Sports for Faculty Members

Playing

Many faculty take advantage of the Drexel facilities for exercise and recreational competition.  My own passion is squash, served by courts in the bowels of the Daskalakis Athletic Center (DAC) on the north side of Market between 33 and 34th streets - currently experiencing a major addition.  That same building includes facilities that are available (mostly scheduled) for:

• Badminton
• Basketball
• Exercise machines
• Free weights
• Squash
• Swimming
• Table Tennis
• Volleyball

There are also available for recreational use

• Tennis courts
• Soccer/Lacrosse field

To make use of the facilities you need to purchase a quite inexpensive athletics pass.  You can also sign up for an inexpensive locker.  Inquire at the DAC entrance.

Watching

As you might expect, Drexel has an active varsity sports program, conducted in multiple locations.

• Basketball is the big varsity sport with pep-rallies and large attendance at games in the DAC during the season.
• Swimming, Diving and wrestling all occur in the DAC as well.
• Field sports take place at "Drexel Field" at 43rd street North of Market.  As a futbol (soccer) fan I've enjoyed a number of games there.  But they also host: Lacrosse, Tennis, Field Hockey
• Drexel Crew has a boathouse on boathouse row on the Schuylkill River.
• Drexel Golf occurs as well, but not close to campus so far as I'm aware.

Advising

If you have an interest in a sport there are many non-varsity sports that need a faculty advisor.  I found myself the advisor to the Drexel squash club despite my mediocre abilities and have seen them flourish to my great pleasure with very little active effort on my part - and much highly-disciplined effort on the part of the students.

Jim Mitchell

Committees – Career Benefits

Pick your committees carefully.  They’re everywhere.  If there’s a faculty meeting and a contentious issues comes up there will almost always be a committee created to study it.  If you want to change something that’s currently done one way you’ll probably have to get committee approval to do it differently.

From a very crass point of here are the criteria that I’d recommend in picking your committee memberships.

• How visible is it?  Will service there be perceived as a “good thing” at tenure or contract time?
• How much time does it take?  Some committees meet often and have considerable outside work.  They can be immensely valuable (e.g. Faculty Senate committees), but can also be great time sinks.  Others meet a couple of times a year with only discussion necessary.  Both occupy a single line on an annual report.  Check the expectations and match them to your responsibilities and goals.
• Who will you meet on the committee?  Committees that go beyond your immediate discipline or department can be very beneficial in making you known.  This can help both in forming alliances for projects (grant proposals or other) and how opinions are formed – particularly for tenure decisions.
• How controversial is the committee?  It’s wise not to irritate senior professors making  judgments about your future.  Of course “visible” and “controversial” are sometimes synonymous.

Notice that I didn’t talk about the benefits to the profession, the university, or your department.  All those are obvious and indeed should enter into you thinking, but early in your career you’re probably focused on establishing yourself so you can continue.

Once again I emphasize that these are my own opinions and are not official.

Jim Mitchell

Living In Center City

We're fortunate that we were able to buy at the low end of the market, 30 years ago, just before our daughter was born.  As a result we live in a four-story house at 21st and Locust streets, a block from Rittenhouse Square, one of the most balanced, loved small urban parks in the country.  Housing at my corner is no longer cheap, but within five or six blocks there are still possibilities for younger faculty.

What do I love about living here?

• Almost everything we need for daily life is within walking distance: groceries, hardware, books, ice-cream, flowers.
• Curtis Institute, one of the world's great music schools, is just across the square, with free concerts two or more times a week.  The concert quality ranges from good to world class.
• We have only one car, whereas we'd need two if we lived out.
• I can ride my bicycle to Drexel in six minutes - I waste almost no time commuting.
• We're surrounded by excellent restaurants - diner to among country's best - again all in walking distance.
• Our daughter got a fine education at a private school - admittedly not "free", but we didn't have that second car and commuting expenses, and our property taxes were reasonable.
• A branch of the Free Library (you can get a card since you work in Philadelphia) is a block away, with the main library a five minute bike-ride on the parkway.
• When we want "country" it's easy to get to in all directions. We've tried the suburbs (Lansdowne) which allowed us a vegetable garden and a backyard larger than a large carpet, but we've been happy in Center City for many years.

