The following was sent to faculty by e-mail on July 19, 2014.

Hi colleagues –

I hope you are all having a good summer. I thought I’d let you know a couple of things that might be of interest:

Opening Meeting: The opening community meeting for the 2014-15 academic year will be held on Tuesday, August 19, 2014.  Unlike recent years, the meeting will be in the afternoon.  The schedule is still being prepared, but the meeting will probably run something like 2-5 pm.

Community Picnic: The community picnic will be held immediately after the community meeting on Tuesday the 19th, starting at 5:15 pm.  This is a change from recent practice, when the picnic was held after opening convocation, but it is a return to previous practice, when we used to have the picnic after an all-day opening community meeting.  It is our hope that the picnic can be a more fun and celebratory event if it is not happening in the middle of the beginning of classes and all the associated issues of the first weeks of school.

The Moon Room: Following discussions with some colleagues in April, I have decided to set up a faculty community space for faculty on the web.  I’m calling this The Moon Room, after our meeting space.  It is located at http://moonrm.com.  Yes, moonroom.com was taken. I’m hoping it can be a place where we are able to discuss issues relevant to working and teaching at Guilford.  It is set up in blog format, and anyone is welcome to post links, data sets, ideas, questions, or commentary to the blog section.  If you’d like to receive e-mail notification whenever something is posted, there’s a way to subscribe to the site on the left side of the site.  If you’d like to get set up as an author, which everyone is welcome to do, just register on the site and send me an e-mail and I can give you posting privileges.  If you’d like to comment on posts already there, which is also welcome, you do not need to register to do so.  If you have something you’d like me to share there but do not want to post it yourself, I am happy to do so.

Faculty Survey Results: I have compiled and analyzed the results from the survey on Guilford’s working and teaching experience for faculty that I sent out in May and June.  There were 73 responses representing about 60% of faculty members.  The results are posted on the Moon Room site. The report is rather lengthy, but I hope you find it interesting to hear about your colleagues’ happy experiences and frustrations.  Hopefully it will provide a starting point for discussions and potential changes in the coming year.  A direct link to the results is here: Survey #1 Results

Please let me know if you have any feedback about these items or about anything else.  I hope you are having a productive and/or relaxing summer.

Sincerely,
Dave Dobson
Clerk of Faculty 2014-15