I just got back from a faculty meeting. One of the joys of being a faculty is the faculty meeting (insert sarcastic tone). Fortunately, I'm still new, we have a small faculty, and only meet once a month, so our brand of meeting isn't as bad as it could be. I'm not privy to the politics so maybe I'm still immune a bit. Thus far, I've been relative quiet at the meetings, although I started to talk some more today. We cover a lot of topics in the 1.5 hour meeting, most of which I have little to no opinion on or have little relevance to my current life. As I become more integrated with the department that will change, but for right now, I'm quite comfortable with my new girl status.
Until it became the center piece of the conversation.
We are having trouble recruiting graduate students. Our enrollment is down this year and for a variety of reasons that's not a good thing. We were discussing our options for recruitment strategies when one of the faculty members said something to the effect of, well we'll have to get Dr. Rini to get us involved in all the new technology out there, you know facebook and twitter and my space and what not.
I should probably mention I'm the youngest faculty by 10+ years.
There was alot of "what's twitter" and "oh yes, thats why we hired a young person" talk that ensued. I explained twitter. I do occasionally but infrequently twitter. I also have a facebook account, which I have been using to keep in touch with friends, although I'm not a heavy facebook user either, and yes I do have a blog. The thing is, I don't want either of these things to become part of my professional life.
I know that some faculty have had sucess with facebook as a tool, and I don't disagree that it can be used appropriately. I don't, however, beleive that a faculty who had facebook as a student can transition her social network to a professional network. I fall into this latter category. My students and colleagues don't need to know that my friends gifted me a can of whoop ass or see picture of me at my nephews baptism. My facebook behavior is not illegal, immoral or anything that can get me fired, it's just not a side of my life the needs to intersect with my academic life. My facebook life grows because of my friends activities and not necessarily because of mine. Do I have to call everyone up and say "hey I really need you to censor your facebook life because mine needs to be professionally acceptable". Same is true of my twitter. I twitter so my friends from far away can feel connected to me and I to them. And the blog, well, the blog is anonymous for a reason.
For a long time I didn't use facebook at all, because of these very reasons. Now that I live 1500 miles away from everyone I know I've started to use it more, but my security settings are on super high. Thus far I've found that it is a good balance for me. I'm not sure how to integrate it with a professional twist. I'm not sure I want to try. As far as twitter, I could set up another account, I suppose I could start a professional real me blog as well. In the end I suggested that the department set up a blog, where the current graduate students and faculty could post about what we're doing, what we want to do etc. I think that it might be a good solution, but it made me think a little about this stuff.
So I want to know how the rest of you feel? Do you live a split personality in reality and if so do you live one online too? I'm not sure I'm ready to maintain another public me.
Is there a way to set up a new professional facebook account separate from your personal one? That being said I'm not sure how much facebook would help anyway.
ReplyDeleteI agree on the need-to-know basis of stuff.
ReplyDeleteNone of my students (as far as I've been able to determine) reads my blog, and even if they did, I don't think they'd find anything too actionable on there. I'm very conscious of that so I generally don't say something like, "Wow, my ecology class was really rude today with the side conversations" or even really talk about any specific instances. I may say, "I had to deal with some difficult people today" but as far as anyone reading knows, that could be a student, a colleague, someone from church, someone from a volunteer group I belong to...(or all of the above).
I also don't think that colleges should perforce jump online with a huge "look at us aren't we cool" presence. Especially not when things like keeping up a departmental blog or twitter site requires time and effort (and probably vetting by higher-ups).
One thing I've learned during my time as a prof is that sometimes there's stuff I just don't feel strongly about, and I can sit back and let other people hash it out. I tend to pick my battles. (One of my big ones of late - which I lost - concerned an attendance policy).
I'm glad my campus hasn't gone heavily into the "let's mine the brains of the Younger People for new recruitment tools." Because though I suppose I'm a Younger Person (though not so much any more), I really am kind of ignorant about Twitter and facebook. I like my good old blog but that (and Ravelry) are about all I do in the way of networking online.
This is a tough one. I made a point to try to keep my work and personal accounts separate because I didn't want my boss reading my rather dark humor tweets. It's not as easy as it sounds especially when you work with people that spend all day on the computer.
ReplyDeletePretty much everyone at work has found my twitter account and I stopped keeping my non work one up to date, but it has been at the expense of tweeting some things that I would have said if co-workers were not listening. I may go back to posting on my non-work account.
As for helping your faculty with this stuff: I've had the experience of introducing these concepts to an older less tech savvy group and it continues to blow my mind how foreign these concepts are to them.
What I hear your faculty asking for is your knowledge of how these tools work. That doesn't mean you need to point them at your blog or facebook page. It means they want someone to show them how to use these tools to translate that into more GRAD students.
I would do this in a few phases.
1) Introduce them to twitter. Create a new account for yourself and start tweeting with them. Once they have an understanding of how to use @username and direct messages you can ask them how they might "find" Grad students of interest. Introduce them to twitter search... Then make it their assignment to find and reach out (tweet at) at least 5 prospective students explaining they are professors at your university and would happily chat with them about how great it is there.
2) Start a faculty blog. Find some topic that would be of interest to prospective grad studets and write about that at least twice a week. Have a rotating schedule so that other professors are responcible for specific posts. You should probably handle the mechanics and just have them email you the materials. Attach google analytics to the blog so you can show how it gets visitors. (make sure to get lots of university pages to link to it)
Once the faculty has all posted once, start showing the more tech savvy ones how to post themselves.
3) Facebook - I have yet to see value in facebook as a platform for identifying people, but that could be that, like you, I don't spend much time with it. Your best bet is to treat this the same way you do twitter.
Whatever you do, start out with new accounts for all your work related activities and DO NOT link between them. Don't even invite the same people to both accounts.
A savvy twitter or facebook user would notice that you are starting out with no friends and be suspect of your accounts, but n00bs, especially older ones, don't understand the drive people have to rack up friends and almost definitely won't notice as long as you keep a steady stream of new info going into your accounts.
So the big point here is: It is your knowledge of the tools, and not the existing nodes on your virtual social network that are valuable to them. You have knowledge which puts you in a strong position. Use it wisely and it will take you far.