Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Minutes and memory

Midway through my life's journey through a dark wood of minutes from past faculty meetings, I stumbled on something remarkable: myself. I was trying to figure out when a particular change had been made in the faculty handbook but I had absolutely no memory of the matter, so I was delighted when a prior faculty chair directed me to the appropriate minutes from 2006--and there I was. According to the minutes, a younger me made a motion that the older me can't even recall.

I do, however, recall yesterday afternoon, when Faculty Council approved a method to consider faculty members' advising activities in annual evaluations and tenure reviews. Several of us have encountered various incarnations of this proposal on different committees over the years, but how long has this idea been bouncing around? In another foray into minute-mania, I stumbled upon the fact that Faculty Council had discussed the need to find a way to evaluate advising way back in 2001. Nine years later, we can put a fork in it and call it done.

How long will it take this action to delete itself from memory? We'd better pat ourselves on the back right away before we forget everything we've accomplished!

1 comment:

Bardiac said...

Can you tell us a bit about how you evaluate advising? It seems to me so very difficult! But we should do a better job.