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The first week of classes at Unknown University (v2.0) is now (as Monty Python would have said) "Now of interest only to historians." Here are some first impressions:

• In the first class meeting the students were a bit non-responsive, but it's often that way the first day of the fall semester (I call it the "Damn! Summer's over! I'm depressed" effect). Don't worry, my students, we feel it too. I covered the first chapter and all the administrative BS in a 50 minute class, so they might have been in a bit of shock. In the 2nd meeting, I must have called on (or had volunteers from) over 15 out of the 35 students in the class. So, I think the expectations have been set.
• Our first faculty meeting lasted only 25 minutes, so there seems to be good leadership at least in that area. I'll wait and see on other matters.
• I've seen the first hints of dysfunctional behavior among the faculty. We have one faculty member (tenured, of course) that teaches one of the doctoral a seminars. He gave his students a 2 page syllabus that contained only the following material: a list of 3 books, and a schedule of chapters to be covered. For those of you who haven't done the doctoral dance, a typical seminar covers mostly articles and often runs to 6 or more pages (in one of my seminars, it took 5 pages just to list the article to be covered). As one of my better colleagues says, "At Unknown University, we put the FUN in dsyFunction". So, there's a lot of running around behind the scenes to see what can be done to ensure he doesn't screw the students over.
  
• the vast majority of the faculty here seems to be pretty easy going. They've decided to do happy hour twice a month on Friday afternoons - another very good sign.

Overall, I'd give it a seven or eight on a ten point scale. Not perfect, but not too shabby.

I still have to finish my syllabus for the second course. Since it meets the first time this coming Monday night, I'll probably get it done sometime around Monday afternoon. At Unknown University (v2.0), we believe in "just in time syllabi".

Stay tuned.

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