While there has still been a lot of work that has to go into planning individual class sessions on a weekly basis, the amount of peripheral work has dropped a lot this semester compared to previous ones. With overall work loads decreasing, it was finally time to actually appoint department heads to manage their own faculty, rather than having everything be run together in centralized meetings. Moving forward, we'll have all staff meetings twice a semester, but beyond that it's up to department heads to figure out how they want to handle things within their department.

I've opted to appoint someone else as the head of the engineering department, if only because I don't intend to stay in this department forever. I'm still acting as the director for the whole academy, and I'm still teaching engineering courses, but eventually I'd like to be starting other departments and acting as guidance, rather than being directly in charge. Eventually, I'll appoint someone else to be the director for the academy as well, but that's a long ways away.

The new students are adjusting well to academic life, which is also a plus. There is quite the uneven distribution of club members, however. I shouldn't be surprised, as that is generally the natural way things tend to distribute. Five of the fifty clubs have a total of half the student body enrolled in them. Three of which are dwarven sports which, as I would expect, are disproportionately populated by dwarves compared to the rest of the student body. That isn't necessarily a bad thing though, as it makes the ratio of demons to dwarves in the smaller clubs more balanced. The other two most popular clubs are the fishing and hiking clubs.

I'm looking forward to seeing what some of the clubs come up with this semester. I'm hoping that the self-propelled wagon club can solve some of their main issues and make a working prototype, and the new tool casting and optimizing club should be interesting to oversee. Having the clubs around has made me realize just how hard it is to up the general technology level, however.

I've been able to sort of bee-line my way to certain technologies, but we're lacking in a large amount of peripheral technology that I didn't implement. The issue that I've come to realize from working with clubs is that the inherent knowledge of individuals is a major limiting factor. This is acutely obvious when I'm dealing with younger versus older individuals. The way someone things about solving problems is largely informed by the environment they grew up in. Take the self-propelled wagon, for instance. The way most of the dwarves think about it is like a wagon that would be pulled by a bargas. The demons who worked on tanks, however, think of it closer to a tank. Neither has the perfect solution for how to actually make a light weight vehicle meant to haul goods.

In another thirty to forty years though, once they've made a prototype, fixed issues with it, and it likely becomes commonplace in society, I'd expect every young person coming to the academy to have a concept of various details of this sort of vehicle. That means that teaching about it and peripheral subjects will be easier. Right now, however, even third year students are learning about what I'd consider to be pretty basic principles. That said, they're also more knowledgeable about certain subjects than I'd expect, like metalworking, likely because there are so many blacksmiths and handmade tools. This knowledge is something I'd expect to phase out over time, by comparison, just due to better trade networks and centralized mass production.

The dwarven studies department also had a quite productive break. They've arguably been the most successful of any of the academy thus far, though perhaps that's just due to the lower barrier of entry. They managed to collect and document quite a number of stories from around the dwarven continent, and also managed to find the ruins of an old dwarven village built in a mountain. From the details I heard, it seems like a lot of dwarven magic hasn't changed since those days, as the entrance was something akin to a collapsed and closed off simple fort made of the same size and shape blocks of stone that the dwarves still cut today. Of course, the place was heavily overgrown and took quite a bit of effort on their part to actually get into.

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There were a number of items they found that were well preserved within the space. They brought all those artifacts to Drazvok for further research. The idea of a museum seems pretty foreign to everyone, and there doesn't seem to be much concern about ownership of these artifacts either. I've talked with the department head about designing and building a climate controlled space for storing the items that they find. I don't mind if Kao and the dwarves on the mainland want the artifacts back at some point, but I think I'd at least ask that they have a good space designed to preserve them before we actually transfer them back over. The climate here is quite bad when it comes to preserving materials, unlike the caves that they found them in, so if we don't build something fast, I expect that some of the items will decay quickly. There was clothing made of plant fibers that was pretty badly damaged just in the removal and transport process, and I expect that the old wood of some of the primitive tools they found will decay quickly as well.

This semester has been going well with only a few hiccups along the way. We're about half-way through, and so we just finished up our all faculty meeting. One of the main topics that was brought up was related to creating a formal process for faculty to go through to have students work as interns for a break. Up until now, I've basically just been handling it as it was brought to me. Moving forward though, I'll discuss with department heads how many positions they think they can reasonably handle, and provide a strict limit on the total number of internship jobs we allow.

Their staff will submit a write-up by a due date, and the department head can fill up to their limit of slots from that selection. There were some questions as to why we're limiting it at all. I gave them two reasons, which was enough for most of the faculty. The first reason is pretty straightforward, the academy is sponsored by two governments. We have to provide room, board, and often supplies for these sorts of positions, so it'd put undue burden on the sponsors to allow unlimited positions. I did, however, give them permission to independently hire individuals if they want with their own money, as long as they provided all the necessary items themselves. Students are able to stay for free in their dorms already over break under our existing policies anyway.

The second reason is that the scarcity of available positions should drive the quality of those positions up. I myself am guilty of simply hiring students to help build out spaces for clubs. Ideally, the most interesting or necessary positions are the ones that are selected and approved of. This should drive the prestige of being selected to do internship work over a break higher as well, making more students interested in it. It's a complicated social feedback problem though, so much like everything else, we'll be monitoring how successful it is closely.

The self-propelled wagon club is starting to make some more progress as well, or at least it seems to be. They've heavily redesigned the wagon from the ground up to accommodate the need for a different steering system and to simplify the connections of the engine to their rear wheel drive shaft. They're using cables and pulleys to steer the front axle, which is a big improvement. They are still having issues with figuring out a good breaking mechanism though. I'd only seen them try to jam a piece of wood through the spokes to stop the wagon before, but they'd apparently tried some of the original braking designs using wood and metal clamps too.

While those obviously worked better than a stick going through the spokes, there were issues with trying to operate both the breaks, steering, and controls all from one central location, as previously that sort of break was located directly over the wheel on it's own lever. They've gone back to that design though, and have started to fiddle with the composition of the tires and the breaks to make it work using a pulley and cable system. It's honestly coming along well, and I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the semester, they've got an operational vehicle that is relatively safe.

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