Advice to a former student who wants to learn to weld

The phrase "MIG and TIG" is misleading, although it alliterates nicely and so somehow stays in the lexicon. There are actually five choices for welding steel, of which TIG is the least useful under normal circumstances. In order of usefulness: 1) arc-welding, AKA "stick welding," using flux-covered welding rod, where the flux prevents oxidation of the molten metal; 2) MIG or "metal inert gas" typically using argon gas as a shield to prevent oxidation; 3) "flux-core" welding, typically using the same equipment as MIG, only without the gas; 4) oxy-acetylene welding and brazing that uses a gas torch and filler rod; and lastly 5) "tungsten inert gas" or TIG which uses separate welding or "filler" rod and an expensive tungsten electrode, needs two hands at all times and so is horrible for vehicle or boat work, but can more easily be adapted to metals other than mild steel. Most welders only need the first three. In a pinch you can do 95% of what you need to do around a workshop, farm, or shop with a stick welder, although having the other types makes life much easier. If you can learn to weld with a stick welder, you can easily pick up the other types in very short order, so it's best to start with stick welding, then add MIG and flux-core, which often use the same welding sets these days anyway. In forty-plus years of welding I've never needed TIG, and I've only used oxy-acetylene welding equipment for heat during other mechanical procedures, or for brazing, not for actual welding. I regularly use all of the other three. I use stick for heavy steel fabrication and cutting, flux-core for most vehicle welding, and MIG for some bodywork when I need an especially good finish. I also have an aluminum "spool" adapter for my MIG/flux-core welder, and cast-iron rod for my stick welder, a classic Lincoln-Electric "tombstone", negating most of the need for the other two types of equipment. The best way to learn to weld is to get shown the basics by someone, then practice. There's no shortcut, and in fact, all you'll do different in a class is learn the theory a bit better, then get shortchanged on the practice because there isn't a vo-tech or community college in the country that can afford to let you practice as much as you actually need to. And a certificate won't do you any good if your welds fall apart because you can't practice. You can pick up a cheap but functional stick welder at Harbor Freight for a Benjamin, less than the tuition at the vo-tech AND you'll then have your own welder. It will come with a cheap and nasty but functional welder's hammer. You'll need to buy some one-eight mild steel rod and find some scrap steel to practice on. A good light-operated welding mask, good welding gloves AKA "gauntlets", a long-sleeved coat made of something that doesn't burn or melt, and a place to work outside that won't catch fire are also needed. A hand grinder with a selection of heads (cutting, grinding, steel brush wheel) and googles are also very helpful, but optional at this stage. Work outside because fumes are nasty. Have an ABC-type fire extinguisher handy. Then practice, practice, practice. The best advice I ever got for welding was "focus on the molten pool." The pool of molten metal is all-important and your ability to put that pool where you need it and to shape it makes you a good welder or not.

Thriving

 

I occasionally get emails and FB messages from students and former students asking how Aimee and I are doing, given the recent hostile takeover of the college and the loss of our jobs. 

This very useful chart came across my FB feed today and I studied it carefully. It's quite relevant.

The short answer to the question is in my title: "Thriving." 

Why? When we just lost our jobs?

As responsible, diligent, and ethical faculty members of the real Unity College, we had been in conflict with the administration since the early 2010s. Our Peace Church background didn't help much. Neither of us ever feels the need to lie or kow-tow to those in power. It's literally "against our religion." And so, by "speaking truth to power," we made sure that the last two Unity College administrations understood that two of their highly qualified and experienced senior faculty disagreed with their strategy for the college.

Their two strategies differed greatly, by the way. Dr. Mulkey wanted to focus the college on climate change education and research. He was quite saddened to discover that he was instead directed by the board to raise money from rich people and find ways to grow the college by teaching more of the usual kinds of students, who present as primarily interested in bachelors degrees that qualify them for positions as game wardens or wildlife technicians, not as climate scientists. Setting the students' priorities first never seemed to come to mind. One response he adopted, for lack of any other, was to lecture them, over and over and over again about climate change. I still have several of his slideshows. They are quite good. But our students, the majority of whom had a tenth-grade reading level, found them hard to comprehend and boring, and eventually just laughed at him or complained to his face. I felt a little sorry for him, because even if his methods were wrong, prioritizing climate change was correct. Experienced UC faculty, like myself, had ways of teaching climate change that didn't involve as much lecture, and so had more success. 

