By Colleen Flaherty. Overall enrollment in foreign language courses is down for the first time since about 1995, and enrollments in major European languages -- including Spanish -- are way down, according to a new report from the Modern Language Association. Read more...
By Colleen Flaherty. Most observers agree that adjunct instructors deserve better pay, but what about $15,000 per course? The Service Employees International Union shocked even some adjunct activists last week when it announced that figure as a centerpiece of its new faculty advocacy campaign. But while union leaders admit the number is bold, those involved in the campaign say adjuncts might as well aim big, since they have little to lose. They also say they hope the $15,000 figure will force a national conversation about just how colleges spend their money, if not on middle-class salaries for instructors. Read more...
By Scott Jaschik. Many professors cringe when they think about the way they are described on Rate My Professors, the popular site used by students to evaluate faculty members. A new tool allows those being rated (or anyone) to see the way students tend to use different words when rating male and female professors -- generally to the disadvantage of the latter. Read more...
By Scott Jaschik. By some measures -- Nobel Prizes over time, graduate programs the best students globally aspire to be part of -- American science is the envy of the world. But Roberta A. Ness sees an erosion of excellence. In The Creativity Crisis: Reinventing Science to Unleash Possibility (Oxford University Press), Ness argues that American science has become too risk averse and that frugal federal agencies and university politics and policies combine in ways that discourage breakthrough discoveries. Read more...
By Brian Mathews. Does space matter? Does the selection and arrangement of furniture and technology impact behavior? I think so. The tools around us impact what we can build. So if we follow this line of thought: can we design spaces that enable students to be more creative, more collaborative, or more innovative? Can we offer environments that encourage concentration, curiosity, or confidence. More...
By Richard Pells. Ava DuVernay’s Selma and Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper have both been lavished with praise and award nominations. They are also the focus of intense historical and political controversy. Normally, I don’t believe movies should be judged by their historical accuracy. They are dramas, and occasionally, works of art. But any consideration of these two films can’t be divorced from the events they describe. And as historical interpretation and as drama, I think, Selma is terrible while American Sniper is terrific. More...
By Thomas B. Pepinsky. Area studies in the United States has its roots in national interests. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 jump-started the teaching of less commonly taught languages, and the Department of Education’s Title VI framework references maintaining the “security, stability and economic vitality of the United States” as the central motivation for supporting area studies. The guiding belief behind these programs is that area studies yields practical knowledge that can be used to make better policy. More...
By Alma Acevedo. “But, no jokes.”
Thus said my first, otherwise excellent, class performance-evaluation sheet. Just starting my undergraduate teaching career at twentysomething, I had been more concerned about the mastery of the subject (accounting), the fulfillment of class objectives, the clear delivery, the professional deportment. More...
By Theodore Ziolkowski. Their mottos might suggest to uninitiated visitors from abroad that Latin is still the lingua franca of our universities. Lux with its implication of enlightenment, along with truth (veritas), and knowledge (scientia) are among the favored terms, from Harvard’s veritas by way of Yale’s lux et veritas to Berkeley’s fiat lux and Michigan’s artes, scientia, veritas.
Probably no campus bristles with more Latin inscriptions than Princeton, even though its motto—Dei sub numine viget—promises that we will thrive under the auspices of the deity rather than truth. The mantelpiece in Procter Hall of the Graduate College announces bonus intra melior exi (“You’re good when you arrive; be better when you leave”)—an inscription (from a North African temple of Aesculapius) that a dean can still find useful in welcoming incoming students and bidding farewell to graduating Ph.D.s, as well as greeting potential donors. More...
By Richard D. Kahlenberg. The University of Texas at Austin’s president, William C. Powers Jr., has been seen by many academics during his term in office as a liberal icon. He consistently stood up against interference in university affairs by the conservative Texas governor, Rick Perry, who wanted to de-emphasize research. And Powers has been a staunch champion of affirmative-action programs, defending Texas’s use of race in admissions all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. More...
/https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
