By Erin Bedford. At the beginning of my second quarter teaching, I had a major cold sore outbreak that could only be tolerated under thick layers of desensitizing, gross-looking ointment. Within an hour of arriving at the university that day, four people had kindly alerted me to the fact that I had “something” on my lip (big news). It was rather frustrating and embarrassing, so when I entered my classroom that morning, I raised my hand and proclaimed in an exasperated voice: “In case anyone feels the urge to alert me to the fact that I have something on my face – trust me, I know.” And I smiled. The entire class cracked up laughing. Read more...22 juin 2014
How Humor Can Transform Your Classroom
By Erin Bedford. At the beginning of my second quarter teaching, I had a major cold sore outbreak that could only be tolerated under thick layers of desensitizing, gross-looking ointment. Within an hour of arriving at the university that day, four people had kindly alerted me to the fact that I had “something” on my lip (big news). It was rather frustrating and embarrassing, so when I entered my classroom that morning, I raised my hand and proclaimed in an exasperated voice: “In case anyone feels the urge to alert me to the fact that I have something on my face – trust me, I know.” And I smiled. The entire class cracked up laughing. Read more...Managing Public Speaking Anxiety
By Katie Shives. We all have to present our work to others at some point in our graduate careers, and this commitment to public speaking can lead to real anxiety for some individuals. I know this because I am in that group. I have been so anxious before a 12 minute talk that my hands actually went numb from the terror, my pulse started racing, and I ended up speaking so fast that my 12 minute talk became 9 minutes, tops. That leaves a lot of room for awkward silence. Read more...Open Positions at GradHacker 2014
By Alex Galarza. Managing Editor
The fabulous Alicia Peaker has accepted a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Digital Liberal Arts at Middlebury College! So, we need a new Managing Editor. This is a fully online position that pays $12 an hour for 10 hours per week ($480 a month). The Managing Editor will have the opportunity to gain professional experience managing a blog that currently generates an average of 85,000 views per month. Read more...
A Ph.D. Abroad
By Erin Bedford. There are many recognizable stereotypes of PhD students—a scientist working in the lab until 3 am, a historian sitting in an old library at a table piled high with books and papers—but the globetrotting PhD student is less recognized, and yet just as common. Research today is an international pursuit. Laboratories have members from around the world. International collaborations are not just common but expected. And this means that researchers often find themselves living abroad. Whatever our reasons for choosing to study abroad, once there, we all have similar challenges and similar learning experiences that make it difficult, exciting, and often extremely rewarding. Read more...BAristas
By Matt Reed. Employer partnerships aren’t new in higher education. For a long time, through the 1990’s, they were fairly widespread. The usual arrangement held that employees who worked at a given company during the day could take night classes someplace local, and get their tuition (or a set portion thereof) reimbursed. Many of those programs got cut in the 2001 recession, shortly before online education took off.Starbucks is apparently making an old idea new again. Read more...
Calling Visionary Philanthropists
By Matt Reed. I follow a fair number of academics on Twitter, and I’m consistently amazed at the travel schedules of those who don’t work at community colleges. They go to far more conferences than their community college colleagues do, even when the conferences are focused on teaching. That tends to lead to a certain insularity at conference discussions; when the only people there are people with the travel budgets to be there, a certain frame of reference goes uncontested. This explains a lot. Read more...Keep Out the Poor, the Huddled Masses…
By Matt Reed. I don’t often do this, but I’ll devote two posts to the same book. In this one, I’ll respond to the larger conceptual issue highlighted in the IHE account of the book. In a week or two, after having actually read the book itself, I’ll respond to its specifics more closely.Juliet Lilledahl Scherer and Mirra Leigh Anson have written a new book, Community Colleges and the Access Effect, in which they apparently argue that community colleges would be better off if they adopted selective admissions. From the IHE account -- and again, stipulating that a detailed reading has yet to come -- they argue that open admissions policies and a focus on degree completion have contributed to a sort of false hope among the truly incapable that they’ll be able to get a degree. Read more...
Ask the Administrator: What Skill Sets do Deans Need?
By Matt Reed. A newly-tenured longtime reader at a regional comprehensive writes:
While I enjoy research and teaching, the problems I'm finding really interesting are on the admin side: I've been doing some external relations and curricular development stuff for my faculty, I've realized I've got a decent head for looking at student data, and can run a reasonably functional committee. My question is: if you were in my position and thinking, over the next four or five years at getting ready for a serious admin role, like a Dean, what skill set would you work on developing? I know you've covered the different career pathways before for those , but I wonder what skills or experiences you wish you had.
Context matters quite a bit, so I’ll speak to the types of deanships I’ve seen at community colleges. Read more...
Fair is Fair
By Matt Reed. When discussions get heated, sometimes people dig in their heels, even as they suspect that their own position has become untenable. (Maybe _because_ their position is untenable.) I’ve made a point on campus of trying to move the culture away from that, to create an environment in which people can admit when they’ve goofed without losing face. Ultimately, it’s better just to admit the mistake and get closer to truth. But it’s easier said than done. Fair is fair. If I want others to admit when they’re wrong, I should do the same. Read more...German Students Shun Vocational Training
German high school graduates are increasingly shunning vocational training in favor of attending universities, The Wall Street Journal reported. Government officials said on Friday that new data show that 2013 was the sixth consecutive year in which there was a decline in the number of high school students seeking vocational training. Read more...