Jim Mitchell

Vista Bb—Getting started

Drexel is a major Blackboard client—I’ve heard us called a “flagship” Blackboard school—and what that means is that you will find that Bb Vista is ubiquitous and quite well supported here. Every Drexel course automatically has an accompanying Bb Vista course Website, which you can access via either one.drexel.edu or https://learning.dcollege.net (which may well be the way you are accessing this site). There are a number of templates you can choose, and you have some flexibility with the look and feel of your course, but the main piece of advice I’m going to provide is this:

You should get to know the folks at our Instructional Resources & Technology (IRT) Department’s Faculty Development Center (FDC): http://www.drexel.edu/IRT/faculty.html.

The FDC has an onsite home base on the first floor of the Korman Center. I think you will find the members of the FDC ready, willing, and able to provide you with assistance on all aspects of teaching through Bb Vista. And "teaching" is the key word here. Sure, it's great to learn to zoom around with a new technology, but we're teachers, and we are seeking educational applications for learning technologies, not just digital bells and electronic whistles. The IRT folks understand this.

In the Freshman Writing Program, of which I’m the director, we use a lot of communication tools in Bb Vista, especially the message board tool, Discussions. We have run several collaborative workshops with the FDC folks, with an FDC person talking about the tech and one of our folks talking about teaching applications. These techies do an outstanding job of helping you find pedagogical applications for the technologies. Basically, there is no need to fly blind when getting up to speed with Bb Vista at Drexel. The University provides faculty with many user-friendly resources through IRT, and you should take advantage of them.

Scott Warnock

Advising Students

There's no single best way to advise students, the situations in which advice is appropriate vary too much as do the participants.  What follows therefore is one individual's take on some common situations and resources.

When in doubt - Ask Advice Yourself

Since advising is an area with consequences for mistakes, my first recommendation is:  When in doubt, ask.  Depending on the situation here are some of the resources that might be useful:

Situation	Resources	Comment
Course Content	Your colleagues Subject librarians	Self-evident, but worth remembering
Academic Advising	Departmental Advisors Student Resource Center (SRC)	Most departments have both faculty and/or staff members assigned to advising.  They're invaluable. The SRC has lists of advisors as well as many general advising resources and forms.
Teaching & Learning	Drexel Center for Academic Excellence (DCAE)	This resource is for faculty, not students, but you can get advice on handling many student issues there.
Student Personal Problems	Student Life Services	Many, many services to which you can refer students - It's amazing how many students aren't aware of the services - almost all of which are "free". I generally refer students rather than deal with tough situations.  In crises I've physically walked a student to the specific resource - e.g. counseling center.
Financial Problems	Financial Aid	Drexel goes a long way to try and help in the many situations in which students find themselves.  I generally refer students rather than try to give specific advice on this very complex area.
Judicial Problems	Office of Student Conduct	This is the office that becomes involved in cases of academic dishonesty and serious behavioral problems.  They can help you determine what the right steps might be.

 

Student Privacy

Remember that under federal law students are essentially regarded as adults with full privacy rights.  These rights and the policies that address them are mostly determined by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy (FERPA) Policy. 

My (emphatically non-official) summary is don't communicate with anyone outside the university about a student without prior written permission from the student.  This specifically includes not talking to families, however concerned they may be.  It is, however, OK to discuss academic issues with colleagues and advising staff.  There are refinements to this, so ask before committing. 

Jim Mitchell

The Quarter System - 10 Weeks is not 14 Weeks

In large part because of our long history of Cooperative education (CoOp) the Main Campus at Drexel operates on a quarter system - 10 weeks of classes + 1 week of exams.  After the tightest terms, winter and spring, there's one week of break and then you start all over again.  After fall and summer there's close to a month of break.  Note that the fall term courses actually last 11 weeks, but nothing much happens during Thanksgiving week, though Monday and Tuesday are officially class days.

If one comes from a semester system the rhythm of the quarter system is different.  Everything is faster and one has adjustments to make.

Content Adjustment

The tendency is to try and fit a semester's worth of work into 10 weeks.  You're unlikely to succeed if you try that.  Instead you must decide what is essential and what isn't.  Remember on the positive side  that we have about 50% more courses required to graduate than semester schools.