But he wouldn't listen to any of us when we tried to tell him any of this. So we disagreed.

The students (or their parents) are paying. They need education that meets them where they are. That is what they pay for. This is a moral imperative. You have to teach the students in front of you. That's the job. And most of those students at that time, by far the majority, perhaps 99.5%, were never going to be climate scientists.

Had he been less volatile, there was room for compromise. We could have shown him how to raise money for climate education while also properly teaching the students in front of him. But he decided, before he ever really bothered to get to know us, that we didn't come up to his standards, and planned to replace us with "proper" researchers.

Dr. Khoury, for his part, wanted to put his dissertation into action, and create an online, for-profit college in which the price of faculty labor was bid down to the lowest possible level (making sure you were left with the least capable and least experienced faculty), and in which student engagement and experiential learning )post-recruitment) was an afterthought. Eventually he got his wish. 

But this will be the death of the institution as we knew it. Unity College was founded as a peace protest against the Vietnam War. It became an environmental school in the 1970s and 1980s when such a thing was essentially unheard of and likely to be unpopular. It became famous during the 2000s because of its place-based, Kurt Hahn-style experiential education. Giving up on experiential place-based environmental education is giving up on the soul of the college. 

It also had a reputation for being led by its faculty, for including faculty and staff in decision-making, and for being the best place to work in Waldo County.

My wife and I were among the faculty who earned that reputation. 

So Aimee and I fought both the Mulkey and Khoury programs tooth and nail, voting down initiatives in faculty meetings, designing better ones, bolstering faculty morale, making sure students were not sidelined. We won against Dr. Mulkey in the end. His violent temper and frustration at our unwillingness to give up on teaching the students in front of us using experiential approaches, to instead spending our time and students' money planning and implementing his egotistical program, which we felt impractical, led to outburst after outburst, and eventually they became, in the jargon of HR professionals, "documented" and "actionable." He quit after a particularly loud one was witnessed by unimpeachable observers.

Dr. Khoury, who keeps his shouting for behind closed doors, seems to think he's won, but I tend to think the whole despicable scheme he's created is fragile enough to one day collapse around his ears. There's a difference between being a striver and being a schemer. You sow what you reap.

All this took a toll. For most of this decade 2011-2020, my working life was carried on in the space between the red and orange zones above. Quakers are supposed to struggle against dishonesty, unfairness, and greed, so we didn't really question whether or not we had to do it. We didn't give ourselves the option. We never seriously thought about applying for other jobs. But we know that one day we might have to quit or be fired and so we made careful plans, socking money away against that day, and planning out a new business for me to run in retirement (while I write my book). 

This planning allowed us the freedom to continue to oppose the administration's plans. Other faculty were forced by financial circumstance to be more circumspect -- although in retrospect, with 20-20 hindsight, they might now realize they were going to lose their jobs anyway and so should have perhaps been more vociferous while they had the chance.

The the pandemic struck and provided an opportunity for Melik to rid himself of his "turbulent priests."

Our business is now bringing in revenue, if not yet profit, and the day when it will be profitable is not far off. The process of making the business was about a six-month daily physical workout, which despite some pulled muscles, was cathartic and likely to extend my life.

So I'm happy to report that now I'm in the green zone of the chart. In my newfound and only somewhat unexpected semi-retirement, I sleep well, get exercise, play with my kid more, and am generally more content. I "chop wood and carry water." I can't ask for much more from life. I miss teaching, but I expect I'll teach again after Covid is over. There are other colleges in Maine.

Aimee, for her part, has a new job where she is constantly amazed at how well they treat her.

Most importantly, and relevant to the chart, our consciences are clear.

