Thursday, July 2, 2009

Faculty (& Professional) Development




The Professional Convention

(Summer of 90: before e-mail, cell
phones, laptops and such & you

had to fly some where for decent
faculty development and then
walk uphill to school both ways:
going and coming. TimeSpace
was different then.)


Theme:
Liberal Communities
and the Nature of
Liberal Conversation.

From a brochure announcing the 30th
Annual Conference of the Association
for General and Liberal Studies:

“Most of us would agree that a sense of
community is central to what we do. But
how do we animate that sense? How do
we make community something vital and
transformative, with a potential for a
genuine reconfiguration of who we are
and how we connect?

Other concerns include the way we
talk about things, about the nature
of those conversations, the bridging
of disciplinary language and the
assumptions it encodes, the voices
that dominate, those that are muted
and the relationship between academic
talk and the rest of the community
surrounding it.”

At 11:00, Thursday, October 25,
the convention gets underway at
the Raddison Lord Baltimore,
I share an hour & twenty minutes
with another professional from
Wright State University who reads
a paper entitled “Jousting with
Words: Language in the Quest for
the Wholly-Funded Grant.”

MY paper is called “Analogies Across
the Curriculum: Publications that Perish,.”

We are asked to keep our delivery
to fifteen minutes to allow for
“ample discussion time.”

Each of the 53 scheduled sessions
meeting in various rooms of Lord
Baltimore during the three-day
converse has been characterized
by a title.

My session with Jousting With Words,
for example, is called “Language as
Barrier and Bridge.” It will meet in
the Lafayette Room.

We are hosted by Towson State University
and will “enjoy reduced conference rates
at the newly-restored Lord Baltimore Hotel,
a particularly fine example of Baltimore
architecture and hospitality. Located amidst
some of the city’s most lively theatres, galleries,
and shops, the Lord Baltimore is always
within easy walking distance of the
Inner Harbor.

Special events include a cocktail reception
at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, a
reception with nationally known artists
who live in Baltimore.

Cost: about $800, including registration,
membership dues, lodging, meals, taxi or
shuffle, airline tickets.

Parker Palmer (The Courage to Teach;
Let Your Life Speak; The Promise of
Paradox) delivers the final address.

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