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Thanks to everyone for the well wishes, cards, gifts, time, etc regarding my graduation! I'll include a few pictures below for those of you who, understandably, couldn't be there. I've been fortunate enough since before graduation to know what I'm doing, but I haven't given everyone the whole story yet.
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| My friend Andrew and me walking through the "Columns," the final part of the graduation ceremony. We're looking/waving at a mutual friend who's part of the "Skulls of Seven" a "secret" society who was ushering us for graduation
In early May, I was approached by the Dean of Faculty and asked if I was interested in taking a one year position with the school. This position is almost full-time (30-32 hours), and is known as a Westminster Fellowship. For all of next year my focus will be implementing, introducing, and maintaining an electronic portfolio program for the school. The intent of the program is to give students a place where they can collect important works (papers, speeches, presentations, artwork, etc) and use this to either represent themselves to potential hirers or to track and generate resumes. On the administration's end, however, they want to use the program to track their own student development goals and collect data (essentially their side of the interface is one giant database they can use for assessment). So it'll be my job to make sure that students want to use the program and that faculty/staff know how to use it.
There's already been some dilemmas with this, for example the pilot class gave poor ratings to the vendor the school has contracted with, so I'm doing hourly work this summer to help select between different programs/vendors and to develop class modules to introduce all the freshman to the software and how to use it. I don't know that I have any investment in this particular project, but it's a job, I'm interested in pedagogy more generally and this affects that interest, and it's a challenge—which is the part that really motivates me.
And while we're on challenges, I'll also be living in Columbia MO next year. House hunting is...not going well. There's lots of complications regarding the fact that my two roomates have either not started looking for a job yet (he's trompsing through the major national parks for a geology class) or is self-employed. I'm the only one with a job, but I can't actually get a lease without a paystub, which I won't have for two weeks. Meanwhile, the only friend still in the area will officially be homeless on May 31, so house hunting will get a lot more difficult before I can demonstrate that I actually have a job.
In that year that I'm in Columbia, the current plan is to apply for graduate schools again, with an eye on masters programs that include funding. In particular I'm looking at the University of Missouri, St. Louis—not because I want to live there but because they have a good program and I could take dual-credit courses with at least St. Louis University if not Webster University as well. Living in Columbia during that time will give me the time to establish in-state residency should I get accepted. For the rest of this summer anyways, I'll be working at the Cosmosphere again, so you'll see me around!
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