kaiyen: pepper

kaiyen: pepper

the life and times of Allan Chen

Latest Posts

edupunking law school, part 1

After a long hiatus from this blog, during which I was basically swamped at work, I return to the idea of how to redefine or perhaps restructure law school to make better use of its faculty, give more to the student, and get away from the traditional models of revenue and federal aid reliance.  I seek to “edupunk” law school.

I don’t have all of the “tenets” of the edupunk and edupreneur movement in front of me, but some really stick.  One key aspect is that, since salaries make up a huge portion of a school’s costs, it is critical to make the most of every dollar.  Especially with faculty that one must lure away from other schools, the amount of time each professor spends actually imparting wisdom unto students is the major metric.  Especially for law schools, where salary (rather than tenure and job security) is often the number one reason that a lawyer would leave a lucrative position at a firm in order to teach, maximizing the contact between student and professor is important.

One means of achieving this is to bring in more adjunct faculty to do the “dirty work” for the professor.  Creating exams, grading, even evaluating written assignments could conceivably all be done by lecturers or other faculty that are not on the track to tenure.  Of course, this requires that the adjuncts work very closely with the professor so that the grading and exam methodology be in sync with the course materials and the professor’s style of teaching.  Now the tenured faculty can spend their time in front of and with students and, hopefully, engaging others about how to change the way law is taught in an environment of continual creativity and improvement.

However, the Edupunk model falls shortl because even the adjunct faculty are often a significant financial load on a law school, much more so than that of the lecturer that runs between jobs in different fields at four separate colleges in an attempt to bring in one decent salary.  Also, many adjunct are practicing lawyers and even sitting judges.  These are not secondary members of the faculty that do supporting educational work for the school.  These adjunct often teach courses that are popular electives with student, and they need to be in front of students just as much as the tenure-track faculty.

The question therefore, is whether there is a role for non-tenure-track faculty at a law school that are valuable both in teaching their own courses as well as being part of supporting the overall work of a tenured faculty that is presumably one of “the” reasons for attending that school.

So…this trend doesn’t work for law schools.  This method of saving costs wouldn’t work for a law school.

Hopefully more success in the next attempt.

October 17, 2010 Higher Education IT, Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, Work-related 0 Read more >

Go watch The Social Network next week « Boy Genius Report

Go watch The Social Network next week « Boy Genius Report.

I have to say that I have been very torn about Social Network.  On the one hand, Facebook, the company, is right here, I have so many friends (well, 5 or 6) that work for them, and I am a little sick of hearing about it as a company (along with Google). Enough already!  I get it, it’s a great story that has defined the concept of social networking!

On the other, it’s a script by Sorkin and directed by Fincher, and stars Jesse Eisenberg.  What a trio.  I know the movie will be quality but wasn’t sure how I felt about the topic.

Apparently, though, it’s darn good.  If BGR, about as entrenched in tech and social networking as any person/group, can say that it’s a truly excellent movie, then I guess I’ll go…

September 26, 2010 Articles from the Web, , 0 Read more >

the conundrum of the blogger

I have been a very frustrated blogger lately.

First, I haven’t been blogging lately at all, so that title might be in jeopardy.  Since one becomes a blogger by blogging, it is a title that one bestows upon one’s self by fiat, and…is therefore not much of a title.  So I am in jeopardy of losing a title which I give to myself by doing the act which is the basis of that title.

No wonder I don’t blog more.  I barely make sense and spend most of my time in my head…

The inspiration for this post is that I just caught up on about 7 posts by a friend of mine who is a GREAT blogger (she keeps it private and I respect her choice to control who accesses it.  Otherwise I’d link to it because it truly should be shared).  In fact, she is married to another GREAT blogger who is a great writer in general.  They are both funny, witty, and able to capture all of their personality and humor and everything else in their posts.

Meanwhile, I find myself overly serious in my posts, and fear that the few people that read this blog think I’m morose, obsessive, and taking myself way too seriously.  I’m all about complaining about the lack of strategic planning in academia, about how we need to fix things…in academia, or how co-workers and/or my work environment are challenging my professional mental stability via chaos, disorganization, and frustration.

To top things off, I don’t blog enough – even about these serious topics – to get anyone to really notice.  I’ve got a draft about the next steps of “edupunking” my law school that has been sitting there for weeks.  If I can’t be funny, at least I can write things of substance.  But if I only write such things every 3-4 weeks, then who is going to notice?

So…the conundrum is that I’m a blogger that rarely blogs.  I’m a (hopefully) funny guy that is always serious when writing.  And one of the ways I want to set myself apart from others in my field is by way of my great, sagacious and insightful writing about academia…but I don’t do much writing.

blurg.

