{"id":68,"date":"2012-08-18T23:13:27","date_gmt":"2012-08-18T23:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/?p=68"},"modified":"2012-08-18T23:13:27","modified_gmt":"2012-08-18T23:13:27","slug":"seems-to-be-the-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/2012\/08\/18\/seems-to-be-the-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Seems to be the place"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, I went to the open house at National Hispanic University (NHU).\u00a0 I did not know what to expect, but everything far surpassed what I had envisioned.\u00a0 The staff is dedicated, motivated and passionate.\u00a0 The students are held to a high standard and are encouraged every step of the way.\u00a0 The class sizes are small, personal, and everyone is treated like family.\u00a0 The facilities are new, up to date (technology-wise), and absolutely spotless.\u00a0 It\u2019s a pretty exciting place!\u00a0 Even before the first session started, I had several staff\/faculty people approach me, shake my hand, and talk to me.\u00a0 It made a powerful first impression!\u00a0 One guy in particular seemed interested in my desire to teach at this institution.\u00a0 He gave me the name of the HR manager, and asked me to call her on Monday.\u00a0 Later on, I discovered that the man I was talking to was Dr. Lopez, the President of NHU.\u00a0 The guy was so personable!\u00a0 The only downside (to me anyway) is that there is no opportunity to get a teaching credential in under a year, and 100% of all credential classes are offered in the evening.\u00a0 In other words, I cannot go to class in the daytime, which would be my preference, and I can\u2019t choose more than two classes every six weeks, because there aren\u2019t more than two available every six weeks.\u00a0 It will take me 1.4 years to graduate.\u00a0 This is still faster (and cheaper) than SJSU by 2x, but it doesn\u2019t help me achieve my goal of getting my credential by next summer.\u00a0 Looks like I won\u2019t be credentialed to take over that 7th<\/sup> grade class at my wife\u2019s school next year.\u00a0 No doubt, God wants me somewhere else.\u00a0 I will trust Him and move forward with assurance.<\/p>\n

The presentations were pretty good today, as was the catered food.\u00a0 Instead of attending the last session, I asked for a tour.\u00a0 That tour turned out to be a gold mine!\u00a0 Alex, the young I.T. guy who guided me around, is a recent grad of NHU.\u00a0 He and I went through the three floors of the campus, and he was able to answer all my questions.\u00a0 On the final floor, I met Prof. Mooney (English) who had spoken in the general session.\u00a0 He\u2019s a real positive and likeable guy.\u00a0 I mentioned that I was going into the credential program, to make myself more \u201chirable\u201d as a teacher, but that my actual desire was to teach at the college level, and that I had applied at NHU.\u00a0 It turned out that he is on the interview and hiring committee for the Art Appreciation position I had applied for.\u00a0 He asked if I had online\/computer skills and I answered in the affirmative.\u00a0 He said that there is a pretty long vetting cycle that happens before my resume hits his desk, but if I get phoned or interviewed by anyone along the way, I was to make sure I mentioned that I was computer savvy.\u00a0 From what I can tell, there is only one other \u201cArt\u201d teacher on campus, and I\u2019m not even sure he\u2019s still here.\u00a0 I might be applying as his replacement (a guy who attended and graduated from SJSU in Art History after<\/em> I had).\u00a0 Prof Mooney said that NHU had every intention of quickly adding Art History classes to its schedule, so if I got hired now, I could be in an area of expansion.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t say this, but I felt he was hinting at a possible full professorship for those who stuck around.\u00a0 Right now, Art History is strictly Adjunct (part-time, no benefits).\u00a0 In other words, if I get hired, and if I don\u2019t go broke as an Adjunct Professor after 5 years (the typical period before anyone is considered for a tenured position), I could land a rare full-time, tenured position.\u00a0 Now that would be cool!\u00a0 Alas, he also mentioned that because NHU is now a part of Laureate International Universities, they would likely be looking for PhD degrees for their full-time staff.\u00a0 I have no desire to get one of those degrees right now, so I might have to look elsewhere… or get that degree.\u00a0 With an MA, and five years as an Adjunct Professor, I could seek full-time positions in community colleges elsewhere, but I would most certainly have to move. \u00a0The kids would be out of the house by then, so moving is a possibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, I went to the open house at National Hispanic University (NHU).\u00a0 I did not know what to expect, but everything far surpassed what I had envisioned.\u00a0 The staff is dedicated, motivated and passionate.\u00a0 The students are held to a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thisplot.com\/TheNewThing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}