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Thursday, October 27, 2011

what the provost said

yesterday...2 meetings with the provost.   in the first one, he agreed to teach a joint section of a CHEM class in the SUSTAIN grouping in the spring.  i know he is incredibly intelligent.  as we sat down with the chair of the CHEM department, he listed off his qualifications.  what i noticed was that the word "collaboration" was not on the list.

in the second meeting, he told us that we (the SUSTAIN initiative) have already had an effect on the campus, whether we knew it or not.  the dean's have unanimously agreed that there must be pot of money reserved for learning innovations on campus.  so starting in the fall, there will be $5M reserved for innovations in learning.

i am watching my cynacism around this...that they agreed to do so because they were thinking of their own pet projects, that we will not have any access to that "relief funding" shall we say, since people will view us as rich already, that we have been useful (provost's words, "i used you as an example of how difficult it is to do this in the system and convince them that we needed to set funds aside to do these sorts of things.").

i am noticing what it is like to have worked all this time, for the sake of the journey, only for those behind us to benefit, for us to be excluded from the promise land, so to speak.  interesting. i am not happy with seeing my self pity.

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