Accessing Your Office Computer Files Remotely

by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Chair, New Member Mentoring Program

As we move deeper into the semester and your workload is increasing (it's not just me, right?), the last thing I really want to do is encourage you to bring lots of work home with you. 

But let's face it -- it's a necessity, right?

You may have a thumb drive that you use to shuffle files from your office computer to your home computer, and sure, those are nice -- but what happens when you leave that thumb drive plugged into the USB port of your office computer? When you wake up an hour early to work on those handouts/meeting notes/governance report, the last thing you want is to be stymied by technology. So while I will urge you to keep home time YOUR time (a rule I preach and have yet to follow myself -- hey hypocrisy!) it might help you to know that you can access your computer files from home with a web address and your MYSCCC login.

First, type https://roam.sunysuffolk.edu/+CSCOE+/logon.html into your web browser (or, you know, click the link and then bookmark it). You'll arrive at this:

Then, enter your MYSCCC login information. You'll be taken to this screen:

At this point you're asked to select the link to your home campus. It's important to note that if you were formerly an adjunct who began teaching on another campus, or even a full-time member transferring from another campus, your files are probably located under your original campus. (ex. I transferred to Eastern from the Ammerman campus last year, and my files are still located under the Ammerman link.)

Click the link and be patient: you'll find a redundant screen that asks yet again for your MYSCCC login:

I find that depending on the amount of traffic on the college server or the strength of the wifi signal at my own home, it can take a minute or two for something like this to appear: 

Use the arrows on the top right of the screen to scroll through the list until you find your MYSCCC Login. When you do, click the link, and you'll be directed to another link for your files ("My Documents").

Hopefully this isn't a totally unnecessary post for you all -- I just realized that I found out about the VPN service when it first came about at the college, and I'm not aware if it's part of the formal orientation for new members. I DO know that I find it incredibly helpful being able to access my files in the smart classroom, and also at home . . . where I do more school-related work than I'd like to admit.

(Look out for one more post/email from me tomorrow, when I archive Nick Giordano's talking points from The New Member Discussion Series event, "Hindsight: What You Can Learn From My First Year.")

On Thinking of Others and Helping (Ourselves)

by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Chair, New Member Mentoring Program

I don't know about you, but this is the point in the semester where I begin to feel pressure . . . papers are rolling in and subsequently building up in stacks on my desk. The number of new emails I receive each day has me on edge. The students who've ignored my office hours for the past four weeks are now making appointments in droves -- to make up quizzes or talk about their writing -- which is fantastic, because it's great that students are finally getting the point about office hours, but when am I supposed to do all this committee work?

My desk as visual metaphor (FOR MY MIND)

It feels like there's never enough time, and sometimes there really isn't enough time, and . . . well, I panic. I stay up late and wake up early trying to accomplish ALL THE THINGS. And then I grumble loudly (usually to the person unfortunate enough to be my office mate) about how overwhelmed and in the weeds I'm becoming/have been/have always been.

Distractions, or methods of procrastination, inevitably crop up around this time, and that's because it helps to think about something other than work when work is driving you a little crazy.

My suggestion is to make those "distractions" a little more purposeful, and little more meaningful, by concentrating on the needs of others for a few brief moments. Happily, the union has a few ways you can do this.

The Making Strides Against Breast Cancer/Jones Beach Annual Walk

Each year in October the American Cancer Society raises money by hosting Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walks.

Each year, dedicated and energetic members of the FA and SCCC community drive out to Jones Beach and participate in one of these walks. For a couple of weeks beforehand, the FA collects donations for the American Cancer Society on their team page. The FA’s goal this year is to collect $5000.  

You can take that well-deserved break from the the craziness of work and do a little web surfing right now -- visit the link above and contribute to this worthy cause by making a donation. AND/OR sign up to walk at the event this year, Saturday, October 19 at 9 a.m. (Okay, the official start is at 9 a.m., but the FA team meets at 8 a.m. You're advised to show up an hour early for the walk because traffic gets bad. A LOT of Long Island turns out for this cause.)

