I’ve been serving on a committee for the past 4 or 5 months trying to create a new minor. We have been conceptualizing a design minor titled “New Media and Digital Culture”, which is essentially a communications, art/design and computer science interdisciplinary song-and-dance.

As we are firming up the curriculum, talk about who would teach the capstone course of the minor came up. Knowing that any professor from the Comm, Art or CompSci department would not want to take it on and only having one department chair available to authorize payment, talk turned to me being hired as adjunct faculty.

Yes. Me. Adjunct faculty.

That was great enough by itself but today, I got an email from the department chair which contained a conversation that she had with the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The conversation essentially said this (heavily paraphrased):

Dept Chair (DC): Remember that minor thing, it’s going great. We have a class that we need staffed. It’s the capstone class.

The Dean (TD): Cool. You got any ideas?

DC: Um yeah. It’s this guy from a “non academic” department.

TD: Okay, what’s the catch?

DC: He doesn’t have a masters. Is that a prob?

TD: Well. You know that accrediation thing we do, it’s kinda tough. There is a way though.

DC: I’m listening.

TD: If they have 18 hours of graduate work, they’re golden.

DC: Uh, yeah. Would it be bad if he didn’t?

TD: There’s that other option. If he’s got experience in the field then that could work.

DC: Awesome.

Shortly after that conversation was forwarded on to me. Needless to say. I’m stoked like a forest fire.

Updates as they come.