When asked questions about my vision for the college, I always answer, “it’s not so much about my vision for the college, the more important question is about OUR vision for the college.” I have several structures in place for collaboration and collective decision-making, such as a lots of meetings with department heads. I’m in the process of starting a student advisory board (more on that in a post after the first meeting later this month), and recently started the UnBox committee. As you may have guessed from the title (or if you remember a post about “The Unpossible”), the charge of the UnBox committee is to brainstorm new and unusual practices. I selected folks who are new to the college or who have reputations for coloring outside of the lines. I have reps from the faculty, non-intructional professional staff, administrative staff, and students (a first year student as well as an upper-division student). The first meeting was mostly about brainstorming ways to get one of my ideas off the ground (the Social Sciences Kaleidoscope; I’ll elaborate on this in another future post), but in future meetings I’m sure that they’ll generate some new possibilities for the college to consider. I’m looking forward to those gatherings!
the UnBox committee
The song “The Unpossible” by Kaleidoscope Jukebox begins with a discussion of the limitations of the word “impossible”:
Our language…you might say our language lacks a word.
We have the word impossible, but we need to differentiate between two sorts of things.
The impossible is that which by definition can never be done.
We need another word: unpossible.
That which can’t be done just yet.
This song popped into my head today while thinking of times over my first two months as a dean when I’ve been told “we can’t do that here.” Luckily, there have only been two occurrences where that could not be overcome. The first time was when I requested wrjacobs@uwp.edu as my email address to match the wrjacobs@x construction I’ve had for the past 20 years. After six years with wrjacobs@indiana.edu I requested wrjacobs@umn.edu at the U of Minnesota and was initially denied, but an administrative assistant eventually tracked down someone who could do it, so I thought that the same thing could happen at UW-Parkside given an initial “our system can’t generate that” response, but no dice. The second instance was a request to let my administrative assistant use my designated dean’s parking space since I’d be parking at an on-campus apartment building. The “we can’t do that here” response was driven by fear of a precedent being set. Umm, I don’t really see future deans lining up to live in the student apartment complex and asking for others to use their reserved parking spaces, but whatevs.
In my meetings with department heads post I outlined consultative structures that I hope will facilitate the generation of ideas about alternative ways of business. Proposals will probably focus on practical problems, and rightfully so! I think that I’ll form another advisory group, one composed of faculty, staff, and students who are specifically interested in brainstorming unpossible ideas. I’ll call this the UnBox committee. Stay tuned for more details!
The song “The Unpossible” by Kaleidoscope Jukebox begins with a discussion of the limitations of the word “impossible”:
Our language…you might say our language lacks a word.
We have the word impossible, but we need to differentiate between two sorts of things.
The impossible is that which by definition can never be done.
We need another word: unpossible.
That which can’t be done just yet.
This song popped into my head today while thinking of times over my first two months as a dean when I’ve been told “we can’t do that here.” Luckily, there have only been two occurrences where that could not be overcome. The first time was when I requested wrjacobs@uwp.edu as my email address to match the wrjacobs@x construction I’ve had for the past 20 years. After six years with wrjacobs@indiana.edu I requested wrjacobs@umn.edu at the U of Minnesota and was initially denied, but an administrative assistant eventually tracked down someone who could do it, so I thought that the same thing could happen at UW-Parkside given an initial “our system can’t generate that” response, but no dice. The second instance was a request to let my administrative assistant use my designated dean’s parking space since I’d be parking at an on-campus apartment building. The “we can’t do that here” response was driven by fear of a precedent being set. Umm, I don’t really see future deans lining up to live in the student apartment complex and asking for others to use their reserved parking spaces, but whatevs.
In my meetings with department heads post I outlined consultative structures that I hope will facilitate the generation of ideas about alternative ways of business. Proposals will probably focus on practical problems, and rightfully so! I think that I’ll form another advisory group, one composed of faculty, staff, and students who are specifically interested in brainstorming unpossible ideas. I’ll call this the UnBox committee. Stay tuned for more details!