The Fall and Spring AHRC Plant Sales

One of the FA's most well-loved community outreach projects is our annual collaboration with Suffolk County's AHRC ("A private voluntary non-profit agency dedicated to applying its professional and financial resources toward improving the lives of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities from birth through end of life,” according to its website, which you can find here: http://www.ahrcsuffolk.org/).

One of the AHRC’s programs involves Flowerfield Gardens, a two-acre nursery and retail garden shop where the public can purchase plants raised by individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The nursery functions also as a work setting where these individuals can learn horticultural skills while nurturing perennials, annuals, vegetable plants and herbs.

Twice a year, in the fall semester and in the spring semester, the FA invites the AHRC to bring the plants raised on Flowerfield Gardens to the three campuses of SCCC, where FA members volunteer their time and sell the plants to the students, faculty, administration and staff of SCCC.

If you’d like to volunteer your time and participate in the Fall 2014 plant sale, please contact Anita Greifenstein at anita [at] fascc.org and she’ll make sure your name and contact info is passed along to your campus plant sale coordinator.

Professors on Wheels

I think you may have heard about this particular endeavor at the New Member Orientation in August, but just in case you missed out on the details, here’s some more information:

The Professors on Wheels program was developed a few short years ago by Professors Daniel Linker and Adam Penna. The goal of the program is to address the intellectual needs of an often under-served and neglected part of our community, our senior citizens, and in particular those seniors who reside in nursing and/or rehabilitation centers without much access to the outside world.

Our program brings the world of academia to them. SCCC Faculty are encouraged to submit ideas for self-contained workshops and lectures to the program’s current coordinator, Dan Linker. Professor Linker will then bring a list of the available workshops and lectures to the attention of interested facilities and senior organizations, and those facilities pick their workshops based on the interest and needs of its community.

The workshops are arranged according to the speaker/faculty member’s availability. Many of our faculty from all three campuses have already participated in this publicly lauded and popular program, and they found the experience to be fun and rewarding.

If you’re interested in participating in this program, you should contact Professor Linker via email (linkerd@sunysuffolk.edu) with a proposal for your own workshop or lecture. Your email should include the following details:

• Name and rank
• Title of lecture, workshop, or class
• Brief course description (25-50 words)

Even though you're PROBABLY going to do community service out of the good of your heart (and as a way of avoiding -- er, taking a break from -- the hassles of work), all three of these opportunities count towards college-wide or community service on your promotion form, depending on how you choose to frame the experience. So ultimately, you'll help others while also helping yourself -- everyone wins! Yay!

In all seriousness, your participation means a strengthening of bonds between the college and the Suffolk County community, and a continuation of vital, mutually-benefiting partnerships between community organizations and the world of higher education. And that really is a cheering thought when the weather starts to cool and the work piles up, isn't it?

The NMDS Archive: Hindsight: What You Can Learn From My First Year

Editor’s Note:  The following was presented at the very first FA New Member Discussion Series event, hosted in cooperation with the Office of Faculty and Professional Advancement, titled "Hindsight: What You Can Learn From My First Year," on September 12, 2014. Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting the text and talking points from the other presenters, too, so that even if you weren't able to attend the session, you'll still have access to some of the insight and advice offered at this professional development workshop. -- SKG

HINDSIGHT: WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM MY FIRST YEAR

by Dr. Misty Curreli, Instructor of Sociology, Eastern Campus

Welcome colleagues. When I reflect on my first year of teaching, there are many challenges that full-time teaching bestowed upon me.  Today I’m going to speak about three of them. Each one was a challenge of some sort, all of which are works-in-progress. But I do want to acknowledge that much of what I’ve prepared for today is grounded in advice that I received from my colleagues, which emphasizes the importance of reaching out to other people in your field.  I hope these suggestions have practical applications for others who are new to the profession. 

