Tag: Syracuse

Most Polluted?

/ Derek Mueller / 2 Comments
Reading Time: < 1 minute

<snark>Every so often I go looking for examples of astonishingly astonishing
web design. With that said, I’m no standards-waving design puritan, and I admit
I am attracted to departures from conventionality (unusual CSS tricks, and so
on). This morning an email arrived with a link for PTA listserv subscribers to
the Syracuse City School District
web site, a site so overstocked with informative tidbits that it can only be
described as belonging to the "dump it in, anywhere" school of design, a school
matching with the old industrial mindset that caused Lake Onondaga to be so
choked with mercury and other debris that it for many years won acclaim as the
U.S.’s most polluted. I get it that the school district is complex,
but…my oh my. Just try to find anything here (e.g., the media release
form).</snark>

To be fair, I have done little in this entry other than pot-shot on the site (and remember a link for future returns). And, to be even fairer, I don’t even need anything from it today. But this craggy little hike through the cluttered SCSD corner of the web got me thinking that it
might be interesting in a class to look around for the most polluted school
district web site in the U.S. (or in a given state) and then to work on improving its usability.

Dinner Club

/ Derek Mueller
Reading Time: < 1 minute

We are next up in the Dinner Club rotation. In just over three hours, we will welcome three families, ten guests total into our home for an evening of food and drink. Among them: teachers, environmental engineers, foodies, artists, and their tots. For most of the day, I have been preparing for this event. I am tired, sweating, allergic, etc. And I have been thinking about the rules of Dinner Club, which I will post intermittently throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening (in stolen moments), time permitting.

Rule 1. Sunshine.

Rule 2. Especially when you feel an argument brewing, do not mistake Dinner Club for Fight Club.

Rule 3. If the guests are pizzatarians, honor their special dietary needs as best you can.

Rule 4. No moving of furniture inside of 90 minutes to scheduled arrival.

Rule 5. No unplanned painting projects. Note: This is not only a Dinner Club rule, but a rule for any time guests are on their way.

Rule 6. Wolaver’s before, during, and after.

Under Cover of Maymesster

/ Derek Mueller / 1 Comment
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Starting Monday I will be teaching a blended WRT307 course for Syracuse.
Blended, in this case, means that the course meets in person, on campus for the
second week of Maymester for two hours each evening, Monday through Friday,
before shifting to twelve weeks of online interchange and coordination via
Blackboard. The course is full. Twenty students are enrolled. Count
up the weeks and you get thirteen total (forgive me for flexing those
underutilized math skills, but this number is alarmingly relevant, as you will
see in a moment).

Syracuse offers this course in other formats: a six-week Summer I
course that meets on campus, a six-week Summer 2 course that meets on campus,
and a 12-week summer course that meets online. Sections following the
six-week on-campus format remain open. They have seats available, that is.

I wondered, "Why on earth would students so clearly prefer the thirteen-week
version, which includes a Friday evening session at the end of next week, when
these other options are available to them?" I floated this question in the WP
offices and heard about how great a preference many students have for actually
meeting a person. Might be exactly right. This falls into what I
think of as the "metaphysics of presence"-based critique of classes that meet
exclusively online: they’re too virtual, too dependent upon writing and only
writing, too far removed from the material commonplaces of fluorescently lit
bodies slumped over in badly designed deskchairs, classroom style. [I can’t make
up my mind about which emoticon to insert here.]

I accept that some students might be drawn to an online section where they
get to meet the instructor for a few face-to-face sessions. When I logged
onto MySlice this week to check the class roster, I found another reason that
could explain the attraction to this section, a section with a bonus week over
and above its 12-week online-only counterpart (other than the "metaphysics of
presence" shtick or the named instructor):

The class is listed as meeting only during Maymester. For half
of Maymester, actually: one week, instead of two. Ten hours total. I
won’t be able to confirm this suspicion until next week, but that crucial
qualification, Maymester Blended or Maymester +12, does not show
up in the online enrollment system. That’s…*gulp*. Worrisome, anyway.