September 25, 2010 Can't be Contained 0 Read more >

a funny thing

Something a bit odd happened earlier today.   An e-mail had gone out to various senior members of the law school that came from one of the school staff but looked a bit fishy.  Had some elements of unsolicited spam in it – “Have you heard the latest on..” and “the biggest scam you’ll find is…”  Stuff like that.

I immediately informed several people that this person was indeed someone from the school, and that I’d look into whether there was anything wrong with her computer or perhaps if someone else had been infected with a virus and was spoofing her e-mail address.  I was going to get to the bottom of this, I was going to set things right, and I was going to prevent bad things from happening to my colleagues.  I was going to be the Assistant Dean of Awesomeness.

When I called up the person and asked if she had sent the e-mail on purpose, she explained that she did indeed send it, and that it was on behalf of one of the faculty she supports.

Me (somewhat deflated but still wanting to be helpful):  “Oh, okay, well just wanted to check because some folks thought it might have been spam or you had a virus.”

Her (non-chalantly):  “Okay, my computer is fine.”

That’s it.  Simple.  Seemed like a done deal.  I summarized my findings to the senior staff who had first inquired and thought things were done.  Wasn’t exactly the most exciting thing but at least I figured things out.

Then…the person sent the message again, with the little added “sent on behalf of Professor X,” which is how it usually is handled.  I’m not on the list myself, so I didn’t know she had resent it.  I also don’t see until later, when I am once again included in the conversation, that she has been mildly lauded for having corrected herself and that it was good of her to clarify her intent in sending the original e-mail.

So, because I had chosen to call her, because I had let her know that she had committed a bit of a faux pas, she corrected herself, and avoided a bad impression on the school, and in fact possibly made a good impression on some.  Yet no word to me, and maybe even not much acknowledgement.

I don’t know where I’m going with this but sometimes this kind of stuff rubs me the wrong way.  Is it too much to ask for a “thanks” or to acknowledge that someone helped you out of a situation?

September 25, 2010 Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts, Work-related 0 Read more >

management

Some things have bad timing.  A critical decision, an important meeting, a message that must be sent, a mission that must be clarified.  Rarely is there a good time for such things.

But we do not get to choose the timing of when we must do that which is our responsibility.  That which is the right thing, at that moment.  We do not get to choose when we need to be firm or decisive.  We do not get to choose when we need to be that person, that messenger, that leader.

What we can choose is whether to actually rise to meet that need and be that person.  Or whether we choose to slide down the slippery slope to mediocrity and ineffectiveness.

This rather grandiose start springs forth from recent thoughts I’ve had about being a manager and, I hope, a leader.  It is indeed a very steep and well-greased slope that a manager faces every day, every week, and certainly from month to month when the easy way is so close, so present, and so, so tantalizing.  That meeting can wait.  We should do this or that only when all the right indicators (and one always chooses one too many indicators) are in alignment.  So many excuses.  But being a good manager means, among many, many other things, riding the edge of that slippery slope, seeing it for what it is, being able to measure its grade…and steering clear of it.

A manager is always a manager.  A leader – and managers are not the same as leaders, and while I am in fact a manager, I can only claim to be a leader if I also claim to have motivated followers, and I’m not sure I’m there yet – must always be visible and sending that message that is clear, concise, and stirs others to attention.  They are very different roles, but management and leadership are both needed.  And once taken, cannot be relinquished, taken for granted, or handled lightly.

I am a manager.  And timing is not my friend lately.  But timing is irrelevant.   I do not get to choose when to deal with HR issues vs. spend time innovating vs. having weekly staff meetings vs. making presentations to hundreds of people on ground-breaking ideas.  I do not get to choose when to be visionary, and when to simply keep my goals in sight and my team in play.  The practical and the idealistic must always be within my domain, yet I do not always have the luxury to choose when I the former will overwhelm the latter.

This balancing act, and avoiding the slippery slope, is perhaps the hardest part of any manager that has broad ambitions of moving up and perhaps attaining leadership roles.  If you are on the slope, then you will always be losing some followers.  At some level, you just decide which followers you are willing to lose, because the reality is that there are multiple slopes, and any decision one makes is going to at least put one’s foot onto that decline.  But until that point, the slope is all danger, and no gain.

Right now, I’m lucky because the slope is obvious.  But it is steep, and even the path around it is indeed very slick and littered with poor decisions, many of which do not in fact lead from each other.  One can get onto that slope via 10 small bad decisions or a single moment of cowardice.

And so timing is irrelevant.  Management and commitment are not.  Management doesn’t listen to the clock.

September 2, 2010 Can't be Contained 2 Read more >

how do I title this?

I just came back from a concert.  Where someone committed suicide.  He leapt from the building that serves as the backdrop to the stage, landing just feet away from the lead of The Swell Season.

