Job Shadowing Experience 1

I asked Ann Taylor and Stevie Rocco (Director and Assistant Director, of the Dutton Institute, respectively) both to let me shadow them because, well, I like them. I like their management style, I like their personalities, I like what they’ve done with their lives. I admire these women because they’re relatively young, successfully managing an innovative and essential Institute, and, because they’ve both been with the University for decades, they have connections out the wazoo. I typically only see them in action internally. I wanted to see them moving and shaking outside of the College and Dutton and it makes a ton of sense for me to follow them around and see what I can learn from them.

While I haven’t yet had the opportunity to attend an event with them outside of our cocoon, they did ask if I’d like to accompany them to a meeting regarding space allocation in our building. I attended the meeting and as a result, I learned a lot about how building space is managed at Penn State. Of course, it’s complicated, but the basic idea is that all areas that can be used by anyone (a.k.a. common spaces) are to be managed using a central database. Other spaces are to be utilized a certain percentage of time or they should be opened up as available common space for the times in which they are not being occupied. It’s an interesting system meant to maximize the use of existing spaces vs building new. I think the jury is still out on if the system and the associated guidelines are working, however, it was a good learning experience. I met a few new folks and gained a new appreciation of what it takes to reallocate space here at Penn State.

Stevie then asked me to attend an online E-Learning meeting. It was attended by several (9?) folks across Penn State, all who work in online learning. We all attended using Zoom, which I felt was appropriate, given the crowd. I enjoyed attending the meeting and listening in on discussion regarding artificial intelligence. It was a short meeting, but I did meet some new folks and gained a better understanding of how E-learning is managed across the University by different units.

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