Duties, expectations and EMT training...

As a department head you expect to occasionally be called upon to serve in capacities outside your normal duties (what ever those are). I’ve put together furniture for faculty on weekends (yes, I keep tools in my office). I’ve been called into classes when graduate teaching assistants/faculty can’t remember their passwords or find IT support. I’ve often run a dust mop down the hallway (we are short on all kinds of staff), I’ve chauffeured out-of-town guests to the airport, I’ve picked up muffins and coffee for the office staff… on occasion I’ve driven colleagues to pick up spouses and children and once I had to take a colleague to the emergency room of a nearby hospital.

Most in academe know that the typical department head/chair is a “jack of all trades”… the Swiss Army Knife of the institution. Need a job done? Need to find someone at the last minute to meet a potential student, calm an upset parent, visit with an out-of-town guest? Call the appropriate academic unit… ask for the department head… they are usually in their office… writing another memo or at worst out getting coffee and they have their cell on… relatively easy to find and reel in at the last minute.

Did I mention, “EMT training"? … well, it’s not a formal requirement but lately it’s something I'd recommend if you are considering this job… this summer, maybe it’s not to late for me to start those short courses with the American Red Cross.

Recently I was in Shanghai for collaborative discussions with Chinese colleagues. Shortly after breakfast I was in my room catching up on email (what can I say, it’s my life) when I received a call from a Purdue student whose study abroad group was also staying in the same campus hotel… I'd met these students a couple of days before… the short of it… “George (a fellow Purdue student) is in the breakfast room unconscious… we have to get to the airport.” OK, technically the study abroad experience was over, the lead professor was on the way back to the U.S…. but as usual, a department head was nearby, available and on call.

So, after an unsuccessful effort by a local campus nurse to bring the student to a conscious state, the ambulance arrived, I leaped (well, squeezed) into the vehicle with a Chinese colleague, rode through the streets of Shanghai to a nearby hospital, checked the student in, calmed him when he awoke, worked with hospital medical staff to get through appropriate paperwork, sat next to the student, arranged for the student's costs to be covered and still made it back to the hotel in time to check out and catch the plane back to Indiana and get to my daughter’s high school graduation.

Oh yes, of course, I documented all of this for the official files. I can also report that I've gained a healthy appreciation for this part of the healthcare system in China… the medical staff were efficient, competent, and went out of their way to take care of us... and the service... a bargain.

I don’t think there’s a category for this on my merit evaluation…

A few more notes on China and Shanghai

Paperwork, interactions styles and open doors…

I’m in Shanghai, working with colleagues at Shanghai Jiaotong University and a variety of others including folks at the U.S. Consulate and Purdue students on study abroad (and no, I’ve not posted a status update to Facebook or twittered about it). We are working on projects associated with collaborative instructional efforts and World Expo 2010. Things are going well. It’s been about 8 months since my last trip and the usual observations still apply… the roads are better, the smog is the same, the traffic seems a bit worse, and the people are still great… and of course the construction noise outside my window began in earnest about 7:15am local time.

One of the many things I’ve noticed on my last few visit is the extent to which Chinese society embraces electronic records while simultaneously keeping much of the old bureaucratic, very manual, and human intensive record keeping intact. It’s almost like keeping a second set of books…

Check into a modest guest house/hotel (not a 4 or 5 star hotel mind you) and it still takes a very long time to work out who you are, copy documents, write up new documents (with carbon copies… haven’t seen those in a while have you!). Then there is the discussion about those “extras”. Ask about “internet access” and that’s another form with another fee upfront… Ethernet cable… maybe it’s in your room maybe its not… another “deposit” if not and another form to fill out… always expect a new form even if you’ve stayed there before… this time it was another form for my room key and a 100 RMB deposit.

It’s good to have a local with you when you check into a small ‘local’ place… it’s so much easier to have support next to you when “hello” and “good morning” are the only English words for the night clerk, and the security guard is almost asleep (and grumbling) on the couch in the front lobby. However, be prepared… the two star hotel staff are not what you will encounter in a major hotel. Service is redefined… especially late at night when they are tired and the staff has to turn on the lobby lights when you arrive and if anything and I mean anything is “out of the ordinary”…or “beyond basic”… this is when it really comes in handy to have a local there to fight for you… and it looks like a fight to me… my Chinese is limited but the verbal style on the part of some of these folks looks pretty aggressive… however, the staff are usually much friendlier in the morning (and they are the same people 24-7 as far as I can tell).

Breakfast… I really missed eggs, rice, dumplings (I know I’m being simplistic and generic here), soup and vegetables for breakfast… coffee is usually extra unless again, you’re in one of those big places. Order anything that’s not covered by the “breakfast coupon” and it’s more paperwork… for each item… two cups of coffee, two pieces of paper that have to be signed, dated, etc… and run over to the front desk. Good thing there are a lot of people in this country.

Doors… if you’ve not spent a night in a middle level hotel in China you’ve not seen the guest room doors propped open and everyone sitting in their rooms, smoking, watching TV and mostly watching the hallway and you or anyone walking by… wouldn’t want to miss anything. On this other hand you get a chance to look at all their stuff… and there is usually a lot of it… so, it’s really a two way opportunity.

It’s swine flu mania out here and I almost missed my connection from Tokyo Narita to Shanghai… don’t ask about how long we had to sit on the plane in Narita, filling out paperwork, having the locals look us over, measure our body temperature… and what’s with the blue gowns, sealed with masking tape in the back and everyone wearing the big industrial goggles?… I felt a bit like I was stuck in a Michael Crichton novel. But that’s another story…

Beginnings and Endings...

One of the best things about being an academic is that our jobs have clear beginnings and endings. We call them semesters, quarters and/or academic years. Like our K-12 colleagues, we spend 9-10 months on what is usually an “academic contract”. My mother-in-law still thinks we get “summers off”... far from the truth of course. Summer is when you get the real work done (even if you don’t get paid). This is the time for you to focus on that research, revise your syllabus and in general have the time to think about your future and future projects. But even summer has a definable beginning and end.

In the summer, most academics still do their email daily, write letters of reference, collect data, work on that book project, attend professional meetings, sit on student exams,,, on occasion they might even teach a summer school class. But we break up our year and summer is usually special for most people.

As a department head, things slow down a bit as faculty are less likely to be on campus, there are fewer meetings, fewer stressed students, fewer upset parents and what really matters “fewer emails.” I’m still in my office each day, unless I take an official “vacation day” and in truth “what is a vacation day when you are constantly monitoring your email and available through your cell phone.” I’m not going to bemoan my “electronic tether”… I'll let others do that. We live in a 24-7 world and if you are an administrator of any sort you have to be available. That’s just the reality.

In my view, this year and semester were a bit more stressful than most. We started the year with a Presidential Election, a looming financial crisis and ended the term a full blown financial crisis, potential reorganization of our college and Swine Flu on our doorstep. In between there were all the usual human dramas, family life, students with problems, problems with students, problems with colleagues, opportunities and challenges, dramas and mini-dramas, tragedies and triumphs, and all the little things that make life what it is… and I’m not talking about college football or basketball or women’s soccer.

But summer is here “and the living is easier.” Don’t give me a job without beginnings or endings… I couldn’t stand it… oops, I’ve got someone waiting at my door and I have to get back to my email, it’s piling up fast!