College presidents’ partners and spouses aren’t all wives hosting receptions in the president’s house.
Many work jobs outside of their role as presidential partners. A growing number are men. And many say the expectations placed upon them by a college or university influence their spouse’s decision to work as the institution’s president.
A new study from University of Minnesota researchers examines the role of the presidential spouse or partner at a time when it is becoming increasingly complex and challenging. Researchers called the survey, which was released Monday after being presented at the Council of Independent Colleges’ Presidents Institute last week, the “largest and most diverse known sample of presidential partners to date.” The results of the study, which involved the leaders of public and private colleges, were earlier presented at a CIC meeting.
Employers are uniquely positioned to encourage positive financial behaviors in their early career workers, say human resources leaders at three universities.
“By leveraging the full range of the institution’s resources,” says Laurita Thomas, associate vice=president for human resources at the University of Michigan (U-M), “employers can create the right climate to promote Gen Y’s financial wellbeing.” Here are some of the ways, according to Thomas, that employers can set early career workers up for success:
In the past decade, internationalisation has become a core strategy for most Canadian institutions, supported by robust policies and practices.
Over the past 50 years, as the national voice advancing international education on behalf of its 150 member institutions ranging from K-12 to universities, the Canadian Bureau for International Education or CBIE, has encouraged, assisted and closely monitored internationalisation in Canada. We take a look here at what this success entails and at the prospects for Canadas next 50 years in international education.
The good news is that Canada is home to so many great universities that it’s difficult to make a poor decision. That’s why choosing the school that best suits you requires going beyond rankings and reputation, and considering the unique culture and educational environment of your potential alma mater.
So what do you really want to get from your university experience? According to multiple surveys, the majority of young people today seek more than just a paycheque from their career. A recent Millennial Branding report found that 72 per cent of this demographic seek work with greater meaning. “Having a job where I can have an impact” ranked higher than wealth or prestige in a 2012 workforce survey conducted by Net Impact.
That’s why, in this year’s Canadian University Report, we looked at how universities are helping undergraduate students make an impact on their careers and in their communities. We spoke to students, faculty and university officials about opportunities to develop the skills needed for a meaningful career and life after graduation (from co-op programs to social entrepreneurship curriculums, from volunteering to purpose-driven business incubators). What we heard was that students aren’t waiting to don their cap and gown before they get started; they are already working with organizations in their communities and beyond, and launching their own businesses and non-profits to tackle our most-challenging social and environmental issues.
Mention the “classroom of the future” and it might evoke images of an old Jetsons cartoon—Elroy and his fellow students working on tablets, following a lecture by a virtual teacher and collaborating on space-aged technology.
While there is little doubt that classrooms have become more sophisticated and digital; the physical classroom setting and furniture haven’t evolved at nearly the same pace. The tablets that are transforming the learning process still sit on top of the same style desks from the 1950s. The blackboards and chalk may have been replaced by interactive whiteboards connected to a computer or projector, but far too often, students still sit in stagnant rows looking up in the same direction at the teacher for the daily lesson.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of peer-level tardiness on individual-level socio-emotional outcomes utilizing nationally representative, longitudinal data.
Trust Matters: Distinction and Diversity in Undergraduate Science Education
In the mid-1980s as a further education lecturer I was mocked by some more traditional colleagues for using “lantern slides”, their term for the then newfangled technology of the overhead projector, or OHP. These Luddites strutted the corridors with coffee-tinted sheaves of notes stuffed untidily under their arms. They would sweep into the classroom, fling their pencil-written papyri on the lectern and, without so much as a glance at their students, commence reading out loud.
In an effort to measure the effectiveness of faculty development courses promoting student engagement, the faculty development unit of Penn State’s Online Campus conducted a pilot study within a large online Bachelor of Science in Business (BSB) program. In all, 2,296 students were surveyed in the spring and summer semesters of 2014 in order to seek their perspectives on (1) the extent of their engagement in the courses and (2) the degree to which their instructors promoted their engagement. The survey comprised three sub-scales: the first and third sub-scales addressed instructional design aspects of the course, and the second sub-scale addressed attitudes and behaviors whereby the instructors promoted student engagement. The results showed a significant difference on the second sub-scale (sig = 0.003) at the .05 level, indicating that students rated instructors with professional development higher on instructor behaviors that engaged them in their courses than those instructors who received no professional development. There were no significant differences found for the first and third sub-scales indicating that the instructional design aspects of the courses under investigation were not influenced by instructors’ professional development. Qualitative data showed that three quarters of the students who had instructors whose background included professional development geared to encouraging student engagement felt that their courses had engaged them. Future research will focus on increasing the response rate and exploring in more depth both the instructional design and qualitative aspects of student engagement.
The OECD’s Brain and Learning project (2002) emphasized that many misconceptions about the brain exist among professionals in the field of education. Though these so-called “neuromyths” are loosely based on scientific facts, they may have adverse effects on educational practice. The present study investigated the prevalence and predictors of neu-romyths among teachers in selected regions in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. A large observational survey design was used to assess general knowledge of the brain and neuromyths. The sample comprised 242 primary and secondary school teachers who were interested in the neuroscience of learning. It would be of concern if neuromyths were found in this sample, as these teachers may want to use these incorrect interpreta-tions of neuroscience findings in their teaching practice. Participants completed an online survey containing 32 