Zen and the Art of Land Rover Maintenance

 With apologies to Pirsig.

Suskind warns of a coup

Everyone should read this and circulate it. Like some of the people consulted, I don't believe that there are enough of the totally batshit crazy Trump loyalists to successfully pull off the kind of coup that the government officials are warning against in Suskind's article. The 42% approval rating is soft in this regard. Most ordinary people, when it comes down to the wire, shy away from violence and are not actually good at it, and so there won't be enough truly violent and practiced extremists within the core Trump brigade. The real threat is manipulation. There will likely be some incidents, and these can get blown out of all proportion very easily. And like the article says, there are some people who will believe just about anything that comes out of this guy's mouth, even unto their own deaths from Covid. The rest of us have to be ready to counter this manipulation in real time on the day. Particularly, don't "take the bait." Don't let them set fire to the Reichstag. Remember, most of the vote is already in the bag and "too big to rig." If you find yourself in a confrontation on Election Day, don't take matters into your own hands. Back away, then call the police and make them do their job, even if they appear to be biased themselves. Even if a local incident isn't resolved, it's better to keep the peace. The complete and very rapid crash of the economy, particularly the stock market, that will take place if any larger scale unrest develops will be the decisive factor. That will mobilize support for stability very quickly. Have faith. Keep calm. Carry on.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/opinion/trump-election-officials.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Investigative article

 https://www.centralmaine.com/2020/09/19/unity-college-transformation-had-seeds-in-strategic-choices-before-pandemic/?fbclid=IwAR0wpbFqzyB4hldYIa3jY_V6I6rdPZCQoiM3rUOJxvvaYnluRgC-sCR6iGk

Identify the problem

It's always important when trying to use reason to unpack any difficult and complex situation to clearly identify the purpose of the inquiry. A problem statement is the usual technique. Problem statements in academia are generally short, but that's deceiving. The work of trying to identify and narrow down specifics for a research proposal or a dissertation can take weeks, months, even years. But this is a primary means by which we use reason to solve societal problems. Medicine, policy, engineering, all require succinct and well-thought out problem statements.

In this case I've had several weeks since the lay-offs, and several months since the Covid closure, and I'm getting to a point where I begin to feel I can be objective. I'll never be completely so, of course. But for example in one obvious source of bias, I'm not angling for my job back. I'm a good deal happier in my current employment of rental house fixer-upper than I was working at the college for at least the last decade. I'm losing weight, sleeping well, and content in my labour. I particularly appreciate that I can more consistently use reason and my own Quaker-ish version of Zen in my daily work. This is largely because I now work alone, for the most part, without so many other egos to feed, students, administrators, other faculty. But the problems I work on have solutions and you can see the results, which is gratifying. Life is more complete and I can enjoy the cooling fall air and the changing leaves.

Neither do I think that, just because one small environmental college is going south, others can't fill the gap. There are lots of other providers of similar services with good ideas and decent planning and leadership that will. I know this from first hand because I worked for some of them before I came to Unity.

My concern is primarily for the particular usefulness of the institution we used to call Unity College.

So, first up, what has happened? The college has shifted primarily to online programming and closed its main residential campus. This is primarily because of the Covid 19 pandemic, but the specific response is a choice. There were other choices, including options that would not have entailed the harms detailed below. So for instance, plans could have been made to furlough faculty and staff and reopen campus in Fall 2021. This is just one example of a different path. There are probably many others.

Various promises have been made that this is temporary, that there will, one day in the future when the pandemic has abated, again be face-to-face classes, albeit within the "hybrid" model and most likely not on the main campus, which the Board has authorized for sale. If these  undertakings pan out, they potentially modify or reduce the harm. It's not, however, reasonable to take them completely into account because they may not pan out. These are contingencies whose likelihood is dependent on events and probabilistic and must be discussed as such.

So what specific harm has been done?