I thought i should spend time thinking about this before posting.  Before writing.  But this post is about my reactions, my thoughts, what I saw.  It’s about the here and right now (which is about 2 hours after the actual suicide, as we were instructed to stay in the venue for a while to let the ambulance through, then got stuck in parking lot traffic, then got a flat tire).

I found myself laughing and singing along with Glen Hansard as he made fun of one of his bandmates just when a quick flutter of darkness slammed into the stage.

I listened to the gasp, then the slight screams.  I could almost feel the sense of general terrified confusion.

I watched people crying, hugged by their significant others.  I watched others just sit and smoke.  I watched yet others chit chat on the side.  I listened to an usher gather random theories from people that weren’t any closer to the stage than I was (and I wasn’t close) and turn them into “the facts as she knew them.”

I watched them do CPR on a man that just fell about 40 feet down and at least 20 feet out (meaning it was a jump, not a fall).  I knew that he was nearly if not definitely dead.  I saw the body seconds after they had stopped and pulled a blanket over.

I noticed that I didn’t really feel anything in particular.

I don’t know.

August 20, 2010 Can't be Contained 0 Read more >

i can’t be the only smart one here…

quite an ostentatious title, I know.  But if you will humor me…

Twice in the last 5 business days, I have discovered problems of which Central IT was not aware.

Last week, I passed along information that several law school staff and faculty received almost no e-mail over the weekend and that most had almost everything getting caught in the university’s spam filter.  I was asked to test this, try that, change this setting…all along reminding IT that this was affecting multiple users and that changing one setting for one user was not a high-probability trouble-shooting path.  Turns out that it was indeed a university-wide problem, and the notice went up on the IT web page about an hour later.

Today, one of our network printers was not working for some of our staff.  We use a central printing system where everything goes from our computers to a print spooler then back out the network to the actual printer.  So I start checking things, crawling around on the floor.  Network connection – good.  IP address – good.  Power – good.  Let’s go check the server online…whoops.  Page won’t load.  Call up IT.  Am told that “sometimes the page just loads slowly but that doesn’t really mean anything” and that they’ll “look into it.”

Turns out that one of the two print managers/spoolers had crashed.  Reboot of server, no problem.

The people here at SCU are good, and many are great.  Everyone seems to want to find solutions.  But sometimes it’s like the dots just don’t connect.  Or, when they do, it’s like point A can ONLY go to point B.  And when standing at point A, there is no point C.  Point C does not exist.  It is like Area 51 or something.

I can tell you this – I want to work with IT at SCU.  I want my department to collaborate with them, to take advantage of rather than ignore the intersections that we have.  But if we have to go to this much trouble even for things this minor, if we have to deal with these inefficiencies despite the good intentions of our colleagues, how much hope do we really have for taking our operations and programs to the next level?

August 18, 2010 Higher Education IT, Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts 0 Read more >

edupunking law school

I have been reading a book called DIY U:  Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education on my kindle.  I’m fairly familiar with the overall Edupunk movement, which has primarily focused on moving away from commercial, enterprise level (and therefore expensive) solutions and towards a more DIY, open-source kind of environment.  But this is the first formal book on the topic and quite an interesting read, too.

Several themes are addressed in the book (and they lead to a somewhat scattered approach, IMO, where the book just seems to jump from different educational model to the next, rather than a large scale, overview-type look at the higher education arena).  A key one is that one needs to lower costs.  Edupunk approaches can help do this by “debundling” the various services that are provided by faculty (teaching, testing, and grading) and increasing efficiency per dollar spent.  There are other ideas, too, such as blended learning with a social side, etc.

One of the questions I’ve been posing to myself is how to “edupunk” the law school environment.

Part of me is of the very mindset that the book argues against – that there is something “special” about the expensive, private higher education environment that makes it different and better.  That students that get into such programs – whether undergraduate or graduate – are in a better situation than those that go to less selective, public institutions.  It’s pretty hard for me to admit that, but part of my brain has been sufficiently scrubbed that I do think that.

That part also wonders if law school just needs to be taught a certain way, and that edupunking the system doesn’t get one very far.  The socratic method is connected at the hip to big lecture halls, rather low-tech environments, and just a lot of talking.  It’s not interactive, it’s not blended, and it’s not particularly practical.  It’s all theoretical, at least during the first year.

I’m going to spend the next few posts thinking about how one might change the instruction of law.  I don’t want to go so far that I’d being ABA-accreditation into question.  The book talks about how these is a shackle on the process of innovation, but it’s also a reality.  I don’t think it would be productive to go all the way to “accreditation be damned, as long as the student learns what he or she needs.”  I think there is a middle ground.  And I intend to explore that over the next few days.

August 17, 2010 Higher Education IT, Work-related 0 Read more >