Effective August first, I have moved to the Odette School of Business from the Faculty of Education at the University of Windsor. It’s an exciting new opportunity for me to carry on with my work on supporting faculty and staff develop online and blended courses and programs at the “U.” I will be doing much the same sort of work as I did in Education in this regard, and I will continue to teach a couple of education courses in the upcoming Fall 2013-Winter 2014 sessions. In addition, I will be able to continue work on an externally-funded research project investigating the use of e-portfolios in continuing education in collaboration with new colleagues at Odette. This is terrific news, and I am happy to be here. The Odette building is beautiful inside, with gleaming floors, artwork, oval atrium, etc. The building is undergoing an expansion at the moment and I will have access to state-of-the-art technology-enhanced teaching labs and meeting rooms. The atmosphere is one of energy and progress. I like it, even though I notice that faculty here speak jargon that I do not yet understand. Perhaps all faculty use a lot of jargon, but until now I did not notice because I was mostly conversant in the educational jargon.
I haven’t been blogging as much as I’d like. As a faculty member and a parent of very young children, I really did not have time to devote to blogging. As I turn a new leaf in my new role at Odette, I hope to blog a bit more regularly. My goal is to blog bi-weekly (every two weeks). I used to blog weekly as a graduate student and rarely as a postdoc, faculty member or a mom on parental leave. This goal should be attainable, but we’ll see. Life happens.
I need to update the by-line of my blog. Until now, the by-line read “my trajectory through graduate study, postdoc, and into the professorate.” I began blogging during my doctoral study as part of a research project investigating social and technical supports for graduate students studying at a distance. I continued to blog through my parental leaves, postdoc, and stint as a faculty member. As there are very few tenure-track academic jobs currently available, I am exploring alternative career options now, so I am going to update the by-line to “my trajectory through graduate study, postdoc, professorate and beyond.” As I am engaged in an e-portfolio for continuing education, I’m going to try to blog for professional development and reflection as a researcher and a teacher in higher education; in other words, to keep an e-portfolio of my ideas and learning and how they change over time!
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