First Day of Orientation at the U of A!!!

Actually, this was an optional meeting, but I wanted to acclimatize myself to the university as quickly as possible. The department textbooks advocates a genre-based, rather than a process-based, approach to writing, so that's a bit out of my comfort zone & I needed as much info as possible before composing my syllabus.  Anyway, a few observations:

  • 95% of the people there were GTAs -- only 5 new lecturers. Should have expected that, I suppose, but I didn't.
    • Speaking of the GTAs, they're quite the young pups. Given that my doctoral program had a slight higher average age for incoming grad students, I'd forgotten what 23 / 24 year old grad students looked like!
  • People are really friendly. I'm really going to enjoy here, I think. (But I already knew that!)
  • Much of the pedagogical and rhetorical information on which this writing program is based is familiar to me from MTSU's teacher training. So, while they're'll be a learning curve, it's going to go pretty quickly.
  • We have a nicely laid out, institution-wide attendance policy and late-work policy. I love when things are nicely laid out like that -- saves so much stress in case there's ever a grade challenge. (I've never had one, but it's a worry that comes with the job.)
  • Strangely enough, based on absences, faculty actually have the ability to drop students from their courses. It's a matter of managing enrollment, but I've never heard of something like that. There's a lot of wiggle room, too -- we may drop students based on attendance. Given that ambiguity, I'll be trying to avoid using this option as much as possible, except in cases of otherwise certain failure of the student.
I have another optional orientation meeting tomorrow, then the big mandatory one on Wednesday. Looking forward to both!

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