So I went ahead and emailed everyone enrolled to explain that most of the
heavy lifting will get done in the 12-week online postlude to Maymester. A few
days since the email, the class is full. I welcome the full class (capped
at twenty, it’s a reasonably-sized group), but I can’t help but brace just a
little bit for Monday evening, for that moment when we take an earnest,
collective look at the schedule, when I’ll have no choice but to explain the
missing asterisk next to Maymester in the registration system.

Commencement

/ Derek Mueller / 2 Comments
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Here are a few photos from Sunday’s commencement at SU.

SU Graduation 2009 - Ceremony

SU Graduation 2009 - Jumbotron Biden

As I mentioned last time, Joe Biden was the speaker. He started with Sinatra’s line that “Orange is the happiest color,” and suggested that Sinatra must have had SU in mind when he said it. Biden told about his graduation from SU in 1968, contextualizing events occurring around the time of his commencement and gradually establishing a bridge between 1968 and the present moment. Graduating during times of great uncertainty uniquely positions you to shape the world at whatever scale you will (i.e., oftentimes this shaping grows from small, principled deeds, from being one who “was not made to look the other way”). He also expressed his strong sense of loyalty to Syracuse University because Syracuse ties have helped him through some of the greatest challenges he has faced. Interjected within these two aspects of his address were references to his father’s advice: when you get knocked down, “get up.”

This summary is the best I could do without notes. And I dedicate it to Sleepy Pete, who appears in the photo above not to be paying attention to the VP.

SU Graduation 2009 - Greeted by Nancy Cantor

Other than those awarded honorary degrees, doctoral candidates were the only group introduced by name and called across the stage. D. snapped this photo of the best the jumbotron could to do capture Chancellor Nancy Cantor and me in the same frame.

SU Graduation 2009 - At HBC with Faculty

After the ceremony, I was fortunate to catch up with professors Lois Agnew and Eileen Schell who waited with D. and Ph. outside HBC for this photo–“fortunate” because temperatures dropped sharply into the 40s during the ceremony, so milling around outdoors wasn’t as appealing as it might have been on a warmer May afternoon.

This Flickr slideshow has a few more photos from the weekend’s events.

Mater’s Day Weekend

/ Derek Mueller / 5 Comments
Reading Time: < 1 minute

No telling whether you’ll be able to see me walking across the platform during
tomorrow’s graduation ceremony in the Carrier Dome, but I’ll be there, walking,
in any case (with the qualification “diss. defense imminent”). The web site mentions

streaming video, which ought to start around 10 a.m., just about the time
the event gets going. Vice President Joe Biden, an SU alumnus, is giving
the commencement address. I’m looking forward to it, even if it means additional security screening and an earlier start to the morning.

Also here’s a photo from last night’s hooding ceremony in Goldstein
Auditorium.

Reason #7

/ Derek Mueller
Reading Time: < 1 minute

Local sports columnist Bud Poliquin shared his “20 Reasons Syracuse Will Make The Sweet 16” in yesterday’s Post-Standard. I’d already picked the Orange to win their first couple of games in this year’s tournament: no surprise, then, that I was nodding along with Poliquin’s twenty reasons.

I paused on No. 7, however:

7.It’s been 1,825 days since SU has won an NCAA Tournament game, which was on March 20, 2004. Or before anybody heard of Hannah Montana, before Alex Rodriguez played a single regular-season contest for the New York Yankees, before that airplane on “Lost” crashed in the South Pacific. That’s a long time.

A long time, indeed. In fact, it’s exactly five years ago, and it’s just about the time (within a couple of weeks, anyway) I committed to SU for a doctoral program of study, just about the time I said “Yes” to Syracuse. A long, long time. Long. Time.

Of course, the latest developments on Lost throw a wrench into this; that Jack et al. are now on the island in 1977 tinkers with time-space decorum ever so slightly, but, alas, it does not change the fact that the Orange have gone 0-for-the-NCAAs since I moved to town.

