The Week Ahead: Wednesday Message from Provost Ed Bonahue

August 30, 2012

Dear Everyone,

I hope your semester is off to a great start. Here's what's going on in the week(s) ahead.

Taking care of our own

Although I usually kick off each semester with visits to classes, this semester I'm trying something different. Most of our faculty have offices in interdisciplinary units in A, B, L, and K buildings, with many others scattered elsewhere. But because the academic units host the largest group of faculty from many different programs and departments, I am starting this semester with a series of visits to all the units. The two main reasons for this are, first, to visit more with faculty I rarely get to see, including our adjunct colleagues, and second, because I want to be sure the units are providing the best possible support. Whether it's computers, printing, furniture, unit aides, scantrons, or bathrooms (I keep hearing something about the doors?!), I want the unit suites to be the best they can. My office will be contacting morning unit aides to ask for some times when I might catch as many faculty in the unit as possible (overlapping class periods whenever possible) and to set some potential dates. Hopefully, I'll make it around to all the units by the end of the semester. And as always, I would be happy to visit with other departments or office areas too-just let me know!

Important Announcement

As Dr. Sasser mentioned at Convocation and in a subsequent email, there is an important campus-wide meeting scheduled for next Wednesday, September 5, at 11:00 in the Fine Arts Hall. The meeting will include an important announcement that everyone in our College community deserves to be hear directly. Please come if you can, and I'll see you there.

Practice makes Perfect

In order to comply with federal requirements applying to all institutions of higher education, the college will conduct building evacuation exercises during the week of September 4 – 7 at our Northwest Campus and the Centers. By law, and in order to ensure a valid exercise, the buildings to be evacuated and the times for the drills cannot be released in advance. However, the College has tried to minimize the impact on classes–the fire alarms will sound in selected buildings five minutes before the end of a standard class time. Faculty and students MUST vacate the building during this exercise. Thanks for your understanding about the importance of complying with this Federal mandate.

Hollywood, Cannes, and Gainesville!

Over the summer, faculty and staff from both Academic and Student Affairs collaborated to plan the inaugural Santa Fe College International Film Festival. With films from around the world and brief introductions by Santa Fe faculty and scholars visiting from China and Brazil, each showing will be pitched toward a general but engaged student audience. The website for the festival (above) has more information about each film, as well as suggestions for incorporating one or more films into your course. All showings will be in the E auditorium.

· Tues, Sept 11, 6:15 PM: No one Knows About Persian Cats (Prof. Randy Handel, Associate Professor of English)

· Thu, Sept 27, 6:15 PM: City of God (Dr. Regiani Zacharias, Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence, Universidade Estadual Paulitsta Julio de Mesquita Filho (UNESP), Brazil

· Wed, Oct 10, 2:00 PM: Sin nombre (Dr. Vilma Fuentes, Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs)

· Tues, Oct 23, 6:15 PM: Moolaade (Dr. David Price, Professor of History)

• Thurs, Nov 1, 6:15 PM: Hero (Prof. Wang Shuguo, Visiting Scholar, Beijing Union University, China)

I'll confess I haven't seen any of these, so I hope can get to some of them.

More next week.

–Ed