It's hard to resign (and other happy news)....

Today I had to resign from my job as an Administrative Program Assistant for the College of Education at OSU. I've been part of the classified staff at the College for nearly 12 years (Oct 5th). Today it was very hard to write my letter, no matter how brief. It felt so...final.

But, in order to move ahead in life, sometimes you take risks. I jumped off a cliff today and I hope my little tiny parachute opens wide and majestically.

Tomorrow...I start my first day as a faculty member of the University. I am the new Administration Manager for the College of Education. My position is a professional faculty position and does not have tenure. I have a year to year contract, renewable at the whim of the dean.

Funnily enough, my job didn't change that much. My title just finally caught up with my actual work. I will be taking a much more active role in the HR and Finance sectors that I merely supported before. Now I will be the authority. [Basically, my boss is retiring and they don't want a new associate dean doing the piles and piles of administrative work (they save them for academic work).]

For a while, until I can get someone hired to fill the new OSII position that will replace my former position, I will have to do a lot of both jobs. Hiring for this position will be my first task as the Admin manager. I started working on the position description in July and it is nearly ready to go. A little tweaking and a conversation with the dean about a direction I'd like to take it and it should be ready.

I will be supervising my former co-workers but the Dean had to speak to them about it as a condition of my hire and everyone seems to be at ease with the change. I have been set up as a mentor to them for several years so this is not as much of a dramatic change as it could have been. However, I think this is the part of my job that I am most concerned about. I've been working with the current three staff members for over a year. (I'll be adding two more shortly) One I will not be supervising because there is a more logical supervisor. I have high standards for myself and it's not always fair to pass those expectations on to others. So I see a number of places where improvement could be made, but they are all hard workers and fairly good at the tasks they have. I will have a hard time making the balance between asking for improvements and realizing that they may be at their max capabilities. It's not that anyone is doing anything particularly "wrong"; there is just always room for improvement/efficiencies. I've been known to be a little exacting but I'd really LIKE to be a person that they all feel comfortable coming to when they have problems, questions, or concerns. I think I am going to look for a little training in this area. A balance- why does it have to be so hard to achieve.

If today is anything like what my future holds it will be a busy and challenging job. Today I wrote an advertisement for a faculty position to be used in several print and web mediums. I also worked on rounding out the new OSII position description. I saw a need based on my recent work on the Marketing front and I think this new position can help in that area. I am juggling three Marketing balls with several different units on campus: a newsletter to come out the first of January, a brand new website to come out at the same time, and a postcard to thank donors for contributions that really needs to happen ASAP. One involves the Department of Web Communications, another involves Marketing, and one involves the OSU Foundation. For sustainability of the newsletter, I may have to involve several other units on campus as well. On top of this I am doing a delicate balancing act with the former dean who "wants to stay involved in the building project" (read micro-managing the project) and making sure that the furniture and set ups that we end up with are functional and efficient for operations and not just pretty show pieces to note on tours with donors. This is not a particularly pleasant part of the job because I think both of us were hopping mad at the other today. I don't think he's being reasonable and considering the actual usage of the space and he thinks I'm being obstructive and deliberately difficult (No actually, I didn't send the floor plans because I thought he already HAD them!). Allan assures me that there are just days like that where you can't please anyone. That sounds like something pleasant to look forward too.

Anyway, I am looking forward to the challenge and an opportunity to grow in ways that I have not before. I hope I am as successful as everyone expects, including myself.