Scottish artist Lesley Mclaren created this oil on canvas; I found it on her personal/professional website (http://www.lesleymclaren.co.uk/index.asp. It could be the harvest moon over Appalachia.
Last night I lay awake and watched the moonbeams stream in my west-facing window. It seems I am often awake when there's a full moon. Could there be a connection? Wakefulness and dreaming often go together.
My days have been so busy lately that my dreams for Arts & Sciences have been submerged in the flurry of activity around the SACS visit and now the revision of all the program ABC forms. But the moonbeams worked their magic; they brought the dreams to mind.
Let me share two dreams with you:
1. I would like to see us "convert" a large number of students from undecided to Arts & Sciences majors. We have 22 exciting programs. Last spring we "signed" 76 new students to our rosters; we need to do that again this semester as we go into advising mode for Spring 2010.
2. I would like us to imagine one or two adult degree-completion programs for our School. Our total numbers should include not just our traditional majors and minors but also some adult learners who are working toward bachelors' degrees.
We are the heart of the institution, we teach all but one class in the Core, we provide most of the KING 1000 and 2000 instructors, we do the tracs in D.C., we supply most of the student and faculty lecturers, we attend ball games, plays, concerts, recitals, films, chapel, and Buechner events. All that is more than wonderful. But, I still want a piece of the action with the adult students. We need to add this one more arrow to our quiver.
What dreams surface for you under the harvest moon?
I have spent many hours illuminated by moonbeams. It is the stuff of astronomy. Maybe 10% of the time is actually doing something, and the other 90% is "day" dreaming about what might be out there, or maybe down here. I also worry that someone is looking back and seeing us as a source of protein.
ReplyDeleteOn the second dream, doing an adult learner version of science would be a challenging. Maybe we can look online at what others are doing, but labs make it more difficult and yet without labs, science is not science. However we might think about a "General Science" degree for folks not wanting to move on to graduate or professional schools. The Air Force Academy had a "Basic Sciences" degree which was very popular and useful for our graduates. Can anyone out there imagine such a degree? What would the graduates do? It seems to me that it would be great preparation for those who want to home school their children. Homes schooling parents frequently struggle with science.
On the first topic I think we need to exchange some brilliant ideas on how to do this. How about sponsoring some games in the dining hall over lunch with some spiffy awards? ($50 in gasoline credits?) We need games that expose students to the wonders of modern science. Maybe we should "raid" the FYEX classrooms and do short one-act plays about famous scientists. I got Einstein!
Is this all lunacy or inspiration? You can blame it on moon beams anyway.