Benefits of a public university that I find unique in comparison to my private-school experiences:
*A women and gender studies department. The lack of academic departments in this area in most Catholic universities points to an area of inquiry in deep need of Catholic academic examination and reflection.
*The ability to consider issues in class from non-church-sanctioned viewpoints without immediately being stomped upon by peers or professors. (This compares well with the "occasional flat-out hostility toward faith" I mentioned yesterday--I had very few classes where either uber-Catholicism or anti-Catholicism emerged, but they were still notable in both cases.)
*Open discussion and education about sex, birth control, and human sexuality. I realize it seemed like I slammed publics in the last post for too much of this, but I think it's important to hit a balance between "it's wrong to have sex outside of marriage and you shouldn't so let's not talk about it" (private) and "let's assume everyone's doing it and that's healthy and people who don't are a bit odd" (public). If only we could mix the accurate information and open discussion of human sexuality in the public colleges with the consideration of responsibilities and consequences in the private schools...I know parents should play a big role in this subject in earlier years, but wow, I have been surprised by the ignorance of undergraduates regarding basic human sexuality in both kinds of schools. (A sidenote: One of my friends has been posting lately about natural family planning, and public schools seem to do a pretty poor job of mentioning it or else mistakenly calling it the "rhythm method" even though that's two decades out of date at this point. So everyone everywhere could convey sex ed information a bit better.)
*Public funding and public-records requests mean a lot of processes at a public school must be transparent. A lot of info is easy to get with a little looking: average faculty salaries by department, number of majors, number of non-tenure-track faculty teaching courses, and so on. Private universities make a lot of decisions behind closed doors. This makes it almost impossible to find out, say, the average salary range for a position unless they post it in a job ad.
The flip side of public funding: the most ridiculous things must be approved by the state legislature instead of determined by campus officials, even though the state provides well under 10% of the university's funding. I really miss a chain of command where, if I could convince the right groups of 3-5 people, I could make something happen.
I'm sure there are other points I'm missing and would love to hear from other people who have worked at or attended both.
2.22.2007
Ash Wednesday reflections
Yesterday I had the rare pleasure of attending Mass in the building where I work. On Ash Wednesday, the local parish (St. Thomas Aquinas) hosts Mass in the Old Main Chapel downstairs. Some friends came over from my husband's building for the service and it reminded me of my high school and undergraduate days. It was truly special to be surrounded by people who share my faith even if it was just for an hour.
There are a few things that can drive me absolutely, positively insane about working at a public university, but it's just too darn far to drive for me to think about working at Regis in Denver. (They don't have a theatre department so they wouldn't have a plum teaching position for me, anyway.) Some of these things include:
*The behaviors they assume students share, i.e. everyone is sexually active or wants to be (I'm willing to concede a majority of students, likely, but still...)
*The relative lack of open discussion about morality and values within classrooms for fear of offending people of a particular/ of no religious faith
*Occasional flat-out hostility toward people who do practice a religious faith.
All people of faith are not ignorant wingnuts. I attended a university that encouraged exploration of faith in the crucible of intellectual inquiry and I am proud of that tradition.
*In certain departments, the assumption that your presence means you share a value system with your instructor. (Try being toward the pro-life end of the spectrum in the women's studies department. I really enjoyed that, and I'm not being sarcastic.)
*The substitution of the lame, empty word "diversity" for words like "respect," "justice," "decency," "duty," "love," and "friendship." We already have a diverse community. What we're missing is shared respect, frank conversations, a basis of caring, a sense of duty towards each other, and a willingness to be open to friendship. People are afraid to speak in terms of morality on a public campus for fear of mixing church and state, even though many of these moral values can easily be justified in secular terms.
This post has been brewing for awhile because I've been reflecting quite a bit on the good things about this campus and about my position here. Still, I needed to vent regarding the disparities I see between my former private-education experiences and my public-school life.
I know that it was beneficial in many ways for me eventually to attend a public university where everyone was not "like me." It opened my eyes to the truths within a variety of other belief systems which I might never have encountered otherwise.
One of the biggest benefits of attending a public university for my Ph.D. was that I could work on my dissertation and not be afraid to critique both my own religious tradition and the traditions of my scholarly discipline. I'm in a weird place scholarship-wise because I value and practice Catholicism (making me more of a theologian than a religious-studies scholar) and also value and practice feminism. The end result is that neither women's studies departments nor Catholic universities are necessarily a good "fit" for my scholarly work since it contains aspects that make both uncomfortable. Which probably explains why I'm working in administration instead of in the classroom...at least for the time being.