PROTECT YOUR TIME 

My first point has to do with time management.  Maybe it’s because I was a graduate student for a large proportion of my life, but I had really bad work vs. personal time boundaries. As a graduate student I was accustomed to working morning, noon, and especially night and I truly believe that the institutional expectation of grad. school is to do more work than is humanly possible, always with an ample dose of guilt for what is yet to be completed.  So, of course this lifestyle seeped into the way I taught and I developed bad habits.

Things that New Teacher Misty would say/do:

• Let me check my email one more time before bed.
• Sure, I’ll respond to emails I receive at 2 a.m.
• Why shouldn’t I eat my dinner at my desk while I finish up my lecture notes for next week?
• Why yes, I’ll meet with you at noon and likely skip eating lunch.
• Why yes, I’ll meet with you at 4 p.m. which is my most productive writing time of the day.

So, we’re all going to have different preferences on how to organize the day, but regardless I would highly suggest creating some rules for yourself by establishing (with some flexibility given the workload) when your workday starts and ends. You can even go as far as to designate certain hours of the day for particular tasks.   

Dr. Misty Curreli speaks about her first year experience at SCCC

For example, a former professor of mine instructed me to “Protect your mornings” in order to thrive at the teaching-research balance. He reasoned that students were less likely to come looking for you and that you’d be most fresh at that time of the day to do the hard work of analyzing data or writing up findings. 

But regardless of how you organize it, whether it’s a 6 hour or 8 hour or 10 hour day, what I’m suggesting is that you deserve some personal, non-working time to give your mind a break.  Not only do I think you deserve it, I actually think this is necessary for the long-term if you don’t want to get burnt out. But doing this, if you’re not accustomed to it, takes discipline and it also requires that you be alright with keeping some uncompleted things on the to-do list until the next workday. (Can you tell that I’m really motivated by crossing things off of my to-do list?) 

Another important and related aspect that can’t be overlooked is regulating the workload.  By this, I mean being cautious to not take on too much in your first year.   You’re going to be approached by many, many people who are looking for your participation and expertise. Don’t get me wrong – there are many, fabulous opportunities to serve the campus community, but I’m told and I’m actually starting to believe that it’s okay to say no on occasion.  This gives you the chance to invest your time wisely in the endeavors that you care most about and it keeps us from feeling like we’re spread too thin.

MEET THE STUDENTS HALFWAY

For the second point, I need to admit that I think I spent a little too much time in my first year feeling…indignant.  There were times when I would leave class and feel little bit astounded and sometimes kind of offended by the “incivilities” that I saw.  By “incivility”, I mean small acts of what I thought of as academic impoliteness. 

There are plenty of examples, but to name a few:  students blatantly using their cell phones during lectures, a quite apparent lack of textbook reading, and the famous question after a student had been absent to class, “Did I miss anything?” These “incivilities” seemed to disregard the standards and expectations that I hold about the college environment based on my too-many-to-mention years of schooling.   

After two semesters under my belt and with some time to relax and be introspective about the year, I realized that I have no business being jaded in my first year of teaching. Also feeling indignant doesn’t do anyone any good – not the students and certainly not me. I realized that students don’t (for the most part) intend to be ill-mannered and I shouldn’t take these things personally. Our students are early in their college careers and very likely not socialized into the norms and values of academic life.  

 Instead of making assumptions that college students should really know x, y, or z, I decided it would be my new goal to dissolve this apparent mismatch of expectations. To start, I committed to the idea of being transparent about the policies and procedures and why they are the way they are. This year, when it came time to talk about the classroom etiquette, I explained to my students that my no phone policy is based on several compelling pieces of evidence – some anecdotal (students have told me that they feel distracted by others’ phones) and based in research (multitasking isn’t as effective as we thought!).   

And because my subject matter (Sociology) allows me to talk about social norms, I actually asked the students to tell me what the social norms are for the classroom. I think this reinforces the classroom standards in a way that allows the more experienced students to teach the less experienced students. 

I also explain to the students how to use the textbook, what purposes the assignments serve (what it evaluates and how it adds to their skillsets), and after learning that some students were challenged by simultaneously listening to me lecture and copying information from Power Point, how to take notes effectively.  

