Week 2 is almost in the rear view mirror… Passing the all important day 10 mark, with a new US president and a big pile of snow to show for it.
To get you caught up, in my new role as Acting Associate Chair for the next 12 weeks, I feel the need to document all that goes on in the form weekly recap, so I can first soak it all in, and second to be able to share with Mark on his return a sort of Coles notes version of what he missed.
Week 2 was a very busy one, and with three off campus meetings, desk time seemed very short, and the week flew by. It would seem the grade change forms have settled down to a small trickle – and I think that is a good thing… Here are the headlines!
Student News
Natasha Thombs, a first year CAB student is about to break the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association (OCAA) All-Time Scoring Record. She is just 5 points away and will be playing Friday, January 23 at 6pm at the Newnham Sports Centre. This is a record that has stood for over 25 years and is a remarkable accomplishment. Congratulations to Natasha in anticipation of your great accomplishment tonight!
Around Our Halls
It’s a new day in our News Studio this week! The backdrop was changed from the nighttime cityscape to the daytime one! I will work on getting approved the purchase of a Caribbean beachscape and some heat lamps so we can start having mini vacations during the day in that class room. The SCA print shop will only accept electronic print submissions now via http://scaweb.senecac.on.ca/scashop, or by using the terminal in the print shop so please get the word out to your students.
Class Visits
Thank you Michael Curran for inviting me to a class next week to take part in a teamwork exercise with CMP students. I also hope to take up Ron Erwin on his offer to visit an IDP class next week!
Keep the invitations coming! I love the idea of getting a better sense of what is going on in as many programs as possible within SCA.
Healthy Discussions
We sure have had a large number of comments regarding a suggestion made to sca.allstaff regarding demand setting for OPSEU. I personally feel that this is a good form of sharing ideas and spurring conversations but I would like to remind people to remain respectful to one another.
Week Highlight!
A highlight from week 2 for me was the campus almost shutting down for 40 minutes while faculty, staff and students crowded around the RTX monitors and in the Hive to watch the US inaugurate its’ 44th President. The sight in the halls was powerful, and the speech was very compelling, but for a part of it, I was thinking about Seneca and how what President Obama was saying had a relevance to our SCA community.
“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.”
SCA has more programs, more students and more faculty than ever before in our young 20 year history and yet we have started this semester off with the same passion and commitment to the future we have always had and all this with troubling economic times upon us, the YORK strike and talk of our own labour issues. Truly commendable to all of you!
Please let me know if you have comments or anything you would like me to include in future weeks! 2 down and 12 to go.
Jim