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When someone finds out what you do on your campus or where you work, what questions do they always ask you?
Meg Palladino, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
The first question I get when I tell people that I work for Summer Session is what I do the rest of the year. Surprisingly to some, it takes the full year to run the program. In the fall, we need to recruit faculty and select courses, update the website and admissions system, and launch international and domestic marketing campaigns, and the application opens in January. We also need to plan for and recruit staff for our residential program. It is a busy cycle.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
I get much different reactions now when I say, “I work at Georgetown University” than when I’ve worked anywhere else. People tend to now get much more interested in me than the polite smiles and nods I used to get. The next question is always, “What do you teach?” My tweet-length response is that I teach the teachers how to teach more effectively, particularly when it comes to incorporating technology. Thank goodness Twitter expanded the character limit. It seems to satisfy most, and then we move on, often to some sort of story about their own trauma around learning or around technology. But I always feel like that description flattens the richness of what I do day to day; I have been doing a lot of mentoring lately, and I’ve been able to say to them when they ask me if I like the work or if I miss teaching, this is the first time I’ve been able to bring my whole self into my work. Internally, on campus, the center I work for has a great reputation, so when I say, “I work at CNDLS,” most automatically know what it is and what we do, which is really nice, for a change. As you can tell, I have trouble describing things succinctly.
Mary Churchill, Boston University, Boston
I do a lot of work in the city of Boston with folks who are not necessarily in higher ed. The first question people used to ask is “What do you teach?” To me, that question really reinforces the fact that for most of the public, teaching is the primary mission of our institutions. To regain public trust, we need to make sure we put teaching at the center of our work. Since I’ve been working full-time in administration for over 30 years, I have figured out how to answer the teaching question and, at the same time, do a little demystifying of how colleges work.
Readers, how do you explain your work in higher ed to friends and family?
