[SML] Classes in college.

[Paul Schreiner]

I have some thoughts, after which I'll offer a suggestion.

> Recently my program chair asked me to develop a class that would be geared toward my undergrad  student workers.

Soooo...they get college credit for what amounts to OTJ training?
Wish I coulda scored something like that...

> The student workers oversee the main theatre and scene shop on campus. We are responsible for covering events like music department concerts, presidential meetings, student organized events, dance concerts, theatre program productions (including set fabrication and painting) and the daily maintenance of the theatre.  As you can imagine we are SUPER BUSY all the time.

Yup.  Ain't no downtime from August-May with that sort of thing.

> The students are mainly engineer majors with some theatre, english, communication and biology majors.

As my last boss loved to say, "You can teach skills.  You can't teach
brains and attitude."  You're fortunate.

> The program chair is hoping this class would be taught in the afternoon so that its available to them during our normal working hours.

*TWWEEEEEET*  No.  Bad idea.  You can't spend classroom time on theory
during work time.  Trying to teach power formulas and basic acoustic
theory can't be done while setting up an orchestra shell.  When do you
get assessments that the rest of the faculty will accept?

Work time is work time, learning time is learning time.  Your chair is
trying to save a few bucks by cutting corners that will, inevitably,
lead to a lesser product all the way around.

> Has anyone else created or have an idea about what I could do for this class?

IMNSHO, any good general stagecraft class that teaches both the theory
and skills behind basic theatrical carpentry, lighting, rigging, and
sound will produce students able to perform all the tasks you describe
independently and unsupervised.

If your stagecraft class can't do that, I recommend revisiting the way
that class is structured.

If you have no stagecraft class, now's the time.

> I feel challenged that this might take a way from daily tasks unless I can figure out a way to incorporate the tasks into classroom activities. The other challenge is figuring out a way to make it appealing to non theatre folks so they will actually take the class.

With enough theoretical content and testing (and a good sales pitch),
it's possible to get a class like this considered for one of your
school's core curriculum course designations.  There's enough math
involved that it should, at least...

If you'd like, send me an email off-list and I'll see if I can
scrounge up a syllabus and calendar for a course I used to teach that
was designed pretty much exactly for this purpose (not *for* student
employees, but designed to prepare students to be able to jump in on
an IA overhire list with impressive results).