Sunday, September 30, 2007

Soul Crushers on Campus

I've written before about the soul crushing document that I helped write. The full document, our NEASC reaccreditation self-study, is available here. I was the main author for standard four.

Well, this is the big week: our visiting team is here to check us out. Tomorrow morning I spend an hour with this guy discussing the soul crushing document. Although the document is indeed soul crushing, I'm actually looking forward to the discussion. I think the visit could be a good opportunity to get some honest feedback about some of COA's strengths and weaknesses.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your soul crushing guy looks very enthusiastic in a bottom-dwelling invertebrate scholar sort of way. I like to think that a redeeming quality of the otherwise tedious self-assessment/peer review process is that it invites consideration of The Other-in the Levinas sense, hopefully not the monster movie sense...

dave said...

My meeting with Paul was quite enjoyable. He struck me as a very nice, thoughtful guy with some impressive experience. I'm definitely interested to hear what he and the rest of the review team have to say. So far I think things have gone well. From what I can tell, nobody's soul has been crushed. Yet.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations; quite an accomplishment! It's great that it was edifying and not deeply compressing. Paul probably had a blast too. Do you get to be a potential soul crusher someday?

dave said...

It's possible that I might someday be a soul-crusher. But given that I've taken a turn away from administration, I'm not certain. Also, I might be too openly hostile of NEASC's fetish for assessment to get asked to be on one of their teams.

Anonymous said...

Too bad "processes" like these don't welcome your Shiva element. Then they might actually become processes. Soul crushers need soul crushers need soul crushers...

dave said...

Umm ... what exactly is a "Shiva element"? I'm not familiar with the term.

Anonymous said...

Sorry. I was appreciating the untapped potential of your open hostility for the assessment fetish with a Hindu reference: the god Shiva is "the destoyer"-of illusion, habit, empty form, etc., so simultaneously the creator of new life, or, in this case, the possibility of a living process.