Serendipity35

Today was my last day at NJIT. I have left my position as Manager of Instructional Technology that I've held (in one incarnation or another) since 2000.

I'll be moving his month to Passaic County Community College to be the Director of the Writing Initiative grant.

Passaic County Community College (PCCC) was awarded a grant through the Department of Education's Strengthening Hispanic Serving Institutions Program (Title V). The grant is to increase achievement and program completion rates of Hispanic and other students by integrating critical thinking and writing skills in the college curriculum.

I'll be heading up this five year reform effort that will involve developing twenty distinct Writing Intensive (WI) courses. These GenEd courses will be supported by an intensive instructional development component that will train faculty in integrating critical thinking and writing. The General Education (GenEd) requirements are the core courses all students must take in order to graduate.

One goal of the grant is to increase the number of students who pass the Graduate Writing Exam (GWE) on their first attempt by twenty percent. It is estimated that by 2012, the program will be serving over 1,000 college-level students per semester, the majority of whom will be Hispanic. The estimated five-year cost is approximately $2.5 million.

The title for this post is taken from the fourth book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series written by Douglas Adams. Its title is the message left by the dolphins when they departed Earth just before it was destroyed and has since been adopted by some science fiction fans as a humorous way to say "goodbye."

In that novel, Wonko the Sane, a scientist who claims to know why the dolphins disappeared, has a fishbowl with the engraving "So Long and Thanks For All The Fish". The fishbowls are farewell gifts from the dolphins, and they also reveal the dolphins final message: "This bowl was brought to you by the Campaign to Save the Humans. We bid you farewell."

I bid my farewell to my position at NJIT, though I will continue as an adjunct instructor there in the Master of Science in Professional and Technical Communication program. I am thankful for all the fish I've gotten in the past 7 years at NJIT. I have had the chance to work on many educational technology projects including course redesign, launching Weekend University, online learning, Continuing Education, blended learning, WebCT, Moodle, the creation of the Teaching, Learning & Technology group, podcasting, iTunes U, the launch of University Web Services and the K20 Initiative.

I'll still be blogging here. And I hope to still have professional and personal relationships with people from NJIT and other schools that I have established through conferences and organizations like NJEDge.Net.

My new position has technology has a part of it, but it's not the featured role. I'm ready for that. I'll still be working with course management systems and course redesign, but I'll also be working with e-portfolios, creating a writing center, presenting at conferences and have the chance to introduce blogging, wikis and all the rest to a new audience.

I'm excited about the possibilities. More to come...