19 July 2009

Headmaster Report #28

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News

--Congrats to Mechronage for winning the fiction entry competition, his entry will be featured in my next report. Blast from the Past Week - ESET Edition also ended. A total of ten members passed the course. Except another course to be reopened around Winter.

--We feel that one of the Shadow Academy's biggest problems is getting exams graded in a reasonable amount of time. When you have thirty different people working on projects nearly identical to each other, it slows down the system. Which is why when I appointed Taig as Praetor he came to me with an idea to speed up grading. This new system, code named "Super EPs" has been in development and beta testing for a few months now, and is now going public.

First, the position of Eclectic Pedagogue is hereby dissolved. The courses within the Shadow Academy have now been reorganized into a system of Departments, each containing similar courses, that are headed by Department Professors, a single member who is in charge of grading all of the courses within his or her department within 72 hours. The Departments are as follows:

Department of Philosophy, Professor Ood Bnar - Force Philosophy, Krath CORE, Sith Alchemy, Force Cults

Department of General Studies, Professor Vai Azexel - DB Basics, IRC Basics, IRC Channel Operators, Conflict Mediation, Leadership Studies

Department of General History, Professor position OPEN - Pre-Republic History, Old Republic History, History of the Sith Empire I, II, and III

Department of Flight Studies, Professor position OPEN - Astronomy, Sith CORE, Capital Starship Studies, Freighters and Transports, Starfighter Studies

Department of Combat Tactics, Professor position OPEN - Obelisk CORE, Hand-to-Hand Combat, Lightsaber Studies, Advanced Lightsaber Studies, Test of Power, Combat Tactics (coming soon)

Department of Coding Practices, Professor position being handled in-house - HTML Basics, HTML Advanced, myriad of other programming courses that we are working on

You may have noticed that not all the courses have been placed within departments, these are the exception courses, such as Chamber of Justice I, or Grammar Studies. These courses will continue to be graded by a single member, known as Docents. To go along with new Professors and Docents, there will also be one or two Assistant Professors, whose job will be to step in whenever a Professor needs help (such as going on a leave of absence), and grade exams. You can view all these new positions on the Council Assistants Roster.

Ood Bnar and Vai Azexel have already been selected as Professors of the Department of Philosophy and General Studies, respectively, so congrats to them. All Docent positions will also be kept by their previous EPs. However, several Professor positions, as well as Assistant Professor, are still open, so we are going to open up these new positions to applications. If you are interested in applying for a Professor position in the Department of General History, Flight Studies, or Combat Tactics, you must meet the following requirements:

-At least the rank of Jedi Hunter

-72 hour email turnaround, 48 hour turnaround preferred - you MUST be able to grade all exams in the department within a reasonable amount of time

-Have passed all courses in the department with at least 90% - as this is a new system, I am going to allow to you retake those courses you need to. Thus, if you want to apply for Flight Studies, but have an 86% in Astronomy, retake soon.

-Must have ideas for improving the courses in the department. Include in the application what you like, don't like, want to change, the usual stuff.

Finally, keep in mind that these are larger positions with more responsibility, but they reward greater. If you wish to take one of them, you should be expecting to hold that position for an extended period of time. These positions are not temporary. If something is going to come up in six months, do not bother applying.

If you would like to apply for an Assistant Professor position, which will not have full-time duties, but will be expected to step up when asked, you should be at least the rank of Guardian with a good number of Academy courses already passed.

Send your applications to Taigikori and me by August 1st, though we reserve the right to start selecting appointees after July 27th, so if you won't be able to get your application in by then, at least send us an email letting us know when to expect it. If you have any questions or complaints about the applications or the new system, you can email us or use the comments section.

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Important Links

--SA Website

--SA Degree Requirements

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Summary

• Wanna be an EP? Can't, they don't exist. Professors now handle multiple courses in Departments, backed by Assistants and Docents. I know, crazy.
  

Dark Side Adept Aabsdu di Plagia Dupar

Headmaster of the Brotherhood