By William Germano. You will remember the moment, when Frankenstein’s monster utters the word “Friend?” It may be the single best line of dialogue in James Whale’s 1931 movie classic.
My bit of linguistic poking today isn’t about changing social attitudes or expanded horizons of understanding, but about the way the suffix -friendly is being asked to do so much work for us. More...
By Geoffrey Pullum. The audience at a talk sees the visiting speaker ushered into the room to check the connection dongle for the projector and greet a few faculty acquaintances in the front row. A brief introduction, a 50-minute talk, and a small reception and perhaps a hosted meal. Two or three hours, all expenses paid. More...
By Lucy Ferriss. My hunch is that the case of the missing comma began with email. In an earlier post, I talked about a friend’s dilemma over email salutations, wherein the preferred casual “Hi” at the beginning is followed by a person’s name and then a comma, rendering the grammatically standard vocative comma (“Hi, Jane,”) perhaps superfluous and at least funny-looking. More...
By Travis W. Proctor. If that sounds like a confession you might hear at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, it might as well be. In academic circles, ABD refers to “All But Dissertation,” the stage at which the only thing standing between me and being referred to as “Doctor Proctor” is the daunting task of writing the equivalent of my first research monograph. More...
By Natalie Houston. One of the great productivity mysteries has to be why so many of us put off unpacking a suitcase after a trip. This is the stuff of sitcoms, of advice columns, and blog posts. And of real life: I’ll be the first to admit that I sometimes leave my bag halfway unpacked for several days after a trip, even though it makes me feel somewhere between irritated and nauseous to see it sitting in the middle of the room. Read more...By Adeline Koh. How long do you keep the items on your academic CV? If it’s been a while since graduate school, do you take off your accomplishments from that time? How long ago would items have to have taken place for you to purge them? Do you maintain full and abbreviated CVs. Read more...By Ryan Cordell. I live in the Boston area, which means (as for many) I have a decent commute to work every day. I hate fighting traffic in the car, so I make this commute by train. I’ve written in the past about why I started carrying a Kindle rather than an iPad on this commute, so that I could read without being distracted by email, Facebook, and so forth. Read more...By Anastasia Salter. The first year is the hardest. This is a familiar warning, and one that I’ve personally found applies in many academic endeavors: college, graduate school, a new job, a new administrative role. This year was my first year at the University of Central Florida, a move that brought with it many transitions, including a new state, house, job, and program, not to mention new students and colleagues. Over the last year I’ve written about finding a home, preparing to move, leaving campus tech services, settling in, and restarting the tenure process. Looking back, here are a few of the things I found most useful for handling the first year. Read more...By Adeline Koh. If you’ve been meaning to start exploring what it would take to integrate Wikipedia in your courses, the West Virginia University library is hosting a free webinar on teaching with Wikipedia on April 30, 10.30am-12pm EST. Topics that will be covered include the gender gap in Wikipedia content and editing, an introduction to editing Wikipedia, sample assignments, syllabi and instructor experiences with teaching with the online encyclopedia. Read more...
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Faculty Cluster Hiring for Diversity and Institutional Climate”
Organization: Urban Universities for Health Equity Through Alignment, Leadership, and Transformation of the Health Workforce
Summary: Hiring faculty members in clusters into multiple departments or colleges was originally designed to expand interdisciplinary research. But faculty clusters also have the potential to help diversify a college’s faculty and improve institutional climate. According to the report, the University of Wisconsin at Madison pioneered the practice and has hired nearly 150 faculty members in 48 clusters since 1998. In more recent years, institutions such as North Carolina State University and the University of Illinois at Chicago have followed suit. More...
/https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
