Happy Friday everyone! I hope you have all had a productive week and you are enjoying a little break from our fall heat wave. It is great to see the leaves changing; it is such a pretty time of year.
A couple of happenings from this week:
I have received a lot of positive comments about our pink out last week. These compliments have come from everyone from alums to those who have no connections to Assumption. I have been quick to point out that this really was a group effort. Our students, parents, faculty and staff put forth an amazing effort.
I spent a lot of time out in classrooms this week observing the academic environment. It was nice to see great teaching and I had the opportunity to listen to presentations in Spanish. One of the students I saw present stuck around after class and shared some more facts he had learned from the project. It was great to hear the pride in his voice as he spoke about what he had learned. I also spoke to a senior class about resume writing and getting a job. They seemed amazed when I told them that I have revised my resume over 100 times. I clarified that 50 of those times were my first attempt to get a teaching job and I wanted it to be perfect, so it took a while. One of our Knight Beacon writers asked me to write a “point/counterpoint” on the issue of reading announcements over the loudspeaker. I am really looking forward to doing this for her.
I spent some time working with some teachers on using Google ngram. This program allows users to search for the frequency of words used in over 500 million pieces of printed materials. It is very cool to look at how words such as “war” increase in frequency when the world is experiencing conflict.
Our email system had some issues this week, which were not easy to fix. One thing is certain and that is that we need to move the info from our exchange server to our new server. The reason we have not yet done this is because it will cause us to experience a communication shutdown for an extended period of time. We are now looking at the end of this month for the switchover.
I listen to a webcast on the Iowa Blueprint that I shared last week with all of you. I would keep an eye on how this is progressing in the legislature. Very interesting stuff!
We have scheduled our insurance walk-through for next Wednesday. These are normally event free and we take the report from the previous year to make sure we have everything updated that they request. I will let you know how it goes next week.
We finalized our proposal for an increase in internet speed to the AEA this week. We currently operate around 3 MEG and are looking to increase to 6-10 MEG. The possibility of adding some online classes and going 1 to 1 will require the extra bandwidth. We will wait to hear back on how much this could increase our annual internet costs.
Let me know if you have any questions and have a great weeekend.
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