Alt Ac Career Paths – A Case Study

Opinion on the alt ac career path are a mixed bag. Some see it as a solution to the current lack of academic jobs, some see it as an opportunity to explore new career territories and expand what an academic can do, while some even believe it is a lie we have been sold to accommodate the hard truth behind the lack of jobs in the market and so we use alt ac as a band aid, or quick fix to a larger problem. Personally I find myself among those who see it as an opportunity to find meaningful work elsewhere and become involved in areas that could benefit from my knowledge and dedication.

With that said, some of you may know my involvement with various arteries of academia outside the classroom. For those of you who don’t, over the past year I have been working on the California Community College Common Assessment with the Chancellor’s Office in Sacramento, functioning as a matriculation and English expert. At first the meetings occurred once or twice a month and I would fly into town in the morning and depart at the end of the day, but with several new changes in legislature that enacted demands for more testing in community colleges, along with tying money to these ventures, the meetings have ramped up, and I just spent this last week in San Diego developing test questions, looking at the interaction between content and testing platform, and essentially ironing out kinks as much as possible. It was a very productive week and I am excited that the work we are doing is ultimately going to help millions of students.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the educational climate in California, we have 113 community colleges serving 3 million students throughout the state, and each one has been operating with autonomy where almost all major decisions are driven locally at the college and district level. Continuing to allow this much disparity in practices across the board is decisively detrimental to students.

Before anyone panics, this Common Assessment Initiative is in no way going to touch upon curriculum, or even direct placement. That will remain completely within the realm of each college and department.

The population of students we are servicing have opted for a community college as opposed to a traditional university for various reasons. Geographically this population is very fluid, and further, due to course offerings students often attend more than one community college at a time, cherry picking their courses to fit their schedules, which often include full time employment, family, and other obligations.

For example, within 25 miles of my house I can name 10 community colleges off the top of my head. If I were a student, desperate to finish school, and couldn’t get all my classes at any one venue, I would hop around and collect my coursework wherever I could get it. I understand this choice, even if it doesn’t always make sense to everyone, aside from all the other implications upon the student in regards to the ultimate education he may receive. But assuming all things are equal, and this student will be just as successful as another student pursuing a linear education at a single institution, there are other factors impeding success. One of these obstacles is the assessment test that places him into math and English classes.

To illustrate this I will use a very common example – one that we see daily. A student will take her placement test for math and English at College A, but then is unable to get math classes. So she takes her English class at College A, but goes to College B for math. The problem is that College B doesn’t accept her scores from the previous school, and so she has to retest. Now she must incur the anxieties of another test, the school will incur the costs of retesting her (and testing instruments are not cheap!), and her scores will have little to no portability. Further, it has been found that when a student is retested, while it may seem counterintuitive, she will most likely perform more poorly the second time around – she becomes frustrated with the process, and subconsciously she believes she doesn’t have to try as hard, because, after all, she just tested a few weeks, if not days ago, and she did fine the first time around. The scores come in and she places into a lower course at College B than at College A. However, College B has classes for her, so she settles for the lower course and signs up for a math class.

She is one of many students who is misplaced into a cycle of needless remediation. She will now be required to take one or two extra courses in order to reach the equivalent of college level math that we consider the minimum for transfer to a four-year university or even to obtain a certificate of completion at the community college level. Piling on coursework does not lead to success. An unnecessary work load causes students to feel as though the end is nowhere in sight, and this feeling of futility more often than not leads to higher drop out rates.

Obviously there are a series of issues to consider in this scenario, and conversations have been occurring for nearly a decade, if not longer, as to how best to remedy these problems. The Common Assessment is not a solve-all solution, however, it gets to one of the difficulties that crops up at the very beginning of the educational process, and by creating this common exam which will be adopted by all the community colleges in the state the placement methodology becomes streamlined. Aside from expired text scores, or students who wish to challenge their placement, a student will never be asked to retest within a short period of time. Scores will no longer be deemed inconclusive or invalid simply because the measurement tools vary from campus to campus. Even when one college is able to “translate” the score sheets from another school, courses will no longer be lost in translation, resulting in extraneous classes heaped upon an incoming student.

The benefits are clear, but the implementation is quite the feat. As mentioned, we have been meeting monthly to hammer out the different competencies we want to test that are reliant upon what students are expected to know at different points in their education, and we have been aligning these competencies with high school curriculum (which is not to say we expect every one of our entry level students to have successfully completed high school). Then we determined which ones of these competencies we absolutely must test with the understanding that not all items can be feasibly accounted for; we are not creating a seven hour long test to rival the Bataan Death March.

