The Do’s and Don’ts of Your Summer non-Vacation
by Craig Shibley, Director of Multimedia Services at California Baptist University
It’s the middle of summer. You made it through the weirdest, and possibly hardest, full school year of your professional career. Great job. And now that summer break is here and there are classes to handle, you can finally get some work done.
One big difference between this summer break and previous ones is that this year, we went from few students on campus to, well, few students on campus. The transition for most campuses wasn’t the same shell shock that usually comes from a full campus to a mostly empty one.
Being such a weird year, more projects may have been done than usually would have been and summer might be different. Here are some Do’s and Don’ts for your summer project list:
Do – make a formalized room checklist and start quadruple-checking rooms yesterday.
If you’re like my campus, rooms were either underutilized or used in a completely different way than during a normal year. If you have a checklist done, great, dust it off and start checking like classes start tomorrow. If you haven’t made one, make it and get it checking. Put your classroom technology through its paces to keep all rooms up to speed.
Don’t – let conversations for future projects happen without you.
This is stressed often but bears repeating. Meetings often happen during summer for new buildings, rooms, and technology that people are looking at. At this stage, they may be informal but can turn into official conversations pretty quickly. Reach out to departments and let them know you’re there if they need anything and to make sure you’re included early.
Do – schedule trainings.
Any rooms with new technology? Any that may have an influx of new faculty? Schedule trainings as early as possible. Waiting until the last week can lead to late cancellations and rooms being overbooked. Be available to help, and set the time to train, troubleshoot, and train again.
Don’t – rely on past success.
You may have done great prior to the pandemic and got your campus through the pandemic. No matter how many “new normal” conversations take place, I’m still not convinced we have a clue what students or professors will want moving forward. And it’s possible they don’t know either. And that’s OK! Professors and students went through a lot in the last 16 months or so, and with that they learned some new things that they liked and didn’t like. Early on, it was trying to figure out how to take the class to the camera. But now they have tricks that we need to help them figure out from the camera to the class. We will need to be open to little nudges that need to take place to keep teaching/learning methodologies moving forward.
Do – document everything.
A lot of changes last year were made quickly. If your experience was anything like mine, you had an amazing combination of permanent installations and temporary solutions. It’s possible that some (or all) of that was done very quickly and may not have followed your standard procedures. Take the time to go back and look at what has been done in the last 12-16 months and make sure it is notated and kept up to date as it should be.
Don’t – try to fit a six-month project into a six-week window.
Maybe this only happens on my campus, but a lot of great ideas tend to appear in the minds of staff somewhere in the middle of June. And with that, they want this idea to be implemented before the Fall semester. Seems great, right? Blowing out the old budget or using that new July 1st budget while students are off campus is very tempting. Do not rush it! Stand firm with what you know can or can’t be done, and don’t let subpar projects get forced through. It can be tempting for all parties, but stay strong with what you know.
Do – find a way to take a break.
Fall’s coming no matter what. Do the steps above and carve out some time. Maybe it’s the first time you’ve gotten away since 2019. Or maybe it’s a staycation. Either way, find a way to recharge. I’m pretty certain all AV has earned it.