Leave Policy

Here's the skinny on what IDS employees must do in order to have approval for any leave time:

1. All leave must be approved by your direct supervisor before the date/time of absence. This means you must telephone or e-mail and receive acknowledgment before taking leave. If your direct supervisor is not available, go to the next supervisor in line.
2. Once leave has been approved by your supervisor, you must notify all team members who may be affected by your absence. In particular, this refers to other developers or instructional designers who may be depending on you as a teammember on any given project.

Finally, I expect everyone to adhere to their scheduled hours. As you know, you have great liberty to determine your own work schedule; I just ask that you stick to it. The more you stick to your schedule in general, the more flexibility we will allow for exceptions.

Leave Immediately Prior to New Semester

No time-off requests will be accepted 7 days prior to or following the first day of any new semester, except for special circumstances or emergencies.

The first day of Fall 2007 semester is August 22

IDS Staff Profiles

I've collected brief profiles of most of our staff as a snapshot of our current team:

John Krutsch
Sr. Director, Distance Education
* Oversees the operation of the many varied programs in Distance Education
* Created the PowerTools for WebCT
* Openly shares his technical and academic innovations with the world
* Enjoys birding, camping, and all things sci-fi

Jared M. Stein
Director of Instructional Design Services
* Oversees DE course & technology development
* Created the TETC
* Teaches Web design for MCT
* Likes literature, writing, film, card games, and tea

Janel Mitchell
Instructional Designer
* UVSC Distance Education
* Assists Faculty in designing courses for distance delivery
* Project Manager for DE course production
* Created processes for DE course development
* Likes structure and organization
* Enjoys exercise, gardening and going to lunch with friends

Eric Liu
Web Developer
* Creating Japanese 1010 online course
* Helps manage course developer projects
* Assistant supervisor on WebCT CE to Vista migration
* Maintains a number of DE course web sites
* Likes martial arts, tennis, cooking, food of any kind, drawing, coffee and tea

Clark Nielsen
Web Developer
* Working on LI Registration web site
* Developing Moodle integration of Flash language tools for JPNS 1010
* Created a custom quiz lock for Driver's Ed Moodle course
* Interested in writing, video games, snowboarding, traveling, and animation

Michelle H. Erickson
Specialist / Editor
* Edits courses for delivery via DE mediums
* Involved with closed captioning initiative
* Transcribes courses
* Likes writing, photography, "flipping" houses (joint hobby with hubby)

Natthaphon "Golf" Pipatchotikul
Web Developer
* Maintains online courses
* Researches latest technologies
* Develops online exams
* Likes movies, driving, learning new things, playing basketball, and Thai food.

Yoshihito Endo
Course Developer
*Learning CSS/XHTML/XML
* Working on Web CT CE to VISTA migration
* Helping coordinate the development of the new DE Intranet site.
* Enjoys learning and using new equipment and applications, such as Mimio, for use in IDS.
* Likes to go camping with his family, playing Golf by himself, and messing around with computers (This is a lot of FUN!!).

New Course Proposal Signature & Review Process

A couple of things were clarified this morning in our weekly DE Directors' Meeting regarding new course proposals:

1. Dept Chair/Dean signature. We are going to proceed with seeking dept. chair/dean signatures at the course proposal step, not at the development compensation step. John K. has agreed that electronic signatures will be sufficient. We will need to build these into the online proposal submission and review system.



2. IDS has been charged with previewing all new course proposals in our weekly IDS meeting and making a recommendation for the IDS Director to communicate to the Senior Director. Senior Director will cover any final approval at the deans/VP level. We will need to make this process as streamlined as possible in the online system.