Our Goals for the Online Community

In the period before joining Drexel physically you're probably interested in the many aspects of life here:

• What's important about starting to teach at Drexel?
• What's life in Philadelphia like? Where do people live, shop, play?
• What's it like getting started in the academic community: research, committees, tenure, etc.?

We hope to help you get started at Drexel before you actually arrive on campus. To do that we've set up an "online community" using VistaBB, the same tool that you'll probably use for some of your classes, but in a different manner than it's often used. Our goal here is to generate questions and discussions so that you can get answers to your specific questions and get to know many of the other new faculty members before you actually meet them at the New Faculty Workshop in September.

The main elements of this online community are:

• Discussion area - where you can ask questions of your colleagues (experienced and new to Drexel) - and you can give you own opinions, suggestions, experience.
  
• Posts - a series of brief pieces (this is the first) by faculty that will both provide information and provoke discussions.
• Resources - links that should be helpful to you - you can add your own.

One thing you might want to do soon is look through the descriptions that community members have posted about themselves in the Introduce Yourself to the Community discussion area, and then add your own post.

Jim Mitchell - Editor