Confessions of the Acting Associate Chair – Week 15 (promo week)

As the Beatles sing “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”, I present the love sharing, touchy feely, happy to be finished but sad to be done, looking forward to the future week 15 – Promo week edition of the confessions e-mail.

Promotion Meetings
It was so interesting visiting each of the promo meetings for the first time and dare I say a little revealing! For example did you know they have donuts and muffins in the IMP meeting, enjoyable adult beverages in the broadcasting meeting (for after the meeting of course!) and just like the life drawing classes, the AFD meeting is conducted completely in the nude? OK I might have made that last one up, but promo week for me this year was very busy but lots of fun. The passion each of the programs and for the matter each of the faculty has for each one of their students was an inspiration, and something to be truly proud of. You should be commended for not only putting your all into each class, but taking part in this last opportunity to catch and save or even let go of the students that need it.

I also love that CAB, GRA and AFD make a marathon day out of it. Going over all of their students transcripts (over 300 for GRA alone) and they still take the time to have a complete faculty / curriculum meeting after they finish with the transcripts. Thank you all for working as hard as you do for your program, courses and students.

Pot Luck
We did have a small handful of people enjoy the first SCA potluck, Tuesday and Wednesday so thanks to all who contributed and dropped in. I enjoyed Karen’s deviled eggs, Pat’s Almond squares, and Jed’s smoked pork but it was the fun we had just getting together in a casual way that I enjoyed the most. I look forward to setting up another potluck in the future and getting even more people out to break bread.

Baby News
Congratulations to part time DMA/MFD instructor, Brendan Sera-Shriar and his wife Jessica on the birth of little Kael Michell on the 25th of April. For a quick picture introduction, take a look at Kael’s very own website (http://kaelmitchell.com/).

Guest Lecture
Congratulations to Jim Zubkavich and all who helped organize the inaugural Valery Tokmakov Animation Innovation Lecture Series that featured celebrated Canadian animator Jacques Drouin and paid great tribute to Valery. I am told it was a great turn out and a huge success.

In closing
334 paragraphs, 1,532 lines or more then 13,400 words in a little over 16 weeks and if you said to me week 0 that I would have been able to write this much, I would have called you loony! When I accepted this job in late December, I did it with 3 goals in mind. One to get to know the other programs within the School of Communication Arts, second to get to know some of the great faculty that we have within our walls and last to learn and grow as a manager and person, and in the end I have gained tremendously from this experience. Admittedly it was a lot easier always having an end date in the back of my mind, and there are a couple of things I have “shifted” to the bottom of my pile, and subsequently have left for Mark to work out, but I have truly loved this experience and thank Jed and Mark for giving me the opportunity.

I am back to the Faculty group on Monday and have a non-teaching summer so look forward to spending some quality time with my family. I also look forward to starting my very own blog, were I will continue to write a weekly observation style recap of my family and life on Fridays. Actually committing theses thoughts in the form of words on paper has proved to be a large part of my growth over the last semester so I don’t want to stop. Thanks again to all who have helped me along the way and in the end I have this to confess: I am one lucky guy, and I will work hard to remember this everyday!

Thanks! 14 (+2) down and 0 to go.
Jim


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