The last full week of March is in the books and the forecast looks good for the remaining 4 weeks of school, so I am happy to present the home stretch, room moving edition of the confessions e-mail for week 10.
Student success
Great news and congratulations to the 4th Semester CAB group who presented to their program partner zig this week. They provided students with a real “live” brief for two of their clients, Burt’s Bees and PeakSaver and this week the students presented their fully integrated advertising campaigns to Lynda Torneck, the account director on both accounts for zig and the Burt’s Bee client who was “blown away” and completely floored with attention to detail and suggestions made for the brand. The two winning groups will now be given the opportunity to present to the zig team and might even get the opportunity to have the work created for execution. They used total new media as the “push” and even the Lynda was blown away by the engagement of using YouTube and Twitter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnOWOGSuX5k
Our faculty Rock!
As I write this, James Cullingham is presenting a talk at L’Alliance francaise about Jacques Soustelle, the French ethnologist of Mexico-politician-journalist who is a principal subject of his history PhD dissertation. We will let you know how it goes next week.
Program success
A great public endorsement for the CAB Program got from Scott Goodson of StrawberryFrog in New York City. Anthony is quoted as saying “This is like getting Speilberg to say your wedding video is Oscar worthy” http://scottgoodson.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/03/award-shows-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly.html
Guest Lecture
The renowned illustrator, James Gurney whose many accomplishments include “Dinotopia”, which he both authored and illustrated, presented his work at S@Y on Wednesday and a GREAT time was had by all. Faculty member, Jim Graves had this to say “That was exciting, inspirational and just plain FANTASTIC! What a great thing to do for our students!” Thanks to Phillip Woolf for organizing and to all the people who made it out.
Lunch Room
At the start of the semester, when I posted my schedule on my office door, I added “lunch club” to each day in hopes I would get an opportunity to get to know more staff and faculty in a casual setting. Some of the best conversations I have had with faculty over the years, dated back to Peter Houston’s office with Ron Lowe and Michael Monty. We solved more of the issues plaguing the world in those 1 hour lunches then I can even count, so the idea of bringing it back was something I have been thinking about for a long time. When Karen said to me, “we need a lunch room” it all made sense. We started talking about it 4 or 5 weeks ago, and it has sure come together with furniture almost completely moved. Thanks so much to Anna for coordinating the whole thing and stay tuned for an upcoming event to launch our new SCA lunch room.
In closing
I understand from years of asking smarter people then me, that the appearance of the first Robin around this time each year signals the TRUE launch of spring. Well at the start of the week, on my front porch, I had my fist sighting. Although, I am not holding too much trust in this particular bird’s seasonal predictability, on the account of the fact he keeps flying into the top edge of my window as if looking for a safe place to land with NO place to do so. I have even built a little shelf, in hopes he would find a safe place to sit, but no luck, he (or she?) keeps hitting the top edge and falling down, and then flying to the railing looking back as if to say “wow I thought that I could fit”. I understand that Einstein said that the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, but maybe we have had it wrong all this time. Maybe sometime over the weekend he will stick the landing.
I do know this… I am going to fly back to my little ledge in room 2061 on Monday for week 11, and I look forward to seeing you in the lunchroom.
Thanks! 10 (+1) down and 4 (+1) to go.
Jim