Mission Impossible at SJSU for me

Many of you know I have two virtual assignments at SJSU. I coordinate the ITSS Help Desk and I teach technology courses in the Center for Faculty Development and Support. Before I came here both of these positions were staffed full time. Since I came both positions have grown. At the Help Desk, in the latest month statistics are available, we closed 400% of the tickets we closed in the same month of the previous year. With my 50% assignment there that is an 800% effective workload increase year-to-year.

At CFDS enrollments are up so high for technology courses that we have had to add extra back-to-back sessions. Therefore I have requested that I be relieved of one assignment so I can concentrate on the other. If management does this and assigns me to the Help Desk full-time that means I will no longer be teaching Emerging Technology classes (such as blogging, wiki’s, RSS etc.) at SJSU. My first choice would be to teach full-time and develop a semester long series of emerging technology sessions that would include Web 2.0, Open Source, Mobile Devices and other emerging technologies.

I will miss this a lot, but I do not feel I can do either job well given my current assignment structure. I will still be a blogger and a podcaster. Just like my photography, I am still a photographer. It is an avocation, not a vocation for me.