Want to help people remember your title? FLIT
So how does it feel to be the campus FLIT? Could be much worse, you know.

Nearly everyone now refers to our space as the LRC, sometimes as the Resource Center. (Paradoxically, I sometimes now find MYSELF slipping into “the LAB.” I think this reflects whether we’re talking about student self-study at the moment, rather than the “language learning educational technologist center director teaching position library liaison lecturer server dude,” to which you refer.

THAT, by the way, is the perfect title – captures all my duties (except also for liason with Computer and Information Systems).

Thankfully IT loaded us up with a lab that holds 25 all in one computers (managed by IT dept.)

I am the Director of the Foreign Language Multimedia Center here at Auburn. As far as Human Resources is concerned, however, I am an Instructional Technology Specialist II.

Our place is now called the “Language Resource Center”, but 7 years ago, shortly after I was hired, I changed it from “Language Lab.” This may seem like a matter of semantics, but I’ll explain later why I found this to be an important change…

And, my title is Director. I chose this title because the university previously called my position “Supervisor”. I’ve tried to shed the “Supervisor” name mainly because of pay equity issues. Most of us who run full-service Language Resource Centers (with the emphasis on “Resources”) are quite sensitive to how how different our positions are from the many “lab supervisor” positions at large universities. Typically, lab supervisors oversee a general purpose computer lab, of which our campus has many. However, these general purpose campus computer labs DO NOT: manage servers which provide audio and film/video collections, curriculum materials and resources, they DON’T typically provide highly specialized teaching and learning-environment software that allows instructors to conduct interactive synchronous classroom activities (such as Sanako, Sony, DiLL, and many other systems), and they typically DON’T provide instructional design assistance and production services to faculty or students. However, since my university’s Human Resources Dept classifies my position as “Lab Supervisor” this has caused problems in the past when negotiating a new salary (due to increased responsibilities). In the event of salary negotiations, Depts of Human Resources rely on comparable positions within the university, and sometimes comparables at other universities. This approach became a problem because the Human Resources Dept did not distinguish between the many computer “lab supervisor” positions on campus and my position as the campus’ only Language Resource Center director. Sorry for the long-winded diatribe, but I appreciate learning of your study that raises many important issues and questions — but from the surface appears simply to be a matter of semantics. I’d love to talk with you more on this topic! Best regards, David

Also at BU we have the Geddes Language Center, which supports foreign language instruction at BU. It is run by a Director and the technical operations are run by the Assistant Director.