Pace

While this is less tangible, most faculty I've talked to agree that the length of the quarter means that it's more of a challenge to make adjustments, to promote reflection, to achieve that magic "coming together" of ideas that initially seemed unrelated to the students, but are important to the overall understanding of the subject.  It's doable, but planning is important.

Effects on students and classes

We start the fall term late in order to not break over Christmas (some quarter-schools do break then).  We therefore finish the spring quarter much later than Semester schools. This timing has implications as well:

• If you're teaching first-year students they may arrive super-eager or somewhat anxious because their friends have been in school for a month already.
• Conferences scheduled around semester school's calendars can be at awkward times for us (I have one that I attended for the first time on sabbatical because it was always scheduled in the first week of fall-term classes).
• That one-week break after winter and spring terms can seem awfully short.  And of course the longer breaks after fall and summer can be a great relief.

All this can be complicated by our academic rules:

• Students can "drop" or "add" a course during the first two weeks without it showing on their academic record - and do.  You could have a student showing up for the first time 20+% of the way through the course.  You could also have groups carefully formed during the first week disrupted because members disappear.
• Students can and do "withdraw" from a course through the sixth week - it shows on their record.  Again there are implications for group projects.  Note also that it's your responsibility to provide students with adequate feedback before the end of the sixth week so that students can make an informed decision whether or not to withdraw.

Faculty Annual Schedules

The quarter system means that, again due to CoOp, the main campus is a year-round school.  In the summer there are regular classes, with about 60% of the number of students on-campus compared to the other terms.

What this means for faculty is that most departments need courses taught in the summer.  For faculty with a three-quarter contract that can provide opportunities to schedule the quarter break at a different time of year.

Jim Mitchell

Commuting to Drexel

Bicycles

As a Center City dweller I have it easy.  I open my front door, put my bicycle on the sidewalk and six minutes later I'm locking it to one of the bike racks by the Main Building.  I've had to brave the speedway that is the Walnut Street bridge over the Schuylkill, but otherwise it's wonderful.

If you live elsewhere the Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition has multiple suggested commuter routes.

Regional Rail & Bus

Septa (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) has a "radial" train system that focuses on center city, with 3oth street station (adjacent to the main campus) and Suburban Station (near the health programs) being on most of the routes.  Their regional rail map will give you a good idea of how it works.  It includes trains, subways and trolleys (these latter can provide a very nice outing with kids in the western suburbs).  Their bus system interconnects and provides connections across the radii as well as radial routes.

For those coming from New Jersey there is easy interchange with the PATCO line at 8th street. There is a connection with the new ""River Route" light rail line run by New Jersey Transit in Camden as well.  NJT also has a number of buses that come to center city.

Google Maps has a pretty good public transit search capability(my example link shows the trip from Paoli to main campus) that includes the Septa Regional rail (Buses being included at the end of 2009).  My tests showed that it doesn't currently do a good job of showing links to New Jersey Transit or PATCO rail lines.

Drexel's Office of Campus Activities has a nice summary page on Public Transit options, including Philly Car Share for short term auto use.

There's a Drexel-sponsored "Compass" program for reduced fares.

Automobile

The automobile is still the most popular mode of travel. A good way to see the major routes is to look at the Google Traffic Map.  The terms you'll hear when listening to the radio (KYW 1060AM is "on the twos" 24 hours)  include:

I-95	Major NE-SW interstate along Delaware River
Schuylkill	Schuylkill Expressway, I-76, from NW to Center City and then I-95 and the airport (shortcut via Penrose Avenue Bridge).
Vine Street	Sunken connector (I-676) E-W across center city from Schuylkill to Ben Franklin.  Get off at Broad Street for Health Programs.
"The Curve"	Stretch on the Schuylkill in Conshocken that regularly has slow-downs.
Blue Route	I-476 Ring route from PA Turnpike (I-276) to Schuylkill to I-95 south of the city and the airport.
Ben Franklin	Bridge from NJ to Center City
Walt Whitman	Bridge from NJ to South Philly
Betsy Ross	Bridge from NJ to North Philly
Commodore Barry	Bridge from south NJ to I-95 in Chester
Tacony-Palmyra	Bridge from NJ to North Philly - It's a lift bridge that is periodically blocked by ship traffic.

 

Parking at Drexel is handled through Parking Services.

Jim Mitchell