Finished the First Week

BGSU did it again! They gave me the best students! I've now finished my first week of the fall semester and I think things will "roll along" quite well! I have three classes and a total of 72 students and 50 advisees this semester. In addition to my teaching and research responsibilities, I will also be serving as a literacy coach for a small rural middle school again this school year so that's a great boost for my consultant work, my research line and it keeps me in the classrooms working with teachers and students - I am so blessed!


Enrollment was up again at BGSU this fall with over 4,000 new freshman at the university. We have over 5,000 students in our College of Education and 324 faculty members there (about 900 at the university). Because of our growth and the Dean's commitment to using tenure tract faculty members and not instructors/adjuncts, we have 26 new faculty members in the College of Ed (8 new for my division - the School of Teaching & Learning). That is really exciting! (And I remind myself of that every time I cannot find a parking space in the faculty lot - lol!) They have made many improvements to the Education Building; it really looks amazing now! (The rest of campus - with something crazy like 275 million dollars of new facilities is also gorgeous!)

The highlight for me as a professor this week was coming out of class one day and seeing a new freshman (also a Christi Thomas scholarship winner) that I taught when she was a kindergarten student, and also a 7th grader. When she said she was just waiting for her next class I told her to come and hang out in my office for a bit. We had a nice time catching up! I'm so proud of her; she's going to do great things - just as soon as she declares a major (LOL!)

My low light this week was learning that I would have to get a new mentor because my amazing and most fantastic mentor earned an Asst. Dean's position so he's no longer allowed to help me over the next five years as I work toward tenure due to a conflict of interest. (He oversees the tenure process.) He assured me I could pick anyone, I don't need a mentor I'm well on my way, but I took the news very hard. He's absolutely fabulous and someone I really look up to and admire. May God help me find a good replacement who will accept my request and give me really good advice so that I can stay at this amazing institution!

I was very happy to see my article in print (since it's essential to keeping my job) in Middle Ground last week. It's a publication of the Association of Middle Level Educators and has a circulation of about 22,000 educators.