1. The mission has been set aside. Of all the mistakes a non-profit entity can make, this is the most problematic. Here is the current mission statement: "Through the framework of sustainability science, Unity College provides a liberal arts education that emphasizes the environment and natural resources. Through experiential and collaborative learning, our graduates emerge as responsible citizens, environmental stewards, and visionary leaders." The administration must now explain how they plan to provide "experiential and collaborative learning" to train citizens, stewards and leaders without a specific environmental place and in the absence of functional community. The first is key to the college's heritage. The environmental movement is about how humans relate to the planet and their place on it, and without a specific location, the context is lost. Environmentalism depends on attachment to place. This may be a spiritual, romantic, or pre-analytical attachment, but without it the motivation to conserve is less. Community is also very important. One reason the alumni are so anguished about the situation is that the college modeled functioning, diverse, inclusive community for many decades. Not every alumni experienced this, it's true. But many if not most did, and you can see clear evidence for this in their posts to the alumni Facebook page. The community we made was an extension of the mission, not the mission itself, it's true. But it made the mission work and provided the college with a unique niche. It wasn't perfect, but then no community ever is. If you don't believe me, you should talk to some of the disabled, gay, trans, or PoC among our alumni. But clear evidence is available through the alumni FaceBook page and in news reporting.
2. Current residential students will not receive the education they transacted for. A contract has been broken. They signed up for an experiential curriculum offered under a certain catalog year and calendar, and that curriculum and calendar is no longer available. Key essential equipment and even the campus setting are now being prepared for sale, suggesting finality. They are offered instead different classes via a different teaching modality with different faculty, often less qualified or unqualified to teach the classes they have been assigned, and under a different calendar, all impositions that many prior residential students will clearly not prefer. Their parents are also concerned. The evidence for this is in comments to various social media, but including the college's official FaceBook page, and the Linked-In pages. This would be tolerable and meet accreditation standards if it were temporary, but the closure of the main campus and ongoing sale of the assets shows that it will not be. 
3. The college community has been divided. A loosely integrated but strong community of Unity students, alumni, faculty, workers, local community members, and other friends nation- and world-wide provided moral and material support for the college and its mission. It is very unlikely that the alumni community and most faculty and other workers who experienced the institution prior to the "fall" will support it to the same degree and with the same passion in its new modality. The community is now clearly divided between this for the changes and those against, and likely broken or lost. Again, evidence is present in social media and news reporting. 
4. The local community has been negated and abandoned. Norms of community behavior have been broken. Good faith and integrity have been set aside in favor of short-term strategy and short term gain. Owners of local business feel especially concerned. Evidence is available in social media, news reporting, and probably some law suits that will shortly be filed.
5. Collegiate norms of shared governance and collective decision making have been abandoned. The college used to teach about how to be a community by being a community, with opportunity for every student, faculty, or staff member to have a voice through their respective deliberative bodies. Faculty in particular are supposed to be in charge of the curriculum, not administrators, nor even the Board of Trustees. NECHE standard 3.15 makes this abundantly clear. Faculty were allowed to attend the online Covid19 planning response meetings, but no formal faculty meetings were held using proper procedure to vote on the Fall 2020 curriculum changes, which are considerable. Our tradition has always been to use parliamentary procedure and Roberts Rules to vote catalog measure up or down or and them. This system allows each person to have their say. The new curriculum has thus not been approved. It is also being taught, in many cases, by part-time faculty, or even full-time ones not qualified for the classes they are assigned. The evidence for this is in the college's LMS and Registrar's records and not available for public view, but trustees should be able to demand to see it. Parliamentary procedure has been incrementally set aside in the last several years in favor of hierarchical or corporate leadership. Faculty were not able to voice their disagreement to these changes without fear of retaliation, nor we we told we would be laid off until the actual day, August 3rd.

Why has this happened? Because at some level a decision was made that the gains from the online modality would offset the loss of the traditional program. This could only be true if you discounted the value of the intangible losses: community, integrity, attachment to place.

