I would like to thank everyone for re-electing me to the position of Second Vice President of the Glendale College Guild. I hope to do a much better job in this term than I have done in my past terms.
Thank you again!
Now for an important piece of information before I write about this month’s topic. Please save Wednesday, May 22, 2019, from 4 to 6 p.m., for a Calstrs Retirement Presentation. The presentation will be on the Garfield Campus in Room MP 103. More information to follow. This will be the last on-campus Calstrs presentation of the semester.
Sure, we supposedly communicate here at Glendale College, but I beg to differ!
In our contract the college’s official way to communicate with us is through our mailboxes in the mailroom. Next time you are in the mailroom take a good look around! Here is what I have seen. Mailboxes are supposed to be in alphabetical order. All instructors are supposed to have mailboxes. Note that I say “supposed to have.” I spend a great of time in the mailroom on campus business and both of those previous statements are incorrect. Often when I am meeting with adjunct instructors, they weren’t aware that they had a campus mailbox, much less where the mailroom was located. In this same vein, I meet adjuncts who are unable to access the mailroom as they teach at night and the mailroom is closed by the time they can take a break and wander down to the mailroom. Also, we have people who teach only online and never come to the campus.
The website should be brought up to date and kept up to date! The first thing to do is to get some new student pictures on it. The current picture of the group of students is many years old! One of the students in the picture graduated from GCC many years ago and has graduated from Cal Poly Pomona also. Check the links on the website to see if they work. Updating the links is important, and the databases should be purged of people who are no longer employed here or are no longer alive.
We love it! We hate it! How many emails do you get a day? If you are like me, the answer is too many! How many of them are truly necessary? Think before you send them! Make sure that they are correct, so you don’t have to send out a revised email. Many people on this campus ignore most of their emails because they feel that they are getting too many. Remember that emails can live forever! So, if you are making promises in them, be sure to keep your promises updated! If not, people will think that we are not telling the truth or that we are merely placating them for the time being or blowing them off! Please when you give people a timeline for things in your emails, be truthful with them! When a timeline is not included, the recipient or recipients will question the veracity of what they are being told and the next time that they receive an email that you have sent, and they will ignore it or think that it is full of falsehoods.
In the area of too many emails, think before you send them out! We are all guilty of sending out emails to promote an event or a meeting. We send them out to thousands of people in the listservs and we get very few attendees. Rather than send out oodles of emails promoting something, it might be a better idea to leave your office and promote it in person! Print some flyers! Visit your colleagues! Walk around the campus and engage your fellow staff members! Visit a few classes! Explore new and unknown parts of the campus! Who knows, perhaps if everyone left their office to talk to people and promote their events and meetings, we would have better attended events and healthier people on campus with a lower health insurance utilization rate, which could save the college money. At the same time people would get feedback on what they were promoting ahead a time
You mean we are actually supposed to talk to people? Yes, we are supposed to talk to people in a civil tone. Please remember that oftentimes when we are delivering a message and people respond negatively, it is not the message that inspired the negative response but how we deliver the message. Be a professional when you deliver the message. What this means is be calm when speaking with people. People like to speak with people who are pleasant and have a smile on their faces.
In closing, what I have written here is simple stuff! Just remember to think before you communicate! If we all try to do at least one of the things that I have suggested, I am sure communications here at Glendale College will improve drastically!
Thank you for reading this and have a great rest of the semester!
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