There are a few things that can drive me absolutely, positively insane about working at a public university, but it's just too darn far to drive for me to think about working at Regis in Denver. (They don't have a theatre department so they wouldn't have a plum teaching position for me, anyway.) Some of these things include:
*The behaviors they assume students share, i.e. everyone is sexually active or wants to be (I'm willing to concede a majority of students, likely, but still...)
*The relative lack of open discussion about morality and values within classrooms for fear of offending people of a particular/ of no religious faith
*Occasional flat-out hostility toward people who do practice a religious faith.
All people of faith are not ignorant wingnuts. I attended a university that encouraged exploration of faith in the crucible of intellectual inquiry and I am proud of that tradition.
*In certain departments, the assumption that your presence means you share a value system with your instructor. (Try being toward the pro-life end of the spectrum in the women's studies department. I really enjoyed that, and I'm not being sarcastic.)
*The substitution of the lame, empty word "diversity" for words like "respect," "justice," "decency," "duty," "love," and "friendship." We already have a diverse community. What we're missing is shared respect, frank conversations, a basis of caring, a sense of duty towards each other, and a willingness to be open to friendship. People are afraid to speak in terms of morality on a public campus for fear of mixing church and state, even though many of these moral values can easily be justified in secular terms.
This post has been brewing for awhile because I've been reflecting quite a bit on the good things about this campus and about my position here. Still, I needed to vent regarding the disparities I see between my former private-education experiences and my public-school life.
I know that it was beneficial in many ways for me eventually to attend a public university where everyone was not "like me." It opened my eyes to the truths within a variety of other belief systems which I might never have encountered otherwise.
One of the biggest benefits of attending a public university for my Ph.D. was that I could work on my dissertation and not be afraid to critique both my own religious tradition and the traditions of my scholarly discipline. I'm in a weird place scholarship-wise because I value and practice Catholicism (making me more of a theologian than a religious-studies scholar) and also value and practice feminism. The end result is that neither women's studies departments nor Catholic universities are necessarily a good "fit" for my scholarly work since it contains aspects that make both uncomfortable. Which probably explains why I'm working in administration instead of in the classroom...at least for the time being.
2.15.2007
happy post-Valentine's Day!
This is our little lovebug, posing for the Valentine's pictures we'll be sending to some family members shortly. Of late, she has started pretending. This might be more effective if she did not immediately crack up giggling after making sad faces at herself in the mirror. I think I could actually bounce a quarter off her lower lip when she practices pouting. She makes ridiculous faces whenever I pull out a camera, and she prides herself on the cheesy smile she gives me when I get out of the car every morning. This photo is her "surprised" face, which she makes when I sneak up on her with the camera, even though she is not genuinely surprised.
Yesterday, her daycare had a Valentine's party at the end of the day. We managed to come by a little earlier than usual to pick her up (more snow, roads getting bad, bosses willing to let us go at 4:15) and witness the spectacle of sheer toddler sugar greed. To which the children appeared to react differently, largely along gender lines.
Our bug and another little girl stood, calmly snacking in the middle of the chaos. Both girls were surrounded by a flurry of little boys. The boys alternately threw their valentine art projects across the room, brought me stuffed animals and books for my approval, ran into my legs, searched for their own parents, and bonked into the two little girls like agitated molecules before bouncing off in other directions. If summed up, their attitude was approximately: "Yay! Sugar! Yay! Art stuff! Yay! Extra mommies! [smack] uh-oh. Okay! Um, where's my mom and dad? Never mind! More sugar!"
The little girls came over, gave me hugs, then wandered back to the snack table for frosted cookies and Sun Chips. Their attitude was vaguely teenage, roughly, "Well, something different is happening. I guess that's okay. I was bored anyway. Are there more chips?"
I cooked a special meal with all-new recipes last night for us after the bug went to bed, and it turned out pretty darn well. We'll be having a date night later, but didn't want to go out on Valentine's Day because it was just too complicated. So, a little homemade romance was created instead.
2.12.2007
Travels and travails
We've taken a few trips out of the Boulder-Longmont metro the past two weekends, with varying but overall pleasant results.
The first weekend in February, Matt had a conference for the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph science team up in Winter Park, CO. Another member of the science team also had a wife who had to work until late in the week. So, Matt drove our SUV up into the mountains, and I borrowed a car from friends for a few days.
