By Patricia L. Price and Scott Newman. The desire to avoid conflict at all costs is a very human, reflexive one: conflict ranks up there with death, snakes and public speaking in the annals of the most feared. Read more...

By Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt. Faculty should be administrators. Well, not all faculty, of course. But, yes, some of you should consider being administrators. I say this for several reasons, but overall those reasons boil down to one thing: your voice. Read more...

By Melissa Dennihy. If you are a finalist for a faculty position, you may be invited for a campus visit, which will likely involve not only formalities such as interviewing, giving a job talk or giving a teaching demo, but also the somewhat more informal activity of dining with the search committee and department faculty members. Read more...

By Nicholas Strohl. Although it may sound similar, this statement was not uttered by President Obama. It was, in fact, a declaration made by the United States’ first national commission on higher education, the Truman Commission, in 1947. Read more...

By Gary S. May. An experiment was conducted a few years back that offered participants the choice between a Lindt chocolate truffle and a Hershey’s Kiss. Each was available for an attractive price -- 15 cents for the truffle, a penny for the Kiss. Three out of four chose the truffle. Read more...

By Scott McLemee. When George Orwell identified his family background as “lower-upper-middle class,” he wasn’t being facetious. It was a comment not just on British social hierarchy but on how that structure perpetuated itself -- through an anxious process of monitoring and policing the nuances of distinction, the markers of inclusion and exclusion at each level. Read more...