Steven Vrooman

I always feel like I’ve saved a book, at least for a time, when I check out something for the first time in over a decade. I’m not sure if I have, but I know books get pulled from circulation if no one cares about them.

Last time I was at TCEA I was a presenter. Today I am here to explore what’s new in educational technology. The exhibit hall opens in 6 minutes and the crowd of teachers at the gate is growing restless!

Do not open.

Edward says get a good night’s sleep before your finals, students.

Ten years ago today I spoke at TEDxSanAntonio! It opened up a world of speaking opportunities across the country, as I spoke to corporations, nonprofits, associations, and universities about all sorts of things, including social media, leadership, and pedagogy. I travel for speaking a lot less now, as my responsibilities at have increased, but it will always be something I love to do.

It’s a good day to be grateful, so I’m doing it 80s yearbook photo style!

I still haven’t fully moved in to my new office, but Michelle Johnson gave me something awesome for the wall! It’s a very small part of our favorite view from the hill at Pedernales Cellars that she painted. It reminds me of a lot of things when I see it. It reminds me that I am in this office because Michelle and I have spent the past two decades talking about what we can do to make the university a better place for everyone and then trying to make it happen. It also reminds me that while I am here, she is making things, paintings, drawings, videos, things that are tangible in her work as an artist. And in days of emails and meetings, finding the tangible can be tough. It is always a danger to confuse spending time on a thing with actual progress. My days should be about getting to the tangible, and these live oaks, which always look to me like they are striding across the fields, feel like they are doing just that.

New headshot for a new position. I’ve been appointed Associate Vice President for Campus Equity and Dean of the Faculty at TLU starting today. I’m very excited about the work, but that means my professional speaking work will be taking a bit of a backseat for a while, and that includes this page. I’ll be posting on my personal account from here forward. Please connect with me there or on LinkedIn. Thanks for all the support these past ten years!

I made 61 everything bagels today.

Update! We woke him up and found an eye!

Challenge: find the cat’s face! He likes to cover his eyes with his paws and sleep like he’s discarded bagpipes.

We wrote our chapters for BOOM! SPLAT! Comics and Violence more than five years ago! This is what a pandemic does to a book project from a university press, so many of which seem to be barely hanging on these days.

But the extreme delay gave us more opportunities to revise than usual, and my editors, Jim Coby and Joanna Davis-McElligatt, were so awesome. I needed them to be since I take a large shot across the bow of the SS Scott McCloud, the biggest boat in comics studies, and I needed to get it right!

So here we are, just published!