That will change later today, right?

Accumulations

/ Derek Mueller / 2 Comments
Reading Time: 2 minutes

What is on your mind if you live in Syracuse in mid-late February? Snow
statistics.

On average, Syracuse endures 117" of snowfall per year. If you insist
that I need a source for this, my source is Ph. He has, without flinching,
handled the largest share of shoveling this year. One hundred and seventeen
inches equals just about ten feet. If you don’t trust my source, maybe you
should do a google for the "National Weather Service" or "snowfall totals" or
"enough of this torment already."

This year we had 117" before the end of January. Ph. would probably say that
he shoveled 110" inches of it and that I struggled with the other 7" before
crying out from flesh-shredding back spasms. I, on the other hand, would offer in my
own defense that we have just one snow shovel.

Ever curious about snow statistics, I went online myself, checked out what
data the internet had to report. And I found the blog for the
New York State Golden Snowball Award,
which tracks the prestigious annual honor for the city that suffers the most
snowfall among Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Binghamton, and Albany. No contest!
The site reports that No. 1 Syracuse has taken on 127.8" of snow this year,
although as I look out the window right now, I think their measure is not up to
date. Make that 127.9…128….

I can’t continue to watch. Of course, snow isn’t the only thing
accumulating on Westmoreland Ave this winter. I have
a CCCC paper to
spit-shine (it’s written-ish, if I can decide which six pages to graft
from the diss), a dis’tation to finish, a book chapter draft to collaborate, and
teach teach teaching to do.

Not to mention resuscitating EWM. Or unburying it, at the very least.

Perhaps I will have more to say about these accumulations again sometime.

Small-crowd Mentorship

/ Derek Mueller
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Monday is our grad program’s “Community Day,” a day of pre-semester conversation to set up the collegial mood that will sustain us throughout the year. I am both happy and sad (not tearfully so): it will be fifth and final such gathering I attend at SU.

I’m slotted in the afternoon for an informal ten-minute spiel concerning “experiences finding and working with mentors and building relationships.” And I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit lately, especially about the options available given such a specious invitation. I’ve had experiences. I can identify several really terrific influences–a long list of folks, academics and non-, who have shepherded me in various ways through this program of study.

Best to list a few? Name names? Cut straight to anecdotes? I have considered this, thought about zeroing in on three off-site mentors who helped me to think differently about what I was setting out to do back in 2004 when coursework got underway. Maybe begin with John Lovas….

But the list is long, and I expect that there will be a lot of this sort of thing on Monday–naming of names, recounting how thus-and-such has been such a beacon, etc. It’s hard to avoid. We’re largely accustomed, it seems to me, to talking about mentoring relationships at the scale of person-to-person.

Fine, so I will probably do some of it, too. Only a little bit. Because I’m also interested in getting at a larger proposition–that my program of study, because of non-directed networked writing practices, has been shaped tacitly by a large number of people (viz., the blogroll and reciprocal Delicious network). Many of these encounters are fleeting, serendipitous, casual, and gift-like. An aggregated subscription to 20 or so Delicious users’ links, a pseudonymous comment posted to Yellow Dog, a syllabus for a course at Purdue, a blogged call for a conference. None of this is especially directed at me, and yet, at the very same time, much of it is and has been. Is this mentorship? Seems so. It’s a sort of opt-in presencing, a manner of dwelling, of doing stuff not because anyone said you should. And I am tempted to say that those passing characterizations of online narcissism, vanity, or self-aggrandizement (wherever they lurk, usually in “that’s not for me” conversations) tend to dodge, downplay, or under-value this point about tacit, small-crowd mentorship I am trying to develop. I can’t definitively put a finger on what sustains it. Desire? A blend of interests (self-interest among them)? Whatever it is–in terms of mentorship–it has left me with a sure sense that my program of study would have been drastically different without it.