ARSE (annual report & self evaluation)

Dear Colleagues,

A few years ago, a faculty committee at Harvard produced
a report on the purpose of education. “The aim of a liberal
education” the report declared, “is to unsettle presumptions,
to de-familiarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on
beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people
and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves.”

(David Brooks—who goes on to praise institutions and
institutional values in “What Life Asks of Us.” NY Times, Jan, 27 )

Recite out loud:

A. Conferences papers presented.
B. Conference panels chaired.
C. Conferences attended.
D. Other invited lectures or talks.
E. Refereed articles published.
F. Books and book sections published.
G. Book Reviews published.
H. Other publications.
I. Articles or books submitted for publication.
J. Articles or books worked on.
K. Internet publications
L. Websites, blogs, etc. maintained (relevant to profession)
M. Performances, Exhibitions, and other creative work completed.
N. Performances and other creative work worked on.
O. Academic seminars or colloquia attended.
P. Seminars, colloquia, etc. that you participated in as an invited participant.
Q. Workshops attended.
R. Guest lectures for other WWC courses.
S. Any paid work as a professional in your field (consulting, etc.)
T. Unpaid professional service (reviewing manuscripts, serving as an external evaluator, etc.)
U. Other—please specify

Glennis Redmond could perform this List Poem
& it would sound spectacular. She’s got VOICE
& would make a dictionary sound good.

Anyone would call this list: professional &
traditional indication of faculty development
& work-program beyond the classroom.
Shipping our beans and produce across state
lines for non-local foodback.

(Don’t take your guns to town, son;
leave your guns at home.)

Henry Jensen used to advocate in-house conferences.
St Johns College publishes its own in-house quarterly
Eco-logical: both of those practices. .

Imagine a list as long as the one above that
counter-aimed at developing the Amateur Within
& Collaborative Genius, which you may recall from
my quoting Keith Sawyer many times, urges an
environment that encourages failure, one that
recognizes the liability of too much clarity: neither
of which notions stoke the kind of symposium,
colloquium, conference, refereed journal, books
& parts of books & reviews of books-a-million
that have collectively been talisman for scholarly
habit & habitats for
humania.

There: we would have IT:

Thesis (professionalism) on the one hand
(the dominant paradise)

Anti-thesis (amateurism) on the other hand
(diametrically if not diabolically opposed)

An ongoing wrestling match: cerebral & affective
fight-club, Gold’s Gym of Heart & Mind sparking
our local intellective & cross disciplinary fires.
Sustained and sustaining our sustainability..

I confess I’ve made no head-way trying to
re-amateur-ize WWC and don’t expect to.
Everyone’s Doctorial, & the P in the Phdegree
is not to be taken literally. Professionalism
uber alles. No one’s going to respond to a cry for
more amateurism! more amateurism!

Size don’t matter. One size fits all.
Pint-sized will act like the Big Boys
who set the standard on what-it-is to
be a professional. .

Nobody else seems to find these LIST-STANDARDS
(ARSE and Teacher/Course) bothersome:
cookie-cutting
institutionalized
assess-mental
unsustainable
re-accreditationally driven
sounds-like-a-university only not
criteria,

& I’m just trying to send up some counter point to
maybe put IT in play.

My Ice Cream Parlor in Hell Service Project.
(without doing injustice to hot or cold)

If those giving conference papers and writing
books and parts of books and refereed articles
and reviews, chairing symposia, attending
workshops etc. would send me abstracts, précis,
summations…I would be happy to try to
conceptualize it all and spam-it-out for the sake
of argument and analogies across the curriculum:
local food for thought and aimed at, among other things:

1. unsettling presumptions,
2. de-familiarizing the familiar
3. exposing what goes on beneath
and behind appearances
4. so as to disorient our young people and
5. help them to find ways to reorient themselves.

Supplemental criteria for the practice of liberal education
not listed above in the Glennis Redmond edition.

xxxooo, Sam