Joining the Lone Star Conference

Before reporting for surgery today, I called the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma to accept the tenure-track teaching position in the East Central English department, which he had offered me one week previously (see image at right).

For those of you who don’t know (and I didn’t before tonight), the East Central sports teams (the Tigers) are in the Lone Star Conference along with some familiar Texas schools (those blog readers who are neither sports fans nor natives of the region may want to skip to the next paragraph): Abilene Christian, Angelo State, Midwestern State, Tarleton State (in Stephenville), Texas A&M-Commerce, Texas A&M—Kingsville, West Texas A&M (in Canyon). Other Oklahoma schools in the Conference include Cameron (in Lawton), Northeastern (Tahlequah), Southeastern (Durant), Southwestern (Weatherford). Somehow Eastern New Mexico snuck in there, too.

It was a tough decision for Mari and I to make and we went down to the wire with it, but three influential reasons in the plus column helped tip the balance:

1) It is a positive professional move for me;

2) It will be great to live within a 3-hour driving distance from a lot of family members in the Metroplex who are likely to be interested in helping us out with some of our childcare needs;

3) It will be nice to live in a warmer weather climate, where the kiddos can enjoy the outdoors for longer stretches of the year. Januaries in Ada have an average high of 50 and a low of 28 (that’s 10 and -2 degrees centigrade), which is not unlike Marches in Chicago where the average high is 47 and the low is 32 (that’s 9 and 0 degrees centigrade). The average highs throughout the Ada winter are about 16 (8 C°) or more degrees higher than they are in Chicago. Daddy like.

We are confident that Mari will be able to find an elementary school teaching job in the area, but reason four in the plus column is the late-breaking news that:

4) Mari might be able to land a full-time job teaching introductory and advanced Spanish language courses for undergraduates at East Central. The pay would be less than what she would get teaching elementary school, but the hours would be better and it would be great for us to work at the same place and she is excited about the intellectual challenge. The dean told me that he should know by the end of June whether they’re going to have the budget to hire her.

The biggest minus in the negative column is leaving behind all of our wonderful friends in Chicago and frankly, I just don’t even want to think about that right now.