Some Takeaways from Therese Huston's talk and World Café today

Therese Huston

At today's gathering led by Therese Huston, focusing on Because How We Decide Matters:  Making Decisions more Inclusive, we learned that all of us are the experts, bringing our different perspectives and knowledge to the table.  Dr. Huston just had to get us going with a couple of points loosely based on her book How Women Decide:  What's True, What's Not, And What Strategies Spark the Best Choices.

After the brief introductory words of wisdom, we discussed how decisions are made in our working area (round 1), ideas on how we can get more diverse perspectives into these discussions (round 2), and steps to make it happen (round 3).  Between rounds, all but one person left their table to find a new spot and thus new group to discuss, with the remaining person as the host welcoming the new group of people and catching them up on the previous discussion.  The result?  We brought up many of the points Dr. Huston was going to make and then some, and we applied them directly to our own work environment, giving us strategies and ideas to take back to our departments and units.  World Café was a great success.

But just in case you do need a reason to read the book, here some of my takeaways, happily overgeneralized:

• having more women in the room for crucial decisions will make these decisions better
• reducing masculinized environments will reduce women's stress level to double excel
• planning hiring interviews carefully will reduce danger of having hidden bias against women and for men (this may depend on the area of interview)
• collaborating leads to better decisions, and being decisive too often is a single, faulty perspective -- and women seen as decisive are seen negatively
• being aware of stereotype threat and not creating situations where this may be a problem -- and counter this yourself with self affirmation
• building coalitions when the risk appears to be high
• remembering that we don't need to know everything about a situation to make suggestions
• showing that we women are willing and able to take risks and be obvious when we have done so
• men take more risk than women -- leading to more and bigger mistakes -- because men are more emotionally stressed when they are in a stressful situation -- this is counter to women being too emotional to make important decisions (which is of course rubbish)
• knowing the difference between confidence and overconfidence
• thinking about a pre-mortem rather than having a devil's advocate
• reframing anxiety into excitement (I am excited rather than I am anxious)
• generating at least one more option (rather than yes or no)
• asking people who you think made a terrible decision to help me understand it
• writing down our decisions so that we can remember them more accurately

All Access at Auburn -- Getting Textbooks into Canvas

Last week, Auburn University Bookstore organized a gathering with faculty and a number of textbook representatives and digital content providers to discuss the options of getting text books and other digital content loaded into Canvas courses so that students have access to necessary content from Day 1.
The university bookstore has been working on this for a number of years, making it possible to

• give all students in a class access to content in Canvas
• customize content
• bill students through e-bill (with opt out and printed version options)
• decrease cost for students up to 30-50% for the texts

We already have quite a few adopters on campus, with UNIV courses having taken the lead a few years back, so feel free to contact Rusty Weldon in the bookstore for what your options are.  Other subject areas that have taken advantage of this model are in Accounting, Biology, Educational Methods, Geology, HDFS, History, Kinesiology, Nutrition, Psychology, and Physical Education.

More Mell Impressions

One week later, some parts of the building are moving along quite nicely -- more dry wall is going up, some rooms have the ceiling rack and network cables in them while others are still looking a little bare bones.

Mell looking down from 4th floor

Adding tiles

EASL room with wires and
ceiling grid

Framing for the Future

Lecture Hall

Mell Study Spaces

First time inside Mell

This week, I had the fun experience of getting into the Mell Classroom building @ RBD Library for the first time, hard hat, safety goggles and neon yellow vest and all.
The following pictures will give some impressions of the place
You will have some stunning views to the outside from informal and formal learning spaces:

Classroom on the third floor

Mell third floor

The view into the inside is also quite remarkable, giving the full view of the RBD Library original entrance way and the skylight at the top for natural light:

Skylight in Mell Classroom Building

RBD front with stair case

And finally classrooms and Panera in the making:

Tiered lecture hall

Monitor locations in classroom

Future Panera

The next few months will be so exciting to figure out how all the puzzle pieces will come together to form one new classroom building.