From my first day in the classroom, though, the professor showed us how to be active, cooperative educators by being one herself. Here are a few of the lessons I learned from her during that first semester that I have gone on to use while teaching my own classes. More...
This popular tongue-in-cheek rebuke has been a humorous, if not a durable universal higher educational meme, familiar among graduate student researchers, academic faculty, and other writers. It softly shames us for engaging in activities unrelated to advancing and publishing our research–namely, the laborious and intensive writing part. More...
Each semester, I make an effort to try something new in my classroom, whether it be a small change like tweaking assignments and readings or a large one like switching textbooks. This year, intrigued by an article on creating a “humanities lab”, I decided to experiment with intentionally implementing discovery learning activities in my classes. More...
The trickiest step in the tax return preparation process for a graduate student in the US is the very first one: identifying your income and other key numbers to plug into your tax return manually, enter into your tax software, or hand over to your tax preparer. More...
After undergraduate studies, the idea of joining an on-campus organization may seem ludicrous especially with the other responsibilities entrusted to graduate students. You have deadlines to meet, office hours to hold, and not to mention your own personal life. However, getting involved with your Graduate Student Association (GSA) can be helpful to your overall graduate experience. More...
This post is part of a (somewhat loose) series about being disabled at university, with a focus on graduate school: problems we encounter, how we deal with them, and what you can do that will make things easier for fellow graduate students with disabilities. More...
By Steven Mintz. Many popular critiques of higher education focus on a series of straw men: soaring costs, indifferent faculty, pointless research, rampant political correctness, administrative bloat, country club amenities, inflated grades, undermotivated, underprepared, and disengaged students, and a ratings-fueled pursuit of reputation and status. More...
By Steven Mintz. It requires all the abilities of a skilled politician, plus other talents. Success hinges on message crafting, coalition building, vision, and leadership, including the ability to motivate, incentivize, and remove obstacles. More...
By Steven Mintz. Yet college faculty have escaped such requirements. In the absence of ongoing professional development training, efforts at improvement and innovation remain voluntary. More...
By Steven Mintz. In a recent blog posting on the University of Texas System’s Institute for Transformational Learning, Joshua Kim expressed a preference for “investing in faculty.” That was precisely what the ITL did, though not, I suspect, in quite the way he meant. More...
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