In short, these competencies have been reexamined ad infinitum and combed through to the minutest detail. However, if we actually want this project to move forward we needed to stop and move with the project. This week we met with the teams who will be implementing the task and creating the test, partnering with them in the content creation areas so we can help hone the end result. Yet our work is not over, we are not simply handing the information over to a testing company and stepping away as they create a static test to disseminate across the state. We want this to be a living document where those who have labored to create the outlines and partial content will have input up to the last steps of creation, and beyond that to update the exam as it becomes live, according to student success, and numerous diagnostics the testing platform will deliver. We hope for ongoing feedback and development.

So far our ever aggressive schedule remains as is, and we hope for field testing and validation by Spring 2016, with the idea that roll out of the exam across the state will begin the following Fall. At the moment this appears to be a very viable timeline.

I am extremely excited to be a part of a process that has this much potential for bettering the college experience for so many students, and which can alter the ways in which students perceive and progress through their educational pathways.

L’Epitaphe

If art recreates life, than Francois Villon’s life provided plenty of fodder for his art. His existence, albeit for the most part unsavory, infused his poetry with an intensity that elided artifice. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his ballad “L’Epitaphe” that he wrote while awaiting his death sentence by hanging all the while looking out of his cell window at those who were previously hung.

villon-epitaph

(Opening of “L’Eptiaphe” from the first dated edition of Villon’s works, published by Pierre Levet in 1489 – Reserves des Imprimes, Bibliotheque Nationale)

Villon was born Francois de Montcorbier, but adopted the surname of Guillaume Villon, his childhood caregiver. He began his ascent into society well enough having reached the University of Paris and obtained a Master of Arts by 1452, only to take a turn for the worst beginning with a brawl in 1455 where he killed a priest (which some testified was self defense). He was pardoned only to find himself on the opposing side of the law later in the same year after being implicated in the robbery of a large sum of money from the Faculty of Theology. Following a few years of more or less vagabonding (with stints at the courts of Charles D’Orleans at Blois and Jean II, Duke of Bourbon at Moulins), he was imprisoned again. This time his savior was Louis XI, whose visit to the region of Meung-sur Loire, where Villon was imprisoned, prompted a dispersal of amnesties from which Villon benefited.

Less than a year later Villon was imprisoned for the last time, and sentenced to hang. This is the point when most believe he composed “L’Epitaphe,” while awaiting his punishment, unbeknownst to him that his sentenced would be commuted to exile from Paris. He followed these orders and little to nothing is known of his life after this point.

However, despite living through the ordeal, the immediacy of the poem at the moment where his life was about to be taken away is not altered. Before going further, here is the poem, along with my translation:

Frères humains, qui après nous vivez,
N’ayez les cœurs contre nous endurcis,
Car, si pitié de nous pauvres avez,
Dieu en aura plus tôt de vous mercis.
Vous nous voyez ci attachés, cinq, six:
Quant à la chair, que trop avons nourrie,
Elle est piéça dévorée et pourrie,
Et nous, les os, devenons cendre et poudre.
De notre mal personne ne s’en rie;
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre!

Si frères vous clamons, pas n’en devez
Avoir dédain, quoique fûmes occis
Par justice. Toutefois, vous savez
Que tous hommes n’ont pas bon sens rassis.
Excusez-nous, puisque sommes transis,
Envers le fils de la Vierge Marie,
Que sa grâce ne soit pour nous tarie,
Nous préservant de l’infernale foudre.
Nous sommes morts, âme ne nous harie,
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre!

La pluie nous a débués et lavés,
Et le soleil desséchés et noircis.
Pies, corbeaux nous ont les yeux cavés,
Et arraché la barbe et les sourcils.
Jamais nul temps nous ne sommes assis
Puis çà, puis là, comme le vent varie,
A son plaisir sans cesser nous charrie,
Plus becquetés d’oiseaux que dés à coudre.
Ne soyez donc de notre confrérie;
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre!

Prince Jésus, qui sur tous a maistrie,
Garde qu’Enfer n’ait de nous seigneurie:
A lui n’ayons que faire ne que soudre.
Hommes, ici n’a point de moquerie;
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre!

Our human brothers, who live after us,
Don’t against us harden your hearts,
For, if pity on us poor ones you take,
God on you will have sooner mercy.
You see us here hanging five, six:
Of our flesh, that we have well nourished,
It has been devoured and rotted,
And us, the bones, are becoming ashes and dust.
Of our misfortunes do no laugh,
But pray God that he may absolve all of us!

