By Cathy Davidson. The Futures Initiative is based on the idea that all education is "vocational" in the broadest sense that education should prepare us for the vocation of leading better, richer, more satisfying, responsible, joyous, and productive lives (in whatever form). Education should be about meeting tough challenges and exploring novel opportunities--coupled with introspection, curiosity, creativity, and social justice too, and all on the way to mastering content and beyond. More...

By Cathy Davidson. This talk brings the interdisciplinary perspective of the social sciences, humanities, and digital humanities to data science and is a follow-up to our HASTAC May 28 “Big (and Messy) Data” workshop as part of a two-year NSF EAGER grant on data and cross-disciplinary collaboration and mentoring.   A key concern from this workshop that needs to be applied to our National Data Service is what my colleague and collaborator Richard Marciano has termed the “forensics” of understanding and interpreting big data. More...

By Jonathan Rees - Chronicle Vitae. The last episode of Radiolab that I heard began with an argument between co-host Robert Krulwich and his wife, Tamar Lewin, who just happens to be the higher education reporter for The New York Times. Walking through The Explorers Club in New York City, Krulwich felt a little bit of historical energy every time he touched a physical manifestation of history—like an Explorer’s Club flag that had gone to the moon and back. Lewin was less impressed. The historic objects were very cool, she pronounced, but she didn’t feel the same magic. See more...

By Rob Jenkins - Chronicle Vitae. Over the past few months, a few of my peers at Vitae have weighed in on the future of tenure, and understandably so: Increasingly, we’re being asked to contemplate a world without it. We’ve been reading arguments against tenure for a while, of course. But there’s a real corporatist edge to recent contributions to the genre. These broadsides envision an Orwellian campus where freedom is servitude—specifically, intellectual servitude to the whims of education technocrats holding up their forefingers to test the winds of supposed market forces. See more...

By Fatimah Williams Castro - Chronicle Vitae. Just last week, one of my graduate-school deans invited me to present on a nonacademic career panel with three other alumni. It was the fourth such invitation I’d received from my university since I graduated with a doctorate in cultural anthropology three years ago. I’m happy to act as a resource for my alma mater—and for graduate students struggling to navigate their career options. But sometimes I wonder if I’m doing much good by showing up. See more...