When professors advise early-career academics on grant writing, we often focus on the common mistakes and pitfalls. But up-and-coming researchers don’t just need advice on what not to do.
They need to know what goes into a successful grant proposal, too. I have some suggestions on that front — that I have gleaned from teaching grant writing for 20 years, and being continually funded by the National Institutes of Health as a principal investigator. Here, then, are my top 10 tips on how to draft a grant proposal that has the best odds of getting funded.
Is it just that time of the semester, or are academics more and more stressed out? In the past week alone, I’ve talked with:
-A colleague emotionally reeling from counseling two students who each had a parent die this semester.
-Another unsettled colleague who received an expletive-filled email from an angry student demanding to "speak to your supervisor."
-A friend at another institution buried under a mountain of papers — the product of a fourth course that he’s teaching on overload to make a little extra money.
What messages do our students receive from their parents, their high school teachers, their older peers, and siblings before they enter college? When I ask my first-year students the answers are, “Now you are on your own,” or “No one will help you when you are in college!” and “You are responsible for your own work.”
Notice something here? All these messages focus on the individual’s sole responsibility to succeed in college without the help of others. You are independent now.
Academe has plenty of its own clichés, but one that we’ve eagerly adopted from the business world is "thinking outside the box." You’ll see that phrase again and again in administrative-job postings and in applicants’ cover letters. But what does it really mean in higher education?
More important, however good you are at thinking outside the box, is it possible to act on your outside-the-box ideas once you’re on the job as a chair, dean, provost, or president?
This month the Admin 101 series on-campus leadership explores some of the reasons why leaders encounter resistance in carrying out unconventional proposals, and what you need to know before you jump outside the box.
As a new faculty member, late work was the cause of many headaches.
I wanted a policy that would recognize there may be valid reasons why a student might not submit an assignment on time, but I did not like the idea of then having to judge the merit of excuses that might be provided or attempt to decide if they were truthful.
I wanted a policy that would acknowledge the merit of a completed assignment, so I did not want to deduct a letter grade or certain percentage of points just because it did not meet a deadline; a value I took to heart after reading O’Connor (2011).
I wanted a policy that would put the responsibility for completing late work entirely on the student, so I did not want to use class time or send reminders out of what was missing and when it was due.
I wanted a policy that would offer the opportunity for a student to submit work after it was due, but I did not want the hassle of keeping track of any new, individual deadlines and individual point deductions (Vatterott, 2009) for assignments that would
occur if I allowed late assignments.
Every developed country is racing to keep up with profound and fundamental changes in the 21st century. The new knowledge economy is creating unprecedented demands for higher levels of expertise and skills, while, at the same time, changing demographics will significantly reduce the numbers of qualified people available in the economy.
The cumulative impact presents great opportunities and great challenges to Ontario.
The Gallup organization, perhaps America’s most respected surveyor of public opinion, recently conducted its annual Alumni Survey of nearly 20,000 adults who attended college, slightly more than 1,600 of whom graduated between 2010 and 2019. Presumably most of these respondents are in their twenties or early thirties. When asked, 63% of white or Hispanic students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “My professors at [University name] cared about me as a person,” compared with only 44% of Black
students.
Faculty and staff are the heart of an institution. Colleges and universities have hundreds and sometimes thousands of employees who each day deliver on the institution’s brand promise to students and others. But have we truly invested in understanding and articulating our institution’s employer brand, with prospective and current employees in mind?
During my dissertation research on higher education multi-campus brand coherence, I studied a peer institution of my university. The qualitative data collection included one-on-one interviews with more than 20 senior administrators (starting with the president), whose areas of responsibility were closely connected to the university’s brand. Participants often asked who
else I was meeting with and responded with surprise when I mentioned the vice president for human resources. “Oh, that’s interesting. Why would you want to meet with HR?”
As laptops become smaller and more ubiquitous, and with the advent of tablets, the idea of taking notes by hand just seems old-fashioned to many students today. Typing your notes is faster — which comes in handy when there's a lot of information to take down. But it turns out there are still advantages to doing things the old-fashioned way.
For one thing, research shows that laptops and tablets have a tendency to be distracting — it's so easy to click over to Facebook in that dull lecture. And a study has shown that the fact that you have to be slower when you take notes by hand is what makes it more useful in the long run.
Graduate students have embraced professional development as an integral part of their education, but what about their supervisors and departments? As part of an initiative to reduce completion times the school of graduate studies at the University of Toronto hosted a series of faculty development workshops to optimize supervisory mentorship in graduate student research progress and professional development.
Background/Context: With a growing body of evidence to support the assertion that teacher quality is vital to producing better student outcomes, policymakers continue to seek solutions to attract and retain the best educators. Performance based pay is a reform that has become popular in K–12 education over the last decade. This strategy potentially produces positive impacts on student achievement in two ways: better alignment of financial incentives with desired outcomes and improved the composition of the teacher workforce. While evaluations have primarily focused on the former result, there is little research on whether the
longer term implementation of these polices can attract more effective teachers.
