Flashback Two: Coordinating the Extension English Program
A few months after joining the English Department, I was asked to coordinate the English Program for the AUB Extension (now known as the Continuing Education Center). That was over and above my full-time departmental teaching load. I was grateful for the opportunity, and I did that for three consecutive years before finally extricating myself.
The Extension job involved dedicating afternoon office hours to seeing Extension English teachers and coordinators, checking all exams, and revising the curriculum. I wrote detailed course objectives for the five levels, changed all the textbooks, and produced an elaborate new placement test, along with placement criteria. I was also involved in the placement of students; while most of the questions were multiple choice, there was a writing component that had to be checked before finalizing every student's placement. Additionally, I was consulted regarding the aptitude of instructors.
Did I leave a mark on Extension? Probably, because I was told that the then-Director of REP (Research and External Programs), the higher body in charge of Extension, was surprised I had left them. Additionally, a decade later, one of the Extension instructors brought to my attention that the placement test I had created was used for ten years after my departure.
The then-Director of the Extension, Antoine Kassab, also an Arabic Department faculty member (now deceased), had informed me that I had been asked to coordinate the Extension Program as a form of preparation for coordinating the English Department's Communication Skills Program in the future. Was I ever asked to do that? Never formally; rather, the possibility was flung at me very fleetingly and somewhat comically (in question form) once in the Department, a year after leaving Extension, when we were being individually consulted regarding the rotation of the Department's program coordinator - and you can imagine my reaction.
After the initial bumpy start there were many more puzzling moments as you may have gathered. AUB can definitely be a mystifying place, and as one of my AUB professors, in the eighties, once rightly remarked, "The Lord works in mysterious ways [at AUB]."
Posted by May Mikati on Wednesday, 01 June 2011, 11:05 AM
A few months after joining the English Department, I was asked to coordinate the English Program for the AUB Extension (now known as the Continuing Education Center). That was over and above my full-time departmental teaching load. I was grateful for the opportunity, and I did that for three consecutive years before finally extricating myself.
The Extension job involved dedicating afternoon office hours to seeing Extension English teachers and coordinators, checking all exams, and revising the curriculum. I wrote detailed course objectives for the five levels, changed all the textbooks, and produced an elaborate new placement test, along with placement criteria. I was also involved in the placement of students; while most of the questions were multiple choice, there was a writing component that had to be checked before finalizing every student's placement. Additionally, I was consulted regarding the aptitude of instructors.
Did I leave a mark on Extension? Probably, because I was told that the then-Director of REP (Research and External Programs), the higher body in charge of Extension, was surprised I had left them. Additionally, a decade later, one of the Extension instructors brought to my attention that the placement test I had created was used for ten years after my departure.
The then-Director of the Extension, Antoine Kassab, also an Arabic Department faculty member (now deceased), had informed me that I had been asked to coordinate the Extension Program as a form of preparation for coordinating the English Department's Communication Skills Program in the future. Was I ever asked to do that? Never formally; rather, the possibility was flung at me very fleetingly and somewhat comically (in question form) once in the Department, a year after leaving Extension, when we were being individually consulted regarding the rotation of the Department's program coordinator - and you can imagine my reaction.
After the initial bumpy start there were many more puzzling moments as you may have gathered. AUB can definitely be a mystifying place, and as one of my AUB professors, in the eighties, once rightly remarked, "The Lord works in mysterious ways [at AUB]."
Posted by May Mikati on Wednesday, 01 June 2011, 11:05 AM
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