Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my first (official) report as your new Headmaster. I'm pleased to say that I've hit the ground running since being moved into the position, and so I'm going to use this report to announce staffing changes, run down the status of current projects and preview upcoming ones, and finally rattle off a few miscellaneous announcements.

P:HM Announcement and Staffing Shuffle

The deadline for P:HM applications technically is tomorrow, but I reserved the right to make my decision early if someone blew me away... and I was definitely blown away. I had some really amazing applicants with a wealth of ideas and experience, and it was incredibly difficult to pick only one of them. In the end, I picked the candidate whose ideas and enthusiasm I felt were nicely complimentary to my own: Marcus Kiriyu! Like I mentioned, a lot of the applications I got were incredibly qualified, which means the next time I have staff openings (the terms for both of the Magistrates will expire in July) I'm looking forward to seeing some of these folks apply again.

Marcus had previously served the Shadow Academy as Professor over our CORE Department, one of our busiest Professor positions. In order to cover this vacancy, I've slid Sang over to cover it; Sang has been doing an excellent job in the Lore Department, so I'm confident he'll excel overseeing the COREs. This means that the position of Professor of the Lore Department is open, and I'm accepting applications for it at this time. The requirements are fairly simple, with no minimum or maximum rank requirement: ability to grade all exams in your Department in under 24 hours, passage (with an 85% or higher) of all courses in the Lore Department, and the ability (and more importantly, willingness) to update the courses within the Department. They need some adjustments to get back into canonicity. Applications will be accepted until Wednesday, May 18th at 11:59 pm EST and should be sent both to myself and Marcus.

Projects

Current

Shadow Academy Staff are currently engaged in the following projects:

• SW History Department Rewrite - Aabs & Farrin: Because of the evil Darth Mickey, my beloved Galactic History courses aren't fully canon anymore. The courses are being pared down (almost in half) and will be added to the Legends Department so that people can still go enjoy my beautiful prose (What? I'm not allowed to be proud of them? How rude!). Estimated completion: 6/1/16

• DJB History I & II Update/Rewrite - Alishu: The DJB History courses have become outdated and needed some clean-up. Alishu has been handling this and is doing a stellar job. Estimated completion: 6/1/16

• Lightsaber Studies - Rhace: The Lightsaber Studies course(s) are being rewritten. Estimated completion: 5/20/16

Upcoming

• The Dreaded... AUDIT! (non-SW courses) - PROFs/DOCs, Farrin & Ood: The non-Star Wars courses will be prioritized and audited for accuracy, typos, etc. Exams are going to be reconfigured and updated. Expected Start: 5/2016; Expected Completion: 7/2016

• The Dreaded... AUDIT! (SW courses) - PROFs/DOCs, Marcus, Alishu, Rhace: The Star Wars-based courses will be prioritized and audited for accuracy, typos, etc. Exams are going to be reconfigured and updated. With the changes in canon... this will be a biggie. We'll be bringing in volunteers to assist in this area (don't volunteer yet, I'll let you know when we're ready for you). Expected Start: 6/2016; Expected Completion: 9/2016

• Operation Remodel - SA Staff: In an effort to streamline the organization of the Shadow Academy and make it easier to initially get to information and then to find similar information, the SA will see a fairly extensive reorganization. The audit takes precedence, but expect to see more about this later on this summer. Expected Start: 7/2016; Expected Completion: 9/2016

• Operation Prereq - Farrin: In order to make a more focused new member experience, different options are going to be explored to create prerequisite courses before other courses open up to a member. This is on the back burner for now, as the SA Staff has more pressing matters (y'know, the stuff above this item) and it'll require some tweaks on the coding end. Expect more info on this over the summer as well. Expected Start: Unknown; Expected Completion: Also unknown. :)

There are some other projects we have on various burners around the SA, too (why are there so many burners around here? This can't be within fire code), but I've got to keep some surprises for later, right?

Miscellaneous Announcements

• The HTML Primer course has been retired. This is a pretty much universally loved (well... almost) course mostly because it's one of the funniest takes on HTML learnin' that I've ever seen and Orv's graphics make me crack up every time I look at it. Due to popular demand, we've had the course converted into a Wiki article so its content - and, most importantly, its graphics - can be enjoyed for years to come. Thank you to Solari for getting that converted so quickly for us.

• Speaking of the Wiki, there is now an HM Policies page on the Wiki. It's still a work in progress, and will be updated as I come across policies that I feel it would be beneficial to remind people of. For instance... don't cheat on SA exams. #themoreyouknow

Top Exam Takers

Name	# of Exams	# of ACs
Neophyte Arsolimese	16	8
Ranger Korroth	11	22
Novice Xero Leoncroi	4	0
Acolyte Lucifer Romanov	3	6
Knight Alishu	2	6

Note: these numbers cover the period from Bubba's final report on 4/28/16 to today.
Cooler note: starting next month, the top exam taker (by number of exams, tiebreaker will be number of ACs) will receive a Scroll of Foundation for their efforts.

Conclusion

Bubba used to sign off of each of his reports by reminding you that the Shadow Academy is a massive wall of text and that only you can prevent fores- no, wait, that's not it. Oh, right: he would remind you that the topics covered in the SA are ever-changing and, even though we proofread extensively, errors still slip in. If you spot an error, please report it to the SA Staff using this simple form; if it's a major enough error, or you spot enough, you'll be rewarded. At the very least, you'll get the thanks of a grateful HM... that's got to count for something, right?