I guess some people might consider this “hand-holding”.  After contemplating this point, I don’t necessarily think that hand-holding is a bad thing if it helps the students develop the tools to become successful students in my classroom and beyond.  In the end, academic success is more than just teaching them the substantive aspects of our professional fields.  It’s also about promoting their achievement as learners.   

So I think it’s important to recognize that not all students are going to automatically know how to be successful learners and we have the ability to intervene with the scaffolding that may get them there. My advice is to watch for and reflect on your assumptions of student behavior and then ground yourself not in ego but in what’s pedagogically best for the students.  Does my approach help them to get from A to B? I like to believe that it has the potential to make a long-lasting impact.

DON'T BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF

As the last piece of advice, I will add a simple but essential phrase for surviving in this profession, “Have compassion for yourself.” There is so much going on in your first year.  It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, unsure, and/or exhausted.  You will work really hard and you should acknowledge ON A DAILY BASIS what you’ve accomplished despite any feelings to the contrary.  What I found really helpful was connecting with other new people to occasionally decompress and remind each other about of the importance of self-compassion. 

A non-teaching friend of mine recently expressed some jealousy towards professors because we get to start over every 16 weeks.  I realized how right she is and how this provides ample opportunity for change and growth.  So relax. You’re probably not going to get it right on the first try, but you’ll have plenty of time to figure it out next semester…or the next semester…or the one after that.

Thank you.

Distance Education Courses: Trials and Tribulations, or, What You Can Learn from My Mistakes

by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Chair, New Member Mentoring Program

So last week I was MIA from the blog for a couple of reasons, but the biggest and most important one is because I was working to fix some problems with the lectures in my online Standard Freshman Composition class.

We have a thriving distance education program here at SCCC. Of course, you may noticed this already because of the volume of emails coming from the Office of Instructional Technology about Blackboard training sessions. This summer, the college changed their official course management system from Desire2Learn (or D2L) to Blackboard Learn. Everyone who'd been teaching online or using D2L to web-enhance their traditional classrooms were instructed to copy, transfer, and/or archive any course material (and grades) they'd posted and saved in D2L before the conversion at the end of August -- because, with some exceptions, D2L is gone by now, and we have no way to access that old material.

For most of us, this was a more time-consuming task than a difficult one, and files were saved and grades were archived with relatively (relatively) few problems. And some of us viewed the change to a new course management system as a chance to revamp our courses, reviewing and editing, or perhaps even recreating, entire lectures or quizzes or activities as we geared up for the new academic year.

I was one such sucker person. In prior semesters, I'd posted my "lectures" to D2L in the form of essays inside each content module, or sometimes as a series of mini-essays embedded within the Discussion Boards. But as I moved material into Blackboard Learn for my online comp class, I thought I'd give those lectures a much-needed update and  . . . cue the sad trombone music  . . . use PowerPoint slides with audio recordings saved over them (wah wah wahhhhhh). 

Yes, you read that correctly. I thought I'd use PowerPoint. Finally. Because updating my course means using software that was the hot new thing in 1990. 

Me, more or less, trying to record audio on PowerPoint

*facepalm*

So anyway . . . I reduced my essays to slides and then sat talking to my computer for 30 minutes or so for each lecture in an effort to give the PPT presentations a little more energy than subjects like "The Writing Process" entail naturally.

Two weeks ago, just before I was about to open the next learning module which held the "Writing Process" lecture, I decided to sit through my PPT and make sure everything was cool.

Everything was NOT cool.  Everything was very much un-cool.

The audio would play, but it played about 50 seconds (if that) of audio per slide, even though I might have been speaking away merrily for 5 full minutes. So . . . I spent much of my weekend attempt to rerecord the lectures, without much success. And then (after wasting so much precious time) I did some online helpdesk trolling and realized that PowerPoint for Mac is essentially not-to-be-trusted when it comes to doing anything other than making rinky-dink slides. Because Apple wants you to use their presentation software, Keynote. And Microsoft wants you to forget that Macs have better firewalls and more lasting hardware, and begin buying a new Dell or HP every two years.

