The Graduate Workers of Columbia on Friday told Columbia University that a majority of teaching assistants and research assistants have signed cards asking that the United Auto Workers local be recognized as a union. A statement from the union noted that if the university does not voluntarily agree to collective bargaining, the UAW could ask the National Labor Relations Board to conduct an election and (assuming a majority of the graduate students back the UAW) certify the union. Read more...14 décembre 2014
Next Showdown Over TA Unions at Private Universities?
The Graduate Workers of Columbia on Friday told Columbia University that a majority of teaching assistants and research assistants have signed cards asking that the United Auto Workers local be recognized as a union. A statement from the union noted that if the university does not voluntarily agree to collective bargaining, the UAW could ask the National Labor Relations Board to conduct an election and (assuming a majority of the graduate students back the UAW) certify the union. Read more...Artwork at Iowa, Intended as Anti-Racism, Viewed as Racist
A visiting fellow at the University of Iowa placed a sculpture that he views as a critique of racism on the campus last week, but removed it when the university noted that he didn't have permission and many students said that they found the work offensive, The Des Moines Register reported. Read more...The In-Between Times
By Nate Kreuter. The average day of a teacher-scholar without administrative responsibilities is largely unstructured. With the exceptions of teaching times, office hours, and a slate of irregular meetings, how and when a faculty member works is largely left up to the individual. Accounts of how much time our varied responsibilities consume are varied: see this and, for the contrary opinion, this. Some institutions, a minority, do require faculty members to be on campus for a certain number of hours during the week. Read more...When Good Advice Is Relative
By Stephanie K. Eberle. While giving a “Marketing Strategies for the Job Search” lecture in my and John Krumboltz’s “Career and Life Planning” course at Stanford University, one of our graduate students raised her hand. She explained that, having had three months of experience recruiting at a top management consulting firm, she had relevant insights for our mostly graduating seniors and graduate students. Read more...Rethinking Everything … Literally
By Lee Burdette Williams. "I think this a real gut-check moment for you, Nathan."His eyes immediately drop to his lap in an apparent effort to do just that, and I feel my shoulders sag. I look over at my colleague, whose eyes meet mine and then roll slightly. Damn. Nathan looks up from his gut check and eyes me quizzically. I quickly adjust. Read more...
Dozing Off
By Bob Eckhart. You’re an undergraduate, there are 20 minutes left in class, and you’re starting to fall asleep. Maybe you stayed up late studying for a final or finishing a paper; maybe it’s right after lunch and you’re slipping into a food coma. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the bell doesn’t ring for 20 minutes and you’re starting to doze off. What do you do. Read more...Younger Than That Now
By Scott McLemee. Hannah Arendt’s thinking takes an unexpected turn in the final paragraph of The Origins of Totalitarianism -- rescuing a glimmer of hope from the ruins of the 20th century’s final solutions and ends-of-history. Permanent closure is not in our nature as a species. What distinguishes us, rather, is the power to begin. It is “the supreme capacity of man,” she writes; “politically, it is identical with man's freedom.” Read more...The Innovation Agenda
By Jeffrey J. Williams. For a rising generation of administrators in higher education, the heart of education is innovative technology -- and faculty get in the way. Read more...The Inverse Interview
By Elizabeth H. Simmons. I recently read Edmond Lau’s terrific article for engineering job candidates, which stressed that the interviewee must ask thoughtful questions of the interviewer. Being in the middle of the faculty search season at my college, I was struck by the soundness of the advice – and the need for an article tailored to candidates for academic positions. Read more...Unsustainable Postdocs
By Colleen Flaherty. Postdoctoral fellowships make a lot of sense in theory: They offer recent Ph.D.s, especially those aspiring to careers in academic research, a place to develop professionally and – hopefully -- build a research profile before or while hitting the job market. But too often, these fellowships are underpaid, under-mentored positions where young academics languish during what are potentially their most creative, productive years. That’s the upshot of a new report from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine, which is highly critical of the structural factors driving the growth of postdoctoral ranks, and which recommends a series of reforms – including a big raise for postdocs working on federally-funding biomedical research. Read more...
