7.30am - arrived in my office. Did the usual: dealt with waiting e-mails; checked calendar; checked in-box for pending tasks and dealt with the following: reassured colleague that I would deal with an issue about a student querying their grades from last semester; agreed to meet a former student who is now completing a PhD at another University, and read his draft thesis for him; replied to student's message about their ongoing dissertation work; arrange to meet with a commissioning editor from Routledge on Thursday; received from the editor of Geografiska Annaler the pdf file of a paper that I wrote that they are about to publish - filed it and wrote back to acknowledge; sent copy of the pdf to co-author in Minnesota; replied to a request from the faculty office for information they could include in the faculty newsletter about the prize I won this year for "Excellence in Learning and Teaching" - rather than make up new stuff I sent them an extract from the oration that was read at the presentation on degree day; received and checked the draft timetable for teaching for next semester - this version has room numbers on, so am able to check that planned activities for each of my classes will be possible in the rooms that have been allocated; checked out the contents of the newly released Volume 46 of Annals of Glaciology - noticed particularly that Richard Alley is arguing the case that global warming is leading to ice-sheet mass loss (downloaded his paper for reading and use in teaching).
Figured out how to do back-to-back printing with my recently installed new printer.
8.50am - collected "real" mail from pigeon hole: a copy of the official photograph of me with the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor and Pro Vice Chancellor on degree day when I collected my award; some junk mail; a booklet of information about next weekend's open day - read through this to check my commitments: I'll be giving the talks to visitors.
Checked the newly updated web pages advertising our new course offering in Single Hons Geography. I contributed material for this last week but had not seen the outcome till now.
Checked with School Administrator about the marks record of the student who is querying their grades.
Met Debbie in the Low Temperature Lab to set up a new experiment, then took a half-hour coffee break.
Confirmed with School Administrator that I would be "on duty" today to receive phone calls from the Department of Academic Affairs about "clearing" admissions to Geography. I will be asked to make decisions about whether we are willing to accept students. I will be on duty doing this on and off throughout the week.
Spent 20 minutes preparing a memo confirming a set of student marks and the circumstances surrounding them, and sent it to the student, his tutor and the course administrator, in response to a persistent series of queries from the student. What a waste of everybody's time it is when students don't bother to do work properly in the first place then make a fuss about getting bad marks and try to get out of doing the reassessments.
Received, and put into my diary, the dates for open days for the next academic year.
Had phone conversation with deputy head of undergraduate recruitment about how to handle recruitment for our new single honours course during this clearing week and the forthcoming open days. It's a bit awkward because the UCAS numbers won't be arranged in time for applications to be made in the regular way, so we need a workaround until theofficial codes come through, and I need to be able to explain that to open day visitors.
Had a visit from a student with questions about the re-assessment process for one of their modules.
Reviewed a paper submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research. I previously reviewed an earlier version, the authors have made changes, and now I have been asked to review it again. I read through my original comments, the authors' responses and the revised paper, and wrote a letter of recommendation to the editor. The whole process was done online.
Discussed with a colleague arrangements for reorganizing some teaching during his planned absence at the start of term.
12.30 - took a sandwich break.
Brief e-mail discussions with colleague about content of open-day presentation, and with visiting publisher about his arrival on Thursday.
Afternoon: spent the bulk of the afternoon on the job of writing a comparative review, commissioned by publishers Routledge, of two of the major current Physical Geography textbooks. I've been thinking about this, and looking at the books, for a couple of weeks, but this afternoon wrote and submitted the report.
Responded to query from School office to confirm some content for School Handbook.
Finalised by e-mail details for a visitor coming tomorrow.
