Week 16

Since many of the students in the class are already working professionally, I'd like to hear from them about navigating office or campus politics in generating grants and other collaborative projects.

I have had a very interesting experience working with my projects.

If I had known what I know now, I would have concentrated on much more specific and localized projects so that I could see them through completion.

I am very excited about my ideas. Both the online writing lab and the service learning projects and projects which could impact the student community greatly. Doing either of those projects on a large scale has been very problematic.

Our campus is going through some administrative shifts and the roles of certain individuals are shifting. We have lost some key individuals; the head of the grants committee has resigned. This turmoil has lead me to put my project on hold, at least publicly.

I know that if I introduce it at the wrong moment, it could become the victim of a power struggle over which I have no control. I have had one individual suggest that I should take the project to another institution who would be interested in working on something like that.

If I had known all of this was going to take place, I would have chosen projects which the academic division could control. This has lead me to redesign my service learning project and make it much smaller scale.