A monumental shift is steadily occurring in America’s workforce, as an ever-increasing percentage of jobs require some form of postsecondary education and training. In the Recovery 2020 report, Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce projects that by 2020, 65 percent of all jobs will require some form of postsecondary education. However, this may be a conservative estimate, according to the center, considering that of the 11.6 million jobs created in the 2010 to 2016 recovery, 11.5 million of them, or 99 percent, were filled by workers with postsecondary training.
While higher education has seen a plethora of initiatives designed to increase educational attainment and alternative delivery methods intended to expand educational opportunities, large numbers of students still do not have access to higher education while still in high school. In particular, offering academically advanced high school students the chance to take college courses (dual enrollment) is widely seen as a way to help them make better use of their senior year. And even less advanced students can participate in dual enrollment courses with support, through approaches such as the Early College model.
Abstract
Food insecurity has been identified as an issue among postsecondary students. We conducted this study to describe the level
of food insecurity in a sample of university students with a particular interest in the effect of marginalization. A cross-sectional
survey was conducted using a volunteer sample of 3,490 undergraduate students (44% participation rate) at one BC university
campus between February and May 2017. Experiences of food insecurity were reported by 42.3% (n=1,479) of respondents.
Among those who were food insecure 60.2% (n=891) were female. Logistic regression analysis indicated that females,
students living on campus, those with a diversability (developmental, physical, or other disability), individuals self-reporting
as belonging to a visible minority, and international students were more likely to experience food insecurity than comparator
groups. When adjusted for gender, years on campus, and living situation, students who reported experiencing two or more
forms of marginalization were 2.52 times more likely to be food insecure compared to students who do not report any form of
marginalization. This study further supports concerns about high levels of food insecurity among university students in Canada.
In particular, the findings highlight the risk for food insecurity among students who are already vulnerable to socio-economic
inequity due to belonging to marginalized groups. Efforts to promote student well-being on university campuses need
to address food insecurity by addressing system-level factors to equalize the field for all students at risk for food insecurity.
Keywords: food deprivation, hunger, vulnerable populations, gender, higher education
For Black and Brown children in the United States, a major part of their schooling experience is associated with White female teachers who have no understanding of their culture. That was certainly my experience. My K-12 schooling was filled with White teachers who, at their core, were good people but unknowingly were murdering my spirit with their lack of knowledge, care, and love of my culture.
Joe Biden has a secret weapon in his bid for the presidency: He is the first Democratic nominee in 36 years without a degree from an Ivy League university.
This is a potential strength. One of the sources of Donald Trump’s political appeal has been his ability to tap into resentment against meritocratic elites. By the time of Mr. Trump’s election, the Democratic Party had become a party of technocratic liberalism more congenial to the professional classes than to the blue-collar and middle-class voters who once constituted its base. In 2016, two-thirds of whites without a college degree voted for Mr. Trump, while Hillary Clinton won more than 70 percent of voters with advanced degrees.
ABSTRACT
During the past two decades community colleges and technical institutes in several jurisdictions, including parts of Canada, the
United States and Australia, have been given the authority to award bachelor degrees. One of the motivations for this addition
to the mandate of these institutions is to improve opportunities for bachelor degree attainment among groups that historically
have been underserved by universities. This article addresses the equity implications of extending the authority to award
baccalaureate degrees to an additional class of institutions in Canada’s largest province, Ontario. The article identifies the
conditions that need to be met for reforms of this type to impact positively on social mobility and inequality, and it describes the
kinds of data that are necessary to determine the extent to which those conditions are met. Based on interviews with students,
faculty, and college leaders, it was found that regulatory restrictions on intra-college transfer from sub-baccalaureate to
baccalaureate programs and lack of public awareness of a new type of bachelor degree may be limiting the social impact of this
reform.
Imagine you have completed a scholarly article, book or creative product that you intend as a contribution to your discipline. Who will evaluate your work, attest to its quality and determine whether it is published or exhibited? Who will review the work when you are up for tenure and promotion or contract renewal?
Now, in your mind’s eye, imagine a person who is likely to review the quality of your teaching for professional benchmarks.
The interest inventory is a simple tool to help you acquaint yourself with your students. Unlike the many icebreakers, the interest inventory is a paper-based activity and students do not have to give answers aloud in front of class. The interest inventory, therefore, helps you get to know your students privately and allows you to ask different questions than you would during
oral introductions.
One in three students globally is enrolled in private higher education institutions, according to research that reveals the huge growth and wide reach of private providers.
The analysis, the first study based on comprehensive data on the size and shape of private higher education internationally, finds that private institutions have 56.7 million students on their books, or 32.9 percent of the world’s enrollment.
Talking to a graduate student is a little like an old Abbott and Costello routine about a mythical baseball team composed of players named Who, What and I Don’t Know. Career counseling sessions can be, however, more like a double act with just two players: the student and the professional. And unlike a comedy routine, the scenes take place within the context of dollars spent in stipends, fellowships and expectations of intellectual growth