Dear Everyone,
Many thanks to all the faculty and staff who again came together over the past two days in a torrent of scheduled and quickly arranged meetings to share their Santa Fe experience with the visiting committee from the Aspen Institute. From the meetings I was part of, and from other reports, I know our guests received a genuine and authentic picture of the Santa Fe culture. From what I understand, the committee that visited us is charged with collating the mountains of data, records, and interviews into a coherent package for further review by yet another panel of adjudicators. All in all, I expect that we may not hear anything further until next year. In the meantime, we’ve certainly got plenty going on.
Student Opinion Surveys
We all know the low response rates we often get for online student opinion surveys are usually inadequate for giving us substantive information about student perceptions of our courses. As of this semester, though, the good folks in ITS are ready to pilot a Student Opinion Surveys function within the Santa Fe mobile app, which will allow faculty to have students complete the surveys in class (just as many of us remember), which should lead to tremendous improvements in response rates and feedback. (For students who don’t have a smart phone and want to make their voice heard, the online portal will remain open.) I am looking for six course sections from any part of the College to help try out the app. Faculty who want to participate will be given the minimal training needed, and folks from ITS will even stand by in classrooms in case there is any technical difficulty. So if you’d like to be part of the pilot, please let me know by return email.
World Humanities Expo
The Department of Humanities and Foreign Languages is taking this week to present talks, films, creative projects, research posters, and other activities celebrating world religions, cultures, and languages. A variety of student work is on display in R-01 throughout this week, and all day Thursday there will be a speech competition featuring the best student speakers from the department’s dozens of Public Speaking classes. The week’sschedule will close with a talk from our Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence Regiani Zacarias on Friday.
A Little Nightly Music
This week, the Fine Arts Department presents Trial by Jury, at 7:30 each evening until Saturday the 17th in the Fine Arts Hall. Trial by Jury is a one-act Gilbert and Sullivan comic operettadirected by theatre professor Terry Klenk, with musical direction by music professor Lynn Sandefur. To my knowledge, this production represents another “first” for the Fine Arts Department—an opera with vocals and music performed entirely by Santa Fe students and staff. Tickets are free as always for SF faculty, staff, and students, and additional ticket information is available from www.sfcollege.edu/finearts or at the SF Box Office.
Have a great week!
–Ed