Where was I? Oh yes. Corporate America is trying to ruin my life. No, wait. The purpose of my story:

Well, it has a two-fold purpose. 

One, to introduce you to the idea of online teaching (if you're teaching faculty), or at the very least, to the idea of web-enhancing your traditional classroom through the available course management system. You can apply to be assigned an online course that's already being taught at SCCC, or you can apply for release time to design an online (or Blended or DL classroom) course. If you're interested in any of these forms of online teaching, first go to your MYSCCC page and click on the Suffolk Online tab -- and then select "Online Faculty":

Yes, I took this terrible photo with my phone because the Snippit Tool wouldn't allow me to capture the drop down option.

Then, scroll down and examine the left-hand side of the screen. You'll see these lovely options:

A bit small, I know, but them's the breaks.

You click on the icons/pictures to access the documents. (You can't do that from here, though, silly.) The DE Guidebook will give you a fairly comprehensive look at our program at SCCC -- and those forms, well . . . if you can't read the fine print in that screen shot, it says this:

The following are forms for faculty who wish to:

• Be assigned to their first online course
• Develop and teach a course never presented online before

Also, the Suffolk Online tab of MYSCCC also lists all of those online training sessions in Blackboard which were referred to in the Office of Instructional Technology emails we received. Just in case you accidentally deleted those emails or misplaced them. 

Why would I be encouraging you to teach online or web-enhance your classes when I've struggled so much this past week? Because you're probably more computer-savvy than I am, for one. But also because . . . despite my hiccups with the technology  . . . I've been a member of our online faculty for a few years now, and I know that it serves a definite and specific student need at Suffolk. We have students who are caregivers to sick family; single parents; night-shift workers; people with limited physical freedom living in rehabilitation centers and nursing homes, but who still want to learn and exchange ideas in an academic forum; and students with unique living/work situations that most of us would be hard-pressed to imagine.

Teaching online isn't a fool's errand and it isn't easy. Teaching online takes a lot (A LOT) of work and really good time management skills (which I'm still -- still -- working on). But it's rewarding, and our institution needs good DE faculty.

My second purpose for writing this long blog post about my misadventures with PowerPoint (cue sound of teeth gritting) is that I think it may help you to know, teaching and nonteaching faculty alike-- about a potential problem with PowerPoint. For all of my jokes, I know a lot of us, teaching and nonteaching faculty alike, use PowerPoint in meetings if not classrooms.

I'm not sure how many of you have attempted to record audio with PowerPoint for Mac. Maybe most of you have Microsoft-friendly hardware. But I sure as hell would have been happy to know about these potential (read: inevitable) problems before I spent every free minute on a Saturday and Sunday (and most of the following Monday) trying to fix the unfixable. Maybe, if I share this story with you, you can avoid wasting your own precious time with technological rabbit-holes.

This is one the aims of this blog: to share information that has the potential to make your first year here more manageable. 

To that end, I'm going to begin archiving the papers and presentation notes from our New Member Discussion Series events on this blog. Beginning this Thursday I'll publish, as a separate blog post, Misty Curelli's lovely paper from the Friday, September 12 event titled "Hindsight: What You Can Learn from My First Year." Then two weeks later I'll publish Nick Giordano's piece. And following that, Jason Ramirez's talking points.

This way, if you had to miss the event, you won't miss out on all of the information that was shared. (We had a large and fabulously engaged crowd -- thank you to everyone who attended!)

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.

On Collegiality

by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Chair, New Member Mentoring Program

As we enter the final weeks of the semester, the days lengthen and our workloads seem to grow in kind -- albeit a little out of proportion. I've run out of hands on which to count the number of people around me who have said, "there aren't enough hours in the day" in which to complete all of the tasks with which we've been charged. This seems to be across the board: whether we're teaching faculty or non-classroom faculty, we're all a little (or a lot) overwhelmed.

