On Monday evening, I put together (with lots of help of several of my wonderful colleagues from school) all of the concerns and suggestions that students from SCSU put together last weekend on a wiki that I specifically created for this purpose. I added a cover sheet and sent the email off to the ILS department chair. On Tuesday, the chair sent an email acknowledging receipt of documents that I had sent and explaining that she did intend to share the information with the ILS faculty at the meeting that afternoon. She also mentioned some suggested times that might work to get local students to meet with the faculty. One of the other faculty sent me an email on Wednesday with some positive feedback about the document. Given that I had an immediate feeling of “Oh-my-goodness-what-did-I-just-do?” once I emailed the document, this feedback calmed me down considerably.
After a bit of rest from the whole subject, I regrouped a bit. I sent an email to the student listserv today asking students if they were interested in a meeting with the faculty and if so, if one of the suggested meetings times that the chairperson suggested would work. This definitely sparked some serious debate. Distance students feel a bit left out (which I entirely understand and agree with). Others think that meeting with the faculty in late May or over the summer is too late – and that this will let too much time pass between now and then. I’m not entirely sure where all this will go, but I’m trying to give students the opportunity to speak out.
I’m still amazed at how many students have banded together to work together in this project. I’ve been in contact with more SCSU students over the past week than ever before. It has been exhausting in the extreme – and a tad bit stressful. Currently, I’m in the process of cleaning up the wiki that I created so that I can publish the URL to the student listserv. Hopefully, this will encourage continued participation. I’ve also created a new blog that I can use to keep everyone in the MLS program at SCSU informed. Boy, no wonder I’m exhausted!
May 24, 2007 at 4:24 pm |
[...] even have realized that he was doing so) prodding on his part, I made myself revisit the whole thing. I determined that I needed to say something. We (students) can sit back and complain incessantly [...]