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Dear President Cotton, After a string of emails from “Chip,” it looks as if he may be blackmailing us. He wrote: “I am available for consulting, if interested I will send you a fee schedule.” In a follow up email, “Chip” wrote: “I live five hours from any airport, and I only travel by Greyhound bus. By my calculations, it should take about 48 hours to get from my home in [deleted] to Willard. Once I’m there, we can talk in person about my ideas concerning the actualization of the Podule System.”

How shall I proceed?

Provost Confabuloso

Dear President Cotton, We are getting LITERALLY inundated with emails of support for the Podule system and its implications beyond curricular redesign. See below from a guy named “Chip,” a professional blogger on questions of public policy.

“Excellent point, the whole concept of “faculty” is not only elitist but so 20th century. Students should be able to leverage their own holistic senses of achievement synergistically with each other, upload the creative products into their online learning portfolio to show their ability to critically think about social media and other crucially important things. I mean, who needs history or english, that doesn’t even make sense any more!”

We either move forward quickly with Facultix or we are consigned to the dustbin of history. I will prepare a study on this issue soon.

Provost Confabuloso

“What about just phasing out faculty altogether? Students could have peer counselors or RAs advise them in their residential self-directed online and collaborative learning.”

This question, from Indiana, is leading our administration towards a series of very fruitful and interesting conversations!

We are assessing the implications of this interesting question.

Dear Faculty,

Several questions have arisen since sending out the notice regarding Podules. Below are your questions and my answers!

Question: What the [deleted] are these [deleted deleted] podules?

Answer: Podules are a more efficient, clean, and best-practice way to organize learning.

Question: How will chairs of departments fit into the new Podule system?

Answer: In the reduntification of departments, we have also reduntified chairs.

How will the Podule system deal with prerequisites? For example, how exactly would we determine who is eligible for advanced seminars in biology?

Answer: Prerequisites will be integrated into the podule system as it becomes fully operationalized.

Thank you, Provost Confabuloso

 

Dear Willard College Faculty,

As discussed at the last Faculty Senate meeting, the College, in collaboration with faculty, has made final determination of the outline of the summer reorientation program. Please plan on reviewing and revising any summer research, travel, vacation, or surgery, as the reorientation will be somewhat time consuming. So, what is the Summer Reorientation?

Based on focus group data from faculty, Willard College will immediately dissolve all academic departments. This is following best practices as recently laid out by Plymouth State College. Instead of departments, those very nineteenth century hold outs, faculty shall organize into PODULES. There will be six podules that faculty may join:  Investigation, Curiosity, Confusion, Choice, Insight, and Living. Incoming Willard College freshman will select their Podule during summer orientation. During their time at Willard, they may change their podule as often as they please. The only department to which this new program DOES NOT apply is the Department of Foreign Modern Languages as they had already anticipated this change and presently operate as a mobile podule.

Once again, Gingrich and Associates was invaluable in making the reorientation happen. Also, although he is no longer with us, we wish to extend deep gratitude to former provost Pillow, whose dedication to laying the groundwork for this project was critical. We wish him well in his current situation.

Sincerely, Provost Confabuloso