And when we feel overwhelmed, sometimes we react badly. Tempers can flare. For the most part, I'm talking about tenured faculty -- not new hires. I haven't noticed any new faculty being short-tempered or rude with colleagues; and yet I know you're all as stressed out as the rest of us. (Thus I say in all sincerity and with admiration -- good job by you!)

The administration asks that, although divided into three campuses, we act as one college. I just heard the most baffling story the other day about a group of faculty who refused -- refused -- to meet with another sole faculty member regarding one of the programs at the college. I won't go into specifics here -- I don't have any right to anyway, because it doesn't involve me -- but I refer to it obliquely now in order to illustrate my point: Don't let your own workplace interactions slide into the murky territory occupied by middle-school lunchroom cliques. We are members of a college. As such, we are colleagues, and to colleague, as a verb, is "to cooperate toward a common end." (Thanks, OED! You're the best. Love, Sarah.)

Okay, a photo of pretty flowers is KIND of Pollyanna.
I'm just glad it's finally spring.

I'm not going to go completely Pollyanna on you: I don't believe we should be silent when we disagree with one another and I don't believe we're going to like each other and love our jobs every moment of every day of our careers. Our jobs don't require that we like one another. They do, however, require us to accomplish a multitude of tasks, some of which have very concrete and tangible implications for our students. Sometimes these tasks have very concrete and tangible implications for us. Regardless, no matter the nature or outcome of the tasks, the following remains true: We can't get anything done in this culture of committee-work if we won't even communicate, let alone sit in the same room, with one another.

As I pointed out in my last post, lest you think I'm being sanctimonious (and I really don't want to be!): I am not a person without fault. I can be snarky, reactive, a tad emotional at times. I don't have a good poker face, and when I'm unhappy with something, usually everyone can tell. I do, however, think that cooperation and professionalism are imperative not only to our job, but to our quality of life. I'm sure there's not a single person reading this post who likes the idea of coming to work every day and wasting his or her time. But that's what happens when we stop being collegial with one another. We waste our time. 

A great deal of good is done on these campuses. And a great deal more could be done on these campuses, if it weren't for personality conflicts: particularly conflicts that have been festering for years.

So why bring this up in a blog that's focused on the new hire? Because as the 2013-2014 cohort (one of the largest groups of new hires in years) you're a new generation of faculty who have the power -- whether you're conscious of it or not -- to shape the tenor of departmental, campus, and college-wide relationships at the college.

As new faculty who haven't been part of former interdepartmental disputes or college-wide "bad blood," developed over years or even -- sadly -- decades,  you have fresh perspective and a great absence of bias and I would encourage you to nurture that aspect of yourself, perhaps above all other things, as you head into your second year of employment at SCCC.

Try to remember (hell, someone remind me if it appears that I don't remember, and gently remind those crankier senior colleagues if it appears that they don't remember): we have all been hired to do the same job, regardless of our different degrees, titles, and purviews:  we must make this college thrive, and by extension, ensure that our students thrive. It helps to remember, too, that when we "get things done", when we accomplish what we have been charged to do, our careers thrive.

So today, on the day of the New Member Social (where I hope to see a good number of you, shortly), and because we are so close to the end of this first year, your first year at SCCC, which I hope has been challenging but productive and rewarding: I wish for you a prosperous career in a collegial atmosphere: one where you continue, despite differences of opinion or agenda, to help one another thrive.

On Collaboration

by Sarah Gutowski, Chair, New Member Mentoring Program

For many writers, April is a busy month. It's National Poetry Month, and everyone who's even remotely interested in poetry seems to use these weeks as an excuse to host an event or pet project: a book release party, a NaPoWriMo blog (usually featuring first-draft poem-a-day posts), poetry videos, essays on the importance of poetry, essays on the resurgence of poetry, essays on the death of poetry: you name it, it's probably happening somewhere during April in the U.S.