Which, thanks to ice and snow and Boulder's craptastic lack of snow and ice removal, I had to leave stranded on the Hill Thursday evening after work because I COULD NOT GET IT OUT OF ITS PARKING SPOT. The eight-inch-tall ice/snow border around the parking spot prevented me from making a timely exit. With the help of Waldo, a local college boy who wandered by, I managed to get the car pushed back into the spot so at least I could leave it for the night. (In case you were wondering where Waldo went after the early 90's, I can tell you: he's living in Boulder and is growing up into a fine, thoughtful young gentleman.)
I began running in the snow across campus to try to catch a bus to daycare. A car accident in the middle of campus meant no buses were coming through from any direction. I called my out-of-town husband to look up bus schedules online in case I couldn't find us a ride home. Then I kept jogging through the snow, and finally arrived at daycare circa 5:45 p.m.. One of the bug's teachers had waited patiently for me to arrive, and they even had an emergency carseat for me to borrow. I am so happy she is at a place with such caring people...
My friend Tom was in town last week, since he had to defend his dissertation Friday afternoon. We had made plans to have him, his wife Jenny, and their charming son Max over for dinner Thursday night. I had rashly promised to distract him from worrying about the next day. So, when I called from daycare, out of breath, and begged for a ride back to the icebound car (so I could get the bug's carseat) and then out to Longmont, he was successfully distracted. Not everyone can manufacture a daycare emergency and a transportation emergency on such short notice, but hey, what are friends for? Thank goodness they had rented an SUV so the snow was not too troublesome. We had a safe ride and a lovely visit, and Tom is now Dr. Tom so all is well that ends well.
Friday morning my friend Staci and I set out for Winter Park with our three girls. While our husbands considered the future of Hubble science, our young future scientists pondered the wonders of Dora the Explorer:
They mixed slack-jawed wonder with a few jaunts into the hotel pool and a memorable breakfast out where the bug managed to catapult her booster seat and chair backwards into a stranger's ski boots. That took a bit of recovery time, but she was physically fine, just overwhelmed by her own brute strength and the force of gravity. Lots of fun and pizza was had by all, in spite of sub-freezing temperatures and gusty winds. And we filled the in-lodge pub with cute girl action:
The first weekend in February, Matt had a conference for the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph science team up in Winter Park, CO. Another member of the science team also had a wife who had to work until late in the week. So, Matt drove our SUV up into the mountains, and I borrowed a car from friends for a few days.
Which, thanks to ice and snow and Boulder's craptastic lack of snow and ice removal, I had to leave stranded on the Hill Thursday evening after work because I COULD NOT GET IT OUT OF ITS PARKING SPOT. The eight-inch-tall ice/snow border around the parking spot prevented me from making a timely exit. With the help of Waldo, a local college boy who wandered by, I managed to get the car pushed back into the spot so at least I could leave it for the night. (In case you were wondering where Waldo went after the early 90's, I can tell you: he's living in Boulder and is growing up into a fine, thoughtful young gentleman.)
I began running in the snow across campus to try to catch a bus to daycare. A car accident in the middle of campus meant no buses were coming through from any direction. I called my out-of-town husband to look up bus schedules online in case I couldn't find us a ride home. Then I kept jogging through the snow, and finally arrived at daycare circa 5:45 p.m.. One of the bug's teachers had waited patiently for me to arrive, and they even had an emergency carseat for me to borrow. I am so happy she is at a place with such caring people...
My friend Tom was in town last week, since he had to defend his dissertation Friday afternoon. We had made plans to have him, his wife Jenny, and their charming son Max over for dinner Thursday night. I had rashly promised to distract him from worrying about the next day. So, when I called from daycare, out of breath, and begged for a ride back to the icebound car (so I could get the bug's carseat) and then out to Longmont, he was successfully distracted. Not everyone can manufacture a daycare emergency and a transportation emergency on such short notice, but hey, what are friends for? Thank goodness they had rented an SUV so the snow was not too troublesome. We had a safe ride and a lovely visit, and Tom is now Dr. Tom so all is well that ends well.
