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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Capturing the process of collaboration

I've been thinking that I want to capture what it is like to collaborate with the faculty group. So far, we are faculty from English (2 women), Agribusiness (1 man), Physics (2 men), Engineering (2 women, 1 man), Biology (1 man), Economics (1 man), Communications (1 woman), Math (1 woman), Statistics (1 man). There is a woman from soil science and a man from history who have not been able to participate.

Ha. I've just finished typing this and I notice that I've separated people into disciplinary categories, making that the most prominent feature...I suspect doing this is a symptom of the disease of being an academic: we divide the world that way.

First, it is so refreshing to sit down with colleagues and think together.
We've really only met twice as a whole and have largely been trying to "see" into the big picture and some of the details of the strawman version of the 100-frosh immersion project.  So, we actually have not yet gotten exactly to the point of "thinking." We are still in a kind of polite phase with occasional expressions of differences.

We are very civil...beyond civil, several people occur to me as "gentle souls."

I am enjoying the experience of trying to see things from another's point of view...of even listening to another, of learning. I wonder if I'm getting more and more self-centered because I see that it is really my own enjoyment of  working together that is driving my participation.

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