Greg and Kat's blog

As of next week, I’m done my two year stint as Undergrad director (officially, “Director of Undergraduate Programs”). Ted is taking over, and I have no doubt that he’ll to a fine job.

Overall, I’m reasonably pleased with what I accomplished. There are a bunch of things that I’m happy about:

• We introduced concentrations to our major and honors programs. This adds some value to our degrees (e.g. students can go to EA with a “concentration in Computer Graphics and Multimedia” on their resume) but requires just about no work to implement. [Margo’s idea, my push to implement]
• We actually now have a curriculum! This is the first time we have had any standardized expectations for our courses (other than the calendar descriptions). It’s not much, but it’s an important start. [all me, baby]
• We introduced a learning skills workshop in (at least) CMPT 120/126. I think this is the most effective student retention activity in the university. [Diana, with moral support from me]
• Removed our external breadth requirements, falling back on (and removing duplication with) the now-universal University breadth requirements. This will prevent a lot of confusion about which requirement did what. [me, advisors, the undergrad committee]
• Simplified entrance requirements, making it easier for colleges to offer the courses needed to transfer to SFU, and faster for SFU students to transfer in. Kept enough that we still have a decent picture of the students’ ability, but eliminated the hoop-jumping. [me and the committee]
• Countless other cleanups to the calendar. [mostly me, annoyingly]
• We met our admissions targets in 2007 and 2008. That leaves us well positioned to raise our entrance requirements next year.
• The School has better relationships with Student Services. Both Amanda and I worked on getting our faces known over there. She got a shiny new job out of it. I just get asked to be on more committees.
• The Software Systems program was introduced on the Surrey campus. [mostly Tom]
• I started a push to reform/replace CMPT 150 and 250 (our hardware/system courses). It remains to be seen if this really gets off the ground, but there’s some hope. [me and Sasha]
• Our student records are now paperless, thanks to an electronic record keeping thing (except legacy files). [Nathan]
• The recruitment team has several more cool demos (mostly unplugged) that can be pulled out for recruitment fairs and open houses. [me, Dom, Santi]
• After Amanda left for her new position, I spent 6 months as (what I have decided to put on my CV as) “recruiting and advising Team Lead” or maybe “Director of Enrollment Management”. That was a hassle, but I learned a lot. I understand even more now why Amanda wanted me to do it, but I’m still going to get her for talking me into it.
• Somewhere in there, I taught 6 courses (4 × CMPT 470, 2 × CMPT 120) with reasonable success.

Actually, I have to figure out how to condense all of this onto my CV in a reasonable way (i.e. like 3 sentences). All-in-all, I’m pretty pleased with my term. There are a few “I wish…” things, but not too many. Now… sabbatical!