Happy Friday. Today is the last day of Week 6, and we are close to halfway through the semester! I want to thank you for your great effort and excellent work. Someone once said, “Never underestimate the resilience of our students, but make sure to provide the support they need.” It is also true if we change the word students to faculty. While I am confident in your professionalism and ability, please remember that I am here support you whenever you need a helping hand or a listener.
We are barely in October, but schools and administrators everywhere are already talking about their faculty feeling burned out or stressed out. I know you are all working hard, probably much harder than in normal times, but please let me know if you are experiencing similar feelings, or if you have any physical/mental challenges. We are in this together, and I’ll help in any way I can. Thank you again for being a great team. Our schools have had no emergencies or urgent issues this semester because of your excellence: you not only get things done but you make it look almost easy. I appreciate it.
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Those who don't have plans for the future are bound to have crises in the present 人無遠慮 必有近憂 --Chinese proverb
Dear Colleagues, Congratulations on completing the challenging first week of classes. Except for the regular hustle and bustle of the opening week, SciMath and ITEC started off the semester smoothly. During the meetings with math and biology faculty on Friday, many of you told me that things were going well or at least just fine. Just fine? That's an understatement of how well you handled the most turbulent opening week for the system, the state or even the nation. For our college, this week was marred by COVID-19 reopening and overshadowed by the civil unrest and multiple days of curfew in Minneapolis. But despite these challenges, everyone in SciMath and ITEC was able to focus on teaching. Many of you might not even notice anything if your classes are online. As much as I was in awe with this performance, it didn't surprise me. After all, we planned and prepared well. We didn't count on the best case scenarios; we prepared for the worst ones. We didn't bet on vaccines to save our face-to-face lectures; we grow our online teaching tools and pedagogy. We didn't count on the state or the system to give us permission to reopen science labs; we converted to virtual labs and developed home lab kits. And when several advanced science classes decided to run a few face-to-face labs, we didn't just sit and wait for Public Safety and Facilities to help us; we collaborated with them and made plans for all situations imaginable. Someone once said this about crisis management: If things are done right, a crisis will be resolved even before becoming a crisis and we will probably look like overreacting fools. Thanks for trusting the overreacting fool in your dean. As always, this fool works for you. Guaranteed. Before the Universe entrusts you with something important, it must first challenge your mind, tire your limbs, starve your body, take away everything you possess, and obstructs everything you try to accomplish. For it is the only way to motivate your intelligence, creativity and perseverance, and to make you develop skills for things you normally cannot do. (Mengzi, Chinese philosopher, 370—289 BC.) Dear Colleagues of SciMath and ITEC: Ten days ago, amidst a looming pandemic, the College and I called upon you to teach the rest of the semester without face-to-face contact. What a challenge, and yet what a response you have made! In no time, you converted all 213 sections of the spring 2020 classes to remote delivery. You remap the curriculum, create new materials, and make things work under less-than-perfect circumstances. You also explore new technology, learn new skills, and use methods you did not in the past. You support your peers by sharing knowledge and by encouraging each other. I am proud of what you have accomplished, and I am inspired by how you did it. Like Chinese philosopher Mengzi said, grave situations challenge us to become better, and prepare us for even greater tasks. For our team, the next task is already on the horizon: We need sustainable online teaching practices for future classes, should the pandemic linger. In the next a few days, I will be working with departments on the summer 2020 schedule. Whether your department chooses to go online full-speed or cautiously, I'd like us to make sure that the students are adequately taught, and that your department keeps developing good online practices to meet future challenges. Thank you for being great educators and colleagues. I am proud to be part of this fantastic team. (No puns intended for Gabriel Marquez's 1988 novel.)
Dear Colleagues, Please spend a few minutes and read the College's announcement about current coronavirus situation. (The College sent it to you through MplsConnect email channel on 3/4.) In 2019, the ITEC Team and I made a plan to improve our KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). My summary of the ITEC 2019 KPI plan can be found HERE.
For 2020, I would like to propose the following initiatives. I am also inviting the team to propose additional initiatives that we should work on. Increasing Awards
Closing Achievement Gaps
In 2019, the SciMath Team and I made a plan to improve our KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). My summary of the SciMath 2019 KPI plan can be found HERE.
