academic orientation

I spent most of the day today at MCAD for new faculty orientation. Walked in thinking it might take an hour or two, tops. Boy was I wrong. To be honest, I hadn't really put much thought to the quality of the infrastructure of the school I'll be teaching at, or the 100+ year's of history, or the character of the teaching staff. I had a lot to learn.

At one point, someone told me that MCAD's ability to retain students from Freshman to Sophomore year has been over 90% for the past several years. That's pretty incredible, if you think about students as consumers and education as an ongoing customer-relationship. How many brands do you know that retain 90% of their customers over a year, much less four years? Obviously student-recruitment (or suggestions to educate oneself elsewhere) is huge aspect of this statistic. But it also speaks to staff and environment and focus.

I'm really looking forward to teaching "The Future of Advertising." (First post on the subject here.) It'll teach me a lot, and hopefully teach my students even more.