9/05/08
I'll see everyone Saturday (9/06/08) Morning at 9:00am in room 315 of Preparatory Hall. Plan on meeting until about 11:00 or 11:30. Thanks, Gary

The following email was sent to your RSU student email address about a week ago.

Welcome to my Foundations of Organizational Leadership students from your ole "Professor" Gary ,

Welcome to my class. Because students are still being added to a new section, and the fact that I am removing the online material from WebCT, to my own online site, it’s possible that you could receive this letter twice. (Maybe 10 or 15 times) If so, just disregard. 

You will discover that all of the tools that you will need are on my web site. You will discover that the “Work Schedule” calendar on my web has all the due dates and links to all the assignments so it will be easier for you to work down through the Units of work on work schedule on my web site. If you have any questions at all just call me at 918-343-7800, or email me at:
 rutledge@garyrutledge.com

Follow the calendar on the work schedule page of my Web Site for all due dates. THIS IS THE BIBLE! EVERYTHING YOU NEED ABOUT WHAT AND WHEN IS ON THE WORK SCHEDULE of my web. You may want to "Bookmark" or place a link to my website on your desktop so that you can go directly to it during this semester if you have a question about when an assignment is due or anything else. Spend as much time as you can bang around on my site until you have a good idea where everything is, especially the Work Schedule and all its due dates.

You will be hearing from me a lot, especially at first, so keep an eye peeled for my e-mails. We need to make sure that we can communicate with each other via the Internet, so please send me a "howdy" message as soon as you can.  Tell me about yourself in about 50 words (never a penalty for writing too much). Tell me about your goals, experiences, likes, or dislikes? Tell me about your family or anything you want to talk about.

Use: (rutledge@garyrutledge.com)

I will respond to all emails, so if you don't get an email back from me within 48 hours try again. (Usually much quicker) For emergencies, phone me at 918-343-7800. If you live close to the Claremore campus, you are always welcome to come by my office. (303 Prep Hall) If you have difficulty communicating through normal channels, try another e-mail system. (rutledge@garyrutledge.com is by far the best way to contact me, not the RSU faculty email address) I will be sending all email to your RSU email account unless you tell me specifically to use a different address. Check your email account often to make sure to get all messages from me.

As for me, I have a beautiful wife with whom I spend most of my time. We are raising our 18-year-old granddaughter, and we have 6 year old grandson that visits several times a week. You might hear about my family from time to time because I am at that age where I bore people to death with endless personal stories. I fly my old Mooney airplane, ride an old Harley Softail, ski behind an old boat, and drive an old Vette Stingray. (Everything is old like me, but still going strong) I have had three separate careers; Computers, jet aircraft, and now higher education. I just can’t seem to make up my mind what I want to do with my life. I have degrees from TCC, OSU, OU, TU, and my doctorate is from OSU, so I just root for everyone at games

The web assignment system and the Internet are pretty reliable, but sometimes bad stuff happens. Keep a back up of all written work on your computer just in case something unexpected happens. (Like ice storms and power outages) I will back up everything on my end too.

As far as the email address you use to send work and messages to me, all personal addresses are fine. You can submit work and messages to me from any computer. It does not matter if you use several different computers or servers, when I respond to your emails; I just hit "REPLY" and send my response to whatever address your message came from. By the way, have you noticed? No proctored exams or testing centers.

For Web Assignments/Written Exams enter:
Your Name: Any combination, as long as I can recognize it.
Your ID Number: 
Your ZAP Number: 4015

For the "Discussion Forum" enter:
Username: Your last name (lower case)
Password: 

When posting to the Discussion Forum, be sure you are logged in before attempting to post anything. After you log in, Notice the top right corner of the Discussion Forum should indicate "log out" and your name should also appear. If you are not properly logged in, your post cannot be graded.

You will also use your 5 digit ID Number to identify your grades which may be found on my web site under the “Grades” button on the home page. I will publish grades on my website every 24 hours (except for the threaded discussions which take a little longer) in order for you to see how you stand at any given time. You can go to the grade page on my web and find a summary of your grades with a letter grade representing the work that you have done up to that point. Be aware that different assignments have different values, so the average grade in the far right column is a little misleading. Your grades will be found next to your 5 digit personal ID number shown above. At the top of each column is an abbreviated description of that item. Grades will appear on the grade page pretty much in the order that they were assigned. (Pretty simple Huh) Be sure to check your grades often with the grade button at the top of my home page. Let me know if you have any questions. If you do not wish to have your grades on my personal website, you may let me know and I will not make them available on an Internet basis. Speaking of grades, this course tends to have pretty high grades for those that do all the assignments, and pretty low grades for those that don’t. It’s easy to get behind and this causes all kinds of bad things begin to happen, so follow the work schedule page and its due dates as your bible.

You may want to put a shortcut on your desktop or a link to my work schedule page, to save time. Everything is linked on the work schedule page for the entire course. Just click on the unit of work next to each due date to find out what you should be working on.

Beginning last semester, RSU is requiring all online students to have an active RSU Email account to receive instructions and announcements from the instructors. If you need instructions as to how to activate your RSU email account, you may click on Tech FAC on the home page of my web site for instructions or you can contact RSU's computing services.

Well that should get us going. Once you get into the rhythm of the course, it really becomes easy. Don't forget! I am as close as your e-mail. I usually check my mail several times a day.

Send me that "Howdy" e-mail and tell me a little about you. Sit back and get ready to learn a bunch of stuff and have fun at the same time. This is going to go by so fast you won't believe it.

Have a super semester, Gary R.

I have listed our schedule below. Notice our meeting dates are 8/23, 9/6, 9/20, and 10/4. Our class is going to be very large, so be on time so we can get acquainted, and cover all the material. We will meet in Herrington Hall, room 131 at 9:00am. See you there. Take care, Gary

FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP

FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP

Hi everyone in my Organizational Leadership class. This is the second letter that you should have received by email, and there will be many more.. These letters are supposed to be sent to your RSU email account. To receive instructional material from your instructors, you are required to activate your RSU email account. In my case, if you want to use another email address, you may email me from that address and let me know that this is where you would like to receive your email from me, and I will change it. Several of you may not have received the work schedule below which was supposed to be attached to everyone's first email from me. In case you missed it, here it is again.

There may be a few of you that did not notice on the course schedule when you signed up for this course, that if has four face-to-face meetings in class. (the only one of the adult degree courses that have this requirement) The meeting dates, times, and locations are shown below in the work schedule.

There may be some confusion about the RSU online link for this course that goes to a WebCT location. Pay no attention to this link and do not worry about a code or password to the textbook publisher's web site. Everything you need is on my site (http://www.garyrutledge.com/) and shown below, and the only ID number and passwords are the ones I sent in the first letter to you. All due dates, assignments, and meeting dates are on this work schedule. Just click on the links and they will take you to the appropriate web page.

You need to only read the first 3 chapters in the text before our first meeting. When we meet fact to face, we will go over everything and clear up any questions you may have. You can also email me at anytime at: rutledge@garyrutledge.com and I will respond to your questions. The most important thing to understand is that you are not alone, and that you can always contact me with any concerns that you may have. Do not worry if there is anything you do not understand. This will all be taken care of in our face to face meetings if not before.