If brothers we call you, do not become
Disdainful, even though we are killed
For justice. Each time, you know
That not all men have good sense;
Pardon us, for we are transitioned
Towards the son of the Virgin Mary,
That his grace for us not dry up,
But us preserve from the infernal lightning
We are dead, let no soul us trouble;
But pray God that he may absolve all of us!

The rain us has steamed and washed,
And the sun dried and blackened;
Magpies, crows, our eyes have gouged,
And pulled out our beards and eyebrows.
Never, at no time, at rest are we;
Now here, now there, how the wind changes;
At its pleasure it us carries,
More pecked from birds than a thimble.
Thus do not be of our brotherhood,
But pray God that he may absolve all of us!

Prince Jesus, who of all is master,
Guard that Hell doesn’t over us have lordship:
To it we have nothing to do or to make,
Men, here there is no mockery,
But pray God that he may absolve all of us!

This is a straight forward ballad which includes three stanzas, each consisting of ten lines with ten syllables each, and a brief envoi, all using the same rhymes, and each stanza ends with the same line. Unlike the English ballad that is best suited for more joyous occasions (with a few exceptions), and often accompanied by a song, the French ballad is far more somber. Here however, the form is far overshadowed by the content.

Life and death are the central themes, from the title that denotes an inscription on a tombstone, to the juxtaposition between those who will remain alive and those who have already hung, amongst whom the poet counts himself.

As he begins by beseeching his audience to have pity, his lines act as a memento mori, reminding his audience that they too will die even if not by being hanged as convicts. Further, in the end, it is only the soul that survives and repentance saves all regardless of what may have been while the soul lived among “de la chair,” (the flesh).

The imagery of salvation and the afterlife directly opposes the carnally grotesque and disfigured bodies that hang rotten and devoured, which is further made obvious by giving the corpses a voice. In death they are vocal and retain the potential for salvation, even as the living whom they address remain muted at the sight of the decaying bodies, silently judging their crimes, practically oblivious to their own impending deaths. Through their refusal to speak, to pray for the corpses as the speaker wills them to do, they negate their own salvation because as they pray, God will not only save those for whom they pray, but “tous nous,” all of us.

Thus Villon not only throws in his lot with the convicted men hanging outside his window, but through his constant use of “nous,” us, and his reoccurring refrain for each stanza, “mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre!” he becomes the spokesman for mankind, using his last words as a universal warning for all to repent, so that God “may absolve all of us.”

Sources:

De Vere Stacpoole, Henry. Francois Villon: His Life and Times, 1431-1463.

Fox, John. The Poetry of Villon.

Peckham, Robert. Francois Villon: A Bibliography.

Siciliano,Italo. Francois Villon et les themes poetiques du moyen- age.

“umbra unei lumi”: Doina Rusti’s Fantoma din moara Uncovers Romanian Heritage in the Shadows

Today I started working on one of the two MLA papers I will be giving in January. Since there is no end to my Female Scribe project in the foreseeable future (at least that is how it feels at the moment), I figured I should make some simultaneous progress elsewhere – January is bound to be upon me sooner than expected.

I won’t post the the paper until after I have given it, but it won’t hurt to post some of the research I am doing in the meantime, especially since a lot of it probably won’t fit into the paper due to time constrains anyway. To begin, here is the original proposal:

***

Determining nationality is never a straightforward endeavor, and this remains true in attempting to define being Romanian. In Doina Rusti’s Fantoma din moara she synchronously isolates the Romanian identity while examining its multifaceted pieces via an exploration across time and through disparate perspectives that all reify within the frame narrator.

This paper will orient Romanian recent history through a lens of mysticism that staunchly relies upon the written word to perpetuate itself.  History and fantasy hyper-spiritually combine as Rusti’s main character, Adela Nicolescu, unknowingly encounters her own biography, experiencing both past and present negating a temporal axis. Nevertheless, her lack of control over the material challenges the power that gives authority to authorship and brings to question the very premise of that title.

Thus, if authorship is questioned as Foucault would have us believe, and writing itself becomes a form of death according to Barthes, then the reader who usurps the role of author is thus positioned within a space to witness and transcend death. The hermeneutic activity of reading becomes the ethical area of relegating “author” to “other,” which, in Adela’s situation, as she remains author/creator and reader, the distinction becomes highly problematic, but nevertheless a space worth negotiating.

***

Even though I know where I think this is going to go, I am very curious and excited to see where it actually ends up.