At SCCC, the three English departments host a creative writing festival. This year it takes place from April 21-April 26. Events will be taking place on all three campuses, and then on the last day, Saturday, acclaimed novelist Colum McCann will join us as our Keynote Speaker for a day of workshops, readings, and discussion about the teaching and practice of writing.

Art on display in the Orient Building Student Lounge:
(Eastern Campus): A collaboration between
Drawing II and Creative Writing Students

This post isn't about the festival, however; rather, it's about the kind of work that goes into organizing, promoting, and hosting something as involved as the festival.

It's about collaboration -- which, whether we like it or not, should be at the heart of every endeavor we undertake at this college.

I know, I know: some of you not-so-new members, our mentors, might be saying something like, "Sure, collaboration! But what about that time I did [blank]? Or that other time I was on the [blank] committee and I was the only one who did [blank], [blank], and [blank]?"

I was having just such a gripe with my poor, beleaguered officemate just this week. A "hey, woe-is-me, why-won't-anyone-help" moment. Those moments suck -- and not because we're the victims of other people's disinterest or lack of responsibility. Those moments are terrible because we allow ourselves to think that we're victims.

Lest you think this post is headed toward some kind of self-help cheerleading, let's approach this from a formal, academic standpoint and visit the Oxford English Dictionary, shall we? The first definition for collaboration under the OED uses some diction that you might find fairly significant if you're a unionist: "United labour, co-operation." (Hey, British-built dictionary, British spelling.) The second definition is a little more sinister: "Traitorous cooperation with the enemy."

So for me, the question surrounding collaboration becomes the following: how do we keep our joint endeavors at the college aligned with the first definition, and keep them from sliding into something that resembles the second?

We've all probably worked on some project with someone at SOME point in our lives that involved a little back-stabbing, a little deception, a little friendly-competition-gone-wrong. I think that in our culture of Race-for-the-Promotion this can happen more often than not: after all, while it frequently seems like service opportunities are omnipresent and eternally in our faces at this college, when it comes down to it, we usually choose the service opportunities that fit our talents and strengths and areas of interest.

A problem arises when those service opportunities also fit lots of other people's talents and strengths and areas of interest. Before you know it, you're gritting your teeth and sharing tasks with someone who you don't really know and may not even like, and that can lead to either:

1) long periods of stasis, impasses caused by personality conflicts, and/or unnecessarily heavy individual workloads

or

2) "traitorous cooperation" between like-minded individuals, who reject the collaborative process (first definition), yank the reigns, and take off, leaving other committee members in the dust . . .  and sometimes taking all the "glory" with them (yes, ironic quotation marks are necessary).

I know I've been guilty of the latter, and that I've been part of committees where the former was unfortunately and mind-numbingly true. But I've also been part of committees where I needed to work with people I really didn't gel with -- professionally, personally, etc. -- and yet we managed to get the work done, and there was no back-stabbing, no deception, and no competition-gone-wrong.

That's 'cause we collaborated --  the "united labour" way (Okay! L-A-B-O-R), not the "traitorous" way. We respected each other's strengths, and honored them -- like adults, and in particular, like adults in academia should. We asked questions, actually considered opposing viewpoints, and in some cases back-tracked and went against majority rule when it appeared that majority rule, after all, didn't make a whole lot of sense (creating, you know, a new majority rule . . .).

Also, we considered the importance of our charge above all -- seemingly agreeing, although we never discussed it openly as a group, that no one's ego or reputation or share of the "glory" (again, sarcasm necessary) was more important than finishing the job, which -- ultimately -- was in service to what we were really supposed to be doing: teaching.

Too often we underestimate the value of collaboration. Maybe that's because it seems easier to just do the work ourselves. Maybe because it is easier, in most cases, to do the work ourselves. Sure, we're all looking for that quotable, bullet-worthy item with which we can stuff the hollow carcass of our A-forms (too strong?) -- but truly, our most successful endeavors are rarely the ones where we operate in a vacuum.