For 2020, I would like to propose the following initiatives. I am also inviting the team to propose additional initiatives that we should work on. Increasing Awards
Closing Achievement Gaps
Colleagues:
I want to thank you for another great start of the semester. For the spring of 2020, I would like to propose a few times besides regular meeting time for us to get together. End-of-year picnic. Let's celebrate the end of the school year with a picnic! I'll rent a park building in Roseville: there will be indoor gathering space and outdoor recreation area, including playgrounds for kids. It would be on a Friday or Saturday during 4--8p, but you and you family and friends are free to pop in and out anytime. If you are interested, please help me by filing out this Doodle. I will plan it accordingly. Ben's coffee hours. Let's meet at Dunn Bro's. I'll buy the first 2 drinks. The times are:
Dear Colleagues,
I want to thank you for working so hard all year, and in particular this semester! I am especially grateful for the following. We got a new chemistry CLA! Please join me in welcoming Alyssa McCaskey, who started on 11/4. I thank Kirk Boraas and Chris Kulhanek for their great work in the search process. I also thank the entire chemistry faculty for helping out in the lab during the transition. We made a seamless CLA transition on the third floor biology lab. Thanks to the referral from Maire Sustacek, we were able to hire an excellent alumnus, Colleen Hutchison. Colleen started on 11/12, the day Anna Lytle officially departed. Please join me in welcoming Colleen. I also thank Chris Kulhanek for helping Colleen get acquainted with the lab and the responsibilities. We are thriving on the new partnership with US Bank. The ITEC Team has been progressive and proactive from the start, and continues to interact with US Bank with enthusiasm and creativity. The outcomes are fantastic for our students and programs: the hackathon, the named scholarship, the monthly guest lectures, the upcoming equipment contribution, the internship opportunities, and much more. I thank the ITEC team for their work. We continue to promote student research related initiatives. Many of your proposals in SciMath have been selected to create student research projects, materials or courses by a grant Renu Kumar won from the System Office. This will inject extra energy to our classes and our students. I appreciate your effort to elevate our college from a place to pick up transferring credits to a higher learning institution that encourages scientific inquiry and nurtures student research. I cannot thank Renu enough for her tireless work on this grant. And the list goes on. Whether you are celebrating Thanksgiving or not, below is a Taiwanese magic spell for your holiday feast. It says "Eat-at-will-and-gain-no-weight". Happy Thanksgiving! Dear Colleagues of SciMath and ITEC:
I am writing to you to sound a rally call. Minn State is launching a campaign called Equity 2030, which aims at eliminating the achievement gap at Minnesota State Colleges and Universities by 2030. This is no easy task. For example, suppose there is a course with a passing rate of 80% for the white students and 60% for the student of color. Using an exponential growth model, to bring the 60% passing rate up to 80% in 10 years, the students of color need to perform 3% better than the previous year for 10 straight years, assuming that the passing rate is fixed at 80% for the white students. On the other hand, Minnesota has had little/no success at closing the gap: the State has worked on it for the last two and half decades only to see the gap grow to one of the largest in the nation. Let's face it: despite all the great effort, Minnesota educators are not very good at teaching students of color, or the underprepared students in general. I am no exception: I have much to learn in the area, as a teacher and as an administrator. Here are what I think we should do as individuals and as a team. Keep searching for ways to teach underprepared students. Emergency room doctors don't refuse to treat smokers or alcohol/drug abusers, who are the most vulnerable and who need help most. As educators we also cannot abandon our weakest students. When students and their challenges evolve, so should we the educators. Let's continue to ask:
Continue to innovate. Let's look into new ideas as well as older but good ones that were not given a chance in the past. Let's try out good practices you learn from colleagues elsewhere or from professional associations. I will reach out not just to the Minn State System but also to successful inner-city colleges and HBCU around the nation for their best practices in educating students of color. Take on the challenge and seize the opportunity. In the Chinese language, crises are called risky opportunities "危機". The achievement gap is a risky opportunity for our school. It is a risk because of its severe negative impact on an important portion of our students, but we also have an opportunity to turn things around. With a systemwide initiative, we might be able to get additional support or help. And if some of our peers in the College or the System choose to act passively or not at all, we would also seize the opportunity to take the lead in doing something great for our students. Everyone in SciMath and ITEC has a great deal of professional and intellectual excellence, and we did not come this far in our careers just to be an ordinary college that can't handle students of color. The Minneapolis College is Minnesota's most diverse higher education institution, and we fulfill a unique role in serving a unique student body. Please join me in this important initiative for our students and for our college. Dear Colleagues of ITEC and the College Foundation:
I want to thank you for the fantastic 2019 US Bank Hackathon at Minneapolis College. Thank you to Penny and the Foundation Team for connecting us to the corporate sponsors US Bank and Microsoft, for organizing this event, and for creating great opportunities for our students. Thank you to the ITEC Team for educating our students, preparing them for lifelong pursuit of career and learning, and for getting them ready for the hackathon. I also want to applaud everyone for your perseverence and dedication: there were some challenges and unexpected situations before the hackathon, but you overcame them and the outcome was absolutely amazing! I hope you will be basking in the excitement of the moment in the next a few days: you more than deserve it. Please enjoy it and share with our students. As for me, I am getting back to my drawing board to work on our next opportunity to collaborate with our new friends at US Bank and Microsoft. There are so many awesome things we can do for our students, and making them happen is a unique responsibility and privilege that I enjoy. And I know you will be there when our students need you! |
AuthorDr. Ben Weng Archives
June 2024
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