The First Reunion des Professeurs of the year

Yesterday (September 15, 2008) was the first official Reunion des profs of the year at the Ecole des Sciences de l'Information (ESI) -- everyone on the permanent teaching staff assembled for a three hour meeting that quite frankly reminded me of every other faculty meeting I'd ever seen. I guess that professors everywhere are the same, and there's a certain amount of comfort in that.

It was particularly pleasant to be welcomed on an individual basis by each and every professor either before and after the meeting. It was also quite an honor to be acknowledged by Dr. Benjelloun, Director of the School, in his opening remarks at the start of the meeting.

There were about 20 professors present for this first official meeting of the year. Twenty professors, howevers is a fraction of the total teaching staff. ESI, like many schools in other countries, depends adjuncts (or vacataires) to teach some of the classes. Most of the meeting was in French. Some of the comments were in Arabic, especially when emotional reactions to the governtment's education reforms were being articulated. The last time the government had similar reforms was in 1996, before that, in 1986. There was glowing talk of changes put through during the last batch of reforms, so change is not admonished by any stretch of the imagination -- instead, the reforms seem to be a good opportunity, one to be used to its fullest advantage both for the future success of the school and for the students.