By Matt Reed. Wednesday night, at dinner:
The Boy: What did you do at work today?
Me: I saw some student presentations of their end-of-semester projects. It was fun, since I don’t usually get to see students do their thing.
The Girl: Were they science projects?
Me: No, they were presentations about finances. Read more...

By Matt Reed. A few months ago, Dahlia Lithwick had a charming piece in Slate about two kinds of Muppets: Order Muppets and Chaos Muppets.  She suggested that most people fall into one of the two camps.  The Order Muppets -- Kermit, Bert, Scooter, Sam the Eagle -- are concerned with keeping the show running. Read more...

By Matt Reed. http://chronicle.com/article/Faculty-Leaders-Try-Their-Hand/150827/
Quick: which faculty or staff on campus have the best ideas?
There’s no clear, a priori answer. Sometimes experience helps, but so can fresh eyes. The loudest may attract the most attention, but sometimes lose the distinction between heat and light. Some people who are great at execution are pedestrian in their ideas, and vice versa. Read more...

By Matt Reed. As regular readers know, I’m a devotee of podcasts as a genre. Like most podcast listeners, I’ve been captivated by Serial, the new spinoff from This American Life. (The final episode of the first storyline will be posted this Thursday, but you can download from the beginning and catch up.  If you can, I recommend it.) The current story being serialized is a murder case from Baltimore from 1999, in which a high school student was convicted of killing his girlfriend. Read more...

By Matt Reed. The theme of Friday’s NEASC experience was looking outward. That’s probably a good thing.
Prior Learning Assessment is one form of looking outward. It’s the practice of granting academic credits for demonstrated knowledge or competency picked up in other places. Read more...