Back to Business

Here's a summary of where I'm at and what I'm doing professionally (perhaps over several posts):

Teaching
I teach three courses this semester.
1. Bread and Butter II (also called cool subject)- I was hired to teach this course, and its prerequisite Bread and Butter I. My favorite course. A very large, lower-level course (for us) at 60 students. I do all the work from planning the course to grading the exams, quizzes and labs to making solutions and putting out lab materials for each students. Know the subject well, rely on textbook powerpoints, so lecture prep is moderate / mild. The most work for this course is the grading. A mountain of grading.

During the Fall semester (my maternity leave) this course was farmed out to a faculty member of another department for the lecture and a roaming adjunct for the lab. Can I tell you a secret? When this colleague taught this course during a previous maternity leave, I got the highest course evaluations in my history because of a comparison effect.

2. Science for Teachers and Gen Ed (a 101 course)- Never taught this before in my life. Feel the need to make it very exciting and do a lot of jumping around, acrobatics and other entertainment in this course. Have a friend/equivalent at another institution who loves her course and has given me some great suggestions.

3. Research course- This course rotates among faculty and this year its my turn. A chance for students to work in the lab but more formalized; a syllabus, lectures for intros, teaching reading literature explicitly instead of implicitly, etc. Was under enrolled (1 student!!) but will surprisingly run anyway. I will get load time for mentoring a student in my lab (a rare treat- yahoo). She is, unfortunately, a sophomore but absolutely needs it this semester. Therefore she has not had a lot of the courses and experiences that will help her hit the ground running, so hoping she can complete my ONE LAST experiment for my paper is a reach. We'll do our best.