The rise and fall of camelot: designing, implementing, and dismantling  (Page 8/16)

Building on the fly. During the summer of 2008 FMC2, FMC3, and I worked on moving the core courses to a teachable point. We collaboratively identified texts and readings for each course as well as specific content and focus. However, each of us took the lead, as an “expert,” in developing one of the core courses. With our high number of participants and limited faculty, we each would be teaching two sections of a core course and either an internship or “managerial” course. I developed the first core course, Ethical School Leadership, which was first taught in the fall of 2008. FMC3 designed the second core course, Leading School Culture, which would be taught in the spring of 2009. FMC2 worked on the third core course, Leadership for Student Learning, to be implemented in fall, 2009. We all worked with DH1 to design The Hickory Experience , initially based on an internship orientation program in the old program.

Cohort 1. Fourteen members of Cohort 1 began the program in fall 2008. After Hickory, one participant dropped out of the program. The remaining thirteen went on to serve a dual role as program participants and sources of invaluable feedback. The lack of a fully developed program led to some painful moments. For instance, The Hickory Experience was initially designed as a separate course. Participants had trouble moving from the intense small-group experiences in Ethical School Leadership to a separate but related set of leadership discussions in the Hickory course. Later, the two courses would be merged so that The Hickory Experience served as an introduction to the program, a cohort development time, and the beginning of Ethical School Leadership. Cohort 1 was also aware that they were blazing a trail and faculty made it clear that we would make changes based on Cohort 1’s feedback. This unique relationship between the program, the cohort, and the faculty created some intense faculty-participant bonds. Including participants as collaborators with faculty was a very effective way of overcoming the criticism that online programs are impersonal.

Personnel changes. As described earlier, FME replaced FMD at the conclusion of the fall 2008 semester. Our growing enrollments allowed FME to teach full-time in the MSA. FME was hired on a tenure-track faculty the following fall. By the end of fall, 2008, I had become exhausted. While the development of the program had been shared work, the burden of being the program director made it difficult for me to ever fully relax and just enjoy what was happening. There was always more to do and problems to deal with and I had yet to publish a single article, putting me behind schedule for promotion and tenure. By December I had reached the point where I could not sleep through the night. I was consumed with the new program and was neglecting my family. With the support of DH1, I resigned from program coordination. FME became the MSA program coordinator, making her transition to full time faculty very stressful. FMC3 volunteered to do most of the work in coordinating and phasing out the old program.