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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

A Dull Article on Spring Rooms


I had planned to write a series about spring room assignments but I’ve been so busy with fall grading clean up and actually doing spring room assignments that I haven’t had time. Plus, I‘m gong on sabbatical the end of February to write all kinds of documentation including a series of essays and instructions for faculty detailing all the R&R related procedures and how they are accomplished in Banner. Therefore, I do not want to waste any of my shallow reserves of cleverness prematurely! But there are some important things I want to tell you about spring rooms.

Check your room assignments today. I am changing rooms all the time and a room assignment you looked at on Monday may be different today. If I have done a room change for you earlier I still may have had to change your room again. If you needed a smart room I have moved you to another smart room, it just may not be the one you were originally assigned.

As I’m sure you have noticed by now, I rarely reply to a room request email. If you keep checking your schedule you will see that a change has been made. I DO reply if I am unable to help you out so you know as soon as I do that there isn’t a room available. We can work on it together and see if we can come up with something else that might work.

Watch your email and check it before you go to classes on January 22. If I have to do last minute room changes over the weekend, and there are always some, I will email you and your Chair and your Department Secretary with the room change information. There will also be a sign posted at your original door but that is a frustrating way to discover that your room has been changed.

Please request all room changes through email rather than calling me or coming into the office. If you call or come in I can’t make the room change immediately; all I do is take down the information. If all requests come through email I have a trail of what is needed and what I did. If I jot down information from a visit or a phone call it misses the trail and is more likely to be misplaced. Plus the phones are insane in R&R the first week of classes and the lines outside the windows are worse. If I wasn’t required to be here I wouldn’t set foot in the place. Spare yourself the agony.

Colleagues may be a good source of room change opportunities. The room you have and don’t want may be just what someone else is dreaming of, or are at least willing to put up with. I can only tell you what rooms I have available that are not being used, which are few and far between. If you take the problem to your colleagues you may find a room switch takes care of the problem. In the past this has worked out very well for a lot of people. Just be sure to let me know so I can change the master schedule and Banner.

My goal is to get everyone into a functional room. It sometimes takes a little scurrying around to make that happen!

Deborah Benjamin
Registration and Records
01/17/2008