This past month I’ve been an active participant in a series of workshops that are helping me to better understand the nature and responsibilities associated with the Deputy Sector Navigator job. I want to thank Myron Curtis, the DSN Far North region in the ICT/DM sector for inviting me and my North Region colleagues at our eight (8) colleges to his two day faculty conference. This is the first time in my fifteen (15) years of teaching here at the College where I’ve been invited to sit with my neighboring colleagues and discuss the issues we face and the opportunities we have to seek collaborative solutions to issues.

On Sunday I returned from the three (3) day annual California Business Education Association conference in San Diego. Two workshops were the highlight of this conference. The first related to a revitalization of keyboarding classes to include soft skills instruction. More about that in later posts but I am running ideas past my faculty colleagues relative to the creation of a single course that covers these key employable skills. The second was a round table discussion attended by one of the DSNs from the Business Sector. The DSN indicated that she has not had teaching experience. While I’m not suggesting that will be an obstacle to job performance, what was clearly evident is there exists a barrier relative to how faculty react to non-faculty participants. The level of trust, that materializes when faculty share classroom war stories, wasn’t there. My sense suggests that it was replaced with a feeling that we (faculty) are going to be advised on how to teach by a consultant who has never taught.

Change in a community college setting generally moves at glacial speed. Recognizing, as I do, my impatient nature, it is going to be a challenge for me if I’m successful in obtaining the DSN appointment. Key to success I believe is the ability to obtain faculty buy-in relative to suggested changes. Steering change in a manner where faculty “adopt” ideas as their own (rather than coming from above), is the direction I’d like to follow. We will just have to wait until the application closing date (December 13th) and the appointment date (January 15th) pass to see if I get to work on this challenge.

I have not completely abandoned certification efforts. Once I complete and submit the DSN application (something I’m hopeful I can do in the next week), I plan to turn my attention towards CompTIA’s new Mobility+ exam. I managed to gain access to a “review copy” of the Logical Operations course-ware and will be using it as my principal study tool for the certification exam. I’m not exactly sure when I will be able to study, given my plan to take the Ethical Hacking online course offered by CSSIA from December 9th to December 13th and their Linux I class from December 16 to December 19th.