And giving credit where credit is due:
This student art exhibit was the brainchild of colleague
 Dr. Helen Wittman, Coordinator of IT Support Services

We've been running the Creative Writing Festival at SCCC for seven years now. I'd love -- love -- to make it to ten years, at least. Hell, I'd love for it to continue in perpetuity. But it's not going to continue unless it continues in the ways in which it is collaborative, and changes in the ways it is NOT collaborative.

Currently we're collaborating, between the three English Departments, in the "united labor" way so much more effectively and efficiently than we ever have before. We have open lines of communication, mutual respect, and a real sense of team effort. Inside the College-Wide Creative Writing Committee, however, things have been less along the lines of "united labor" and more like "traitorous cooperation". The chairs (of which I'm one) have been guilty of taking on too much because it was just easier to do, than to ask.

I think that if you asked the other committee members they'd joke and say things like, "this committee's great! I don't have to do anything!" This sounds kinda nice at first, but the implications are much more sinister than they appear. In the end, if the chairs of our committee don't collaborate more with the rest of the committee, we're going to be the only ones on the committee. And we're going to be the only ones who care. And that's going to kill the Creative Writing Festival.

So in 2014-2015, I'm going to try to change that. I'm going to make a concerted effort to collaborate more. For the sake of our students -- for whom this whole crazy week was conceived -- the festival should endure.

You might be saying right now, "What the !@#$% does this have to do with the union? Or me?"

I'll tell you. After my last post about the election, someone commented anonymously on this blog about my advocacy of the Stipulation of Agreement. That someone said they were thinking of voting "no" because they'd heard in dark corners (the offices of senior colleagues who felt more comfortable jawing in private than speaking up at the three campus meetings) that the extension of the contract and the terms laid out in the new MOA would be harmful, not helpful, to our members.

I wrote a very long and very involved defense of my position that, ultimately, I decided not to publish. (And that kind of wore me out, which is why you haven't heard from me since the end of March.) There were a couple of reasons why I didn't run the post, but ultimately this was the most important: while I am a representative of the FA as its New Member Coordinator, I am not an expert on our contract and I didn't want to put in print something that might be erroneous and irresponsible.

Now, after taking a few, long, long breaths (three weeks' worth, right?) I'll say this much: I like the definition of collaboration being "united labor," with or without that extra vowel. I like the idea of our labor organization,  our union, being one of collaboration -- where we work together, openly (like at our General Meetings) and not in our offices, behind closed doors, whispering to each other unproductively. I like opposing viewpoints, and having my perspective broadened, and I would have liked to hear what Anonymous, and his/her confidantes, had to say during those campus meetings.

And as someone who participated in a full negotiation years ago, as a member of the negotiations team: I welcome a return to the collaborative process after this point. This time Kevin Peterman, Sean Tvelia, and Dr. McKay negotiated in good faith for both sides of the table, with the approval of the EC, and I think in the end both sides came out the better for it. (Apparently, 89.5% of the voting members think this, too.)

But it would be good -- wise, I think -- to return to full negotiations in the future. We have a wonderful, mature contract (one of the best in the country), but it makes sense to hear, before negotiations have already been completed and an agreement drawn up, what the members have to say, since life for our members changes and a good union works to accommodate those changes. (And for the record, both sides are bound to confidentiality during a negotiation, even if that negotiation is a contract extension, like the recent MOA. Also, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I feel like the new MOA does work to accommodate change, enough that made it worth a "yes" vote.)

Still -- I am an advocate for full negotiation in the future. It might be easier for the EC and our elected officers to negotiate the contracts, but conducting a survey of the faculty, and making them part of the process of negotiation -- while admittedly time-consuming and cumbersome -- reinforces  that the union is not just a group of officers and a small governing body called the Executive Council. Our union is made up of faculty -- faculty who have opinions, and need to have them heard if they're going to feel like their labor organization truly represents them.

Members make a union. Collaboration between those members (united labo[u]r!) makes a union relevant, important, and enduring.

(And if you have a point to make about the way we're represented, please make it when we're all in the room.)