By Yves Salomon-Fernandez. Following up on Part I, once I reached my bike riding goal, I decided that it was time to take on my professional sports goal: learning how to golf. I mostly saw golfing as a professional pursuit. My expectation for actually enjoying the game was extremely low. In fact, I did not even consider it a sport and wondered how people could spend hours chasing a little ball or worse, watching others on television chase a ball for hours. I invested in all the accoutrements for my new athletic endeavor. I knew it would be a significant investment, but I figured it’s the price of doing business. Unlike learning how to ride a bicycle, I now had to pay an instructor to give me regular lessons. More...
13 septembre 2015
My Summer Sports Adventure: Part II
Doonesbury Does Academe
By Kenneth C. Green. Give credit where credit is due. Few observers capture and skewer academe and academics as well as Doonesbury, created by Garry Trudeau. The weekend and Sunday strips about the mythical Walden College efficiently and effectively capture, in four to eight panels, much of what gives cause for concern to both insiders and outsiders about academic culture and higher education. Read more...
My Long Journey to Student-Centered Learning
By John Warner. When I first tried my hand at writing fiction, I was working under the spell of writers like Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, Bobbie Ann Mason, Richard Ford. Read more...
Lowering your Hackles for Presentation-Based Feedback
By Anjali Gopal. One of the more common dilemmas I see in research groups is when team members who are required to make a presentation at a conference request advice from their team, and then spend the majority of that advice session justifying their slide design rather than actually accepting feedback. Read more...
Combating Cynicism in Graduate School
By Katie Shives. Almost every department has that person who has elevated cynicism to an art. You know the one. That person who is always unhappy with and verbally tearing down her project, his program, her advisor, journal club presentations, or pretty much any part of the graduate school experience. Usually this is a senior student or postdoc, but these personalities can be found in any corner of academia if you look hard enough. Read more...
Sex on Campus
By Billie Wright Dziech. Campus sexual assault remained in the forefront of higher education’s concerns last week when a St. Paul’s School graduate, Owen Labrie, was tried for, as a senior, raping a 15-year old classmate who accompanied him to an unoccupied building amid rumors of a school tradition requiring graduating seniors to take the virginity of younger female students. Read more...
Three Cheers!
By Scott McLemee. On Aug. 10, the City Council of Cambridge, Mass., passed, by unanimous vote, a resolution to which even the local media gave scant notice. But the document merits attention throughout the Republic of Letters. Read more...