Friday morning my friend Staci and I set out for Winter Park with our three girls. While our husbands considered the future of Hubble science, our young future scientists pondered the wonders of Dora the Explorer:
They mixed slack-jawed wonder with a few jaunts into the hotel pool and a memorable breakfast out where the bug managed to catapult her booster seat and chair backwards into a stranger's ski boots. That took a bit of recovery time, but she was physically fine, just overwhelmed by her own brute strength and the force of gravity. Lots of fun and pizza was had by all, in spite of sub-freezing temperatures and gusty winds. And we filled the in-lodge pub with cute girl action:
Last weekend the weather was actually nice. For the first time in eight weeks. So, Matt and I took the bug down to Denver Saturday for the "Home and Garden Show." Which should have been renamed the "Windows, Siding, and Off-limits Backyard Playground Equipment Show with a few Flowers." Little "Garden" was to be seen, but many strange and wonderful vendors provided amusement instead. We had to drag the bug away from the pianos with promises of snack, which I think bodes well for her future musical career. Other favorite booths included the "create-a-skylight-at-any-angle" window vendor, the many hot tub vendors who let us touch the bubbles, the "stained-glass-for-your-grandma" seller, and the one backyard playset vendor (out of eight I counted) who ACTUALLY LET KIDS PLAY on the equipment. That vendor deserves blessings and business, for saving the sanity of all the parents who had to spend much of their day dragging all their kids away from the "DO NOT PLAY ON THIS EQUIPMENT" booths. Dude, setting it up and not letting them play is like dangling candy in front of them and not letting them have any. Not. Nice.
Least favorite booth: the two plastic dinosaurs at the entrance that scared the hell out of the bug when they "roared." It took ten minutes to peel her off of me, and I don't know who would want dinosaurs in their home or garden so I'm still mystified by why they were at the show. Maybe everyone but me loves dinosaurs.
After the Home Show we took the free bus down 16th Street Mall to a favorite coffeehouse of mine on Larimer Street, the Market. Wow, yummy baked goods and fine, fine coffee make tiredness retreat in style. At least until the long drive home, when the bug wiped out in the carseat from the sheer variety of adventure.
What's cooking?
We've been up to a lot the last few weeks. My assistant cook is now an expert at measuring flour (particularly onto the floor) and at dumping ingredients into the big bowl. Quote: "I do it do it myself. I make Mama pancakes." No matter what we're actually cooking, which in this case was oatmeal raisin cookies. She also has strong opinions on how many raisins should go into oatmeal raisin cookies--"lots and lots"--and how many eggs should be part of the recipe--"Just one, mama. Gooey. Can I crack it?" Um, no. I like my cookies eggshell-free, so we'll be working on that technique in the months ahead. Can't train a sous-chef all at once, you know.
2.01.2007
Paranoia, Exhibit I.
Sometimes, a marketing promotion is just a cartoon gag. Not a terrorist attack.
Suspicious Objects Found Throughout Boston
followed by...
Looney Toons
resulted in...
A Public Apology
It is not nice to laugh too hard at others' paranoia, but really, folks. How long should it have taken someone on the Boston PD, or the bomb squad, to Google the cartoon images on the lit devices and identify them?
Interestingly, no one freaked out in the other nine cities. I wonder if their populations are more hooked in to the Cartoon Network.
The outrage in the Boston papers today is seriously misplaced, and believe me, there is a lot of outrage. Shouldn't the "experts" be savvy enough to realize simple circuit boards with batteries? Does it make sense to blame the marketing company that designed the devices, because the police in one city mistook them for bombs? How idiot-proof do you have to make a guerrila marketing campaign?
People are going to jail and presumably to trial over this mishap, and the city is likely to sue the broadcasting company for wasted time and effort. Any predictions on how this will work out in the long run? Or, how it should work out?
Suspicious Objects Found Throughout Boston
followed by...
Looney Toons
resulted in...
A Public Apology
It is not nice to laugh too hard at others' paranoia, but really, folks. How long should it have taken someone on the Boston PD, or the bomb squad, to Google the cartoon images on the lit devices and identify them?
Interestingly, no one freaked out in the other nine cities. I wonder if their populations are more hooked in to the Cartoon Network.
The outrage in the Boston papers today is seriously misplaced, and believe me, there is a lot of outrage. Shouldn't the "experts" be savvy enough to realize simple circuit boards with batteries? Does it make sense to blame the marketing company that designed the devices, because the police in one city mistook them for bombs? How idiot-proof do you have to make a guerrila marketing campaign?
People are going to jail and presumably to trial over this mishap, and the city is likely to sue the broadcasting company for wasted time and effort. Any predictions on how this will work out in the long run? Or, how it should work out?
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