Who is responsible for these five clear harms? The Board of Trustees of the college is responsible. It delegates this responsibility to the President, but remains the primary authority. All of the college's material and social capital (or goodwill, if you prefer), built up over fifty years of striving by the alumni, faculty and staff, is in their hands. They must choose how to use that collective capital and goodwill to meet the mission. In this case they have chosen to abandon a large portion of both material and social capital, to sell it off or trade it at low bid, including the beloved campus setting, in exchange for vague promises of the superiority and accessibility of the online modality. This has been posited to them as an either/or option, when it was not. The social capital in particular has been marked down in value, when it should have been husbanded and tended. This is what the alumni and community members and parents are telling us. But the campus won't get high bid either. A recent campus auction for a similar college, a competitor, netted about twenty percent of the appraisal.

So this is a clear mistake. First and foremost it's a moral error, but it's also a business error, and a failure of leadership, of trustees not interrogating facts and asking hard questions. 

What happened and why -- a beginning

Regular readers and most students and former students will already know that Aimee and I were among a large group of Unity College faculty who were laid off August 3rd 2020 because of low enrollment due to the Covid19 pandemic. A little later that same week a local news article reported that the college campus would perhaps be sold.

Since then neither of us has said much about this. Aimee has been occasionally active on the Unity College Alumni Community FaceBook page, while I've been essentially silent. The reason for this is that we were waiting on our severance contracts to be fulfilled.

As condition for, essentially, "going quietly," the college offered us a severance package. As a consequence, we agreed not to take part in any lawsuit against the college. Contrary to rumors, there is no non-disclosure agreement or NDA. There is only the agreement that we not sue the college. We remained silent for so long because we didn't want to stir up any trouble that might hinder the severance contract being fulfilled by the college. There's a lot of bad feeling and some definite paranoia and we felt that stirring up this hornets' nest might just perhaps work out badly. At least we didn't want to take a chance.

We agreed to all this because, of course, we are parents. Our teaching jobs were likely forfeit in any case, and we have a kid to look after whose school has been delayed and, once it finally starts, will be be less than half time, two days a week. One of us at least has to look after the kid, and so cannot work a normal full-time job, even if the other one might. The severance offers a lifeline for the next few months while the pandemic continues or possibly worsens into fall.

The contract is now fulfilled, meaning that Aimee and I and possibly other faculty members in the same situation may now discuss the college's situation with less fear. (It would be fairly difficult for the college to find a way to take the money back now that it's safely in our accounts.)

I choose to hold this discussion on my blog, not the alumni page or other social media. This blog is mine and always has been. It dates to 2007, prior to the time when the college had easily-accessible facilities to host faculty web pages or social media. It contains a record of nearly fourteen years of my twenty years teaching at Unity College. I was told a long time ago, long before the current administration, to get rid of it, because it wasn't part of a centrally-controlled college PR program, but didn't. I did begin to use it less, and so skated "under the radar" with it. But I never completely stopped using it, and still control it under my own passwords and encryption.

So, despite a long association with my work at Unity College, the blog is mine, privately owned by me, and not easy to hack. Blog commentary is under my control. I can enforce a certain decorum, and, what is more important to me, employ reason rather than emotion in deconstructing what has happened. This is of course an emotional situation, but adding fuel to those flames doesn't help us repair the damage.

First up, there's a limit to how useful any of this can be. We are not going to bring back the old Unity College. It's probably gone for ever. But those of you that know anything about the Quaker tradition will have heard of the idea of "bearing witness." That's what I want to do here, bear witness to the injustice and wrong-headedness of what has happened, and lay out the poor consequences.

Second up, Covid 19 was primarily responsible for the closure of the traditional academic programs of the college and the close of the residential campus. I'm content to stipulate to that. Doing so was a provision of the severance, and I agreed to it, but I wouldn't have agreed to it if it wasn't true. But it was never the only explanation and never could be. The background is complex and lengthy. Most readers won't have patience for it. But I tend to lay it out, or as much of it as I can do, right here for posterity. Not exhaustively, but comprehensively. It will take a good while to document it all.

That's all I have for today. I have work to do. I may not be employed by the college any more, but I am still employed, rebuilding a fixer-upper house that Aimee and I bought this spring to use as a rental.

You'll need to keep coming back.