Welcome and Congratulations

First Week Cheer: Raspberries from a colleague's garden!

by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Chair, New Member Mentoring Program

When you receive this, or when you feel like you can sit down finally and read it, take a minute to breathe deeply and congratulate yourself on completing your first week as SCCC faculty.

By now, you may have begun formulating questions about your department, your classrooms, your workspace/office, your campus, the college, etc.: You may be wondering why new students keep appearing in your classroom (if they aren't on the roster, out they go!) and/or why the bookstore ran out of books for your class, even when you have a receipt in your hand that says, clearly, you ordered enough for each student. Or you may be wondering why the contractors who are finishing the soffits on your building keep trying to kill the rose bush that used to flower so prettily outside your window. (Nope. Wait, that's just me).

Some of these questions have simple answers, like the first question (many students don't read the emails the college sends them, and unfortunately, they don't always read signs posted on doors about being on class rosters, either.) Some questions, like the second, have really annoying complex answers that are more frustrating than satisfying. And some of these questions will never be answered, and even create more questions, like the last. (Aren't you supposed to be trained to operate a boom before you actually get into the lift?)

Anyway -- the point is: it's natural to have questions when you're new to an institution or even just new to your role within that institution. The FA, through our New Member Program, is here to help answer them. 

By now, most of you have been assigned a mentor. (For those of you who have not received an email notifying you of your mentor assignment, please don't fret -- we are a few days, and a few emails, away from assigning you one. This beginning-of-the-year time can be dizzying for mid-career faculty, too.) 

Your mentors may not have all the answers, but they probably have a good idea of who you can ask in order to secure one.Your mentor can be a person you can bounce ideas off of about pedagogy and classroom practices; your mentor can be a person you can call or email quickly to say, "What's the date of that event again?" or "Who's the Dean/Vice President/Person-in-Charge of A,B, or C?" (The administration and its different levels can get a little confusing sometimes.) 

Something that was decidedly LESS happy-making.

Your mentor can, and should, be the person you go to when you have a doubt, a concern, or a query. Their job -- our job -- as participants in this program is to provide a friendly, accessible, and relatively informal source of assistance during your first year as full-time classroom faculty, librarians, professional assistants, and specialists. 

As part of that assistance, we're hosting a little get-together this Friday, September 12, from 11-12:15 p.m. in the Mildred Green Room of the Babylon Student Center (for you Eastern and Grant colleagues, that's on the Ammerman Campus) as part of a new discussion series, co-sponsored by the FA and the Office for Faculty and Professional Advancement, designed to help new members shape their careers paths at SCCC with purpose, efficiency, and confidence.

“Hindsight: What You Can Learn from My First Year” will feature Misty Curreli, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the Eastern campus; Nicholas Giordano, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Ammerman campus; and Jason Ramirez, Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at the Grant campus.

I encourage you all to take a moment out of your busy schedules and join us for this important (and hopefully insightful) conversation. 

Oh, and there will be cookies, too. You know that by Friday, you'll be needing some cookies. So come for the cookies, stay for the wealth of information and sense of community.