Second, I do administrative work.
So if you're unfamiliar with this,
most universities require faculty to help keep the university running.
And this can be stuff like advising undergraduates, running majors, so
on so forth.
Professional staff do a lot but faculty need to help administer the university.
And I'm no different.
So I do administrative work at the departmental level and
at the college level.
So I just want to talk a little bit about what each one of those looks like.
So first, at the department level, I try to help run our major well.
So for a number of years, I served as the undergraduate program coordinator.
So that's the faculty member in charge of the communication major.
Now the communication major is pretty big, we're a large major,
over a thousand undergraduates, so there's a lot to be done there.
And as the undergraduate program coordinator,
I had to make sure that the right courses were being offered at the right time,
that the graduation requirements were appropriate, and that they were being met.
Basically I had to make sure that the students were getting the classes and
the learning experiences that they needed and it was a lot of administrative work.
Just kind of keeping tabs on all of our many programs and
making sure everything was running smoothly.
So, I also did that, so I did that but
I also did administrative work at the college level.
So here, for example, I serve on the college's curriculum committee.
So with about five other faculty members, I review every single
new course proposed in the College of Arts and Sciences, and that's a lot of stuff.
The college has over a thousand faculty members.
There are 44 different departments.
We offer about 4,000 different courses.
And so what this means is every couple of months, I sit down with all
the new proposed courses and basically check them for quality.
Make sure that the requirements are accurate, make sure there is not too much
overlap between a new course and an existing course.
So for example, we just had a meeting not too long ago and
at that meeting we looked at 70 new courses.
And to give you a flavor of what that looks like,
one of them was a course on Parisian architecture, as in art.
There was another religious studies course, on the Book of Job.
We looked at a chemistry course on quantum mechanics for chemical engineers.
It's pretty diverse, right?
That's a lot to wrap your head around.
But I love it.
I mean it gives me a glimpse, just a tiny little glimpse of all the work,
and all the thinking that goes on at a big university.
And it's an opportunity I wouldn't have if I didn't serve on that committee.
And that type of work, that sort of departmental work,
that sort of college work is built into the university system.
Universities don't run themselves.
They need faculty like me to do administrative work.
And scene.
So hopefully what you're able to see there is where I felt like I was moving through
each stage of state it, explain it, show it, and conclude it.
Conclude it.
The show it part is obviously where you're going to spend most of your time but
the other aspects are just as important because they're helping the audience
know where the support is coming from and it's relevance to the claim.
When I'm talking about those examples, I want those examples
to illustrate what my service looks like and what type of activities I'm doing.
As I'm discussing that, I don't want to wander off topic, so
in each chunk I'm only going to be talking about departmental level work or
college level work.
And this was just a short example of how you might discuss your points.
I would say don't get overwhelmed by the terms and procedures that I am using here.
It basically comes down to, what's the key idea?
How can you help the audience understand that idea clearly?
And this takes practice, but we want to make sure that we're focusing on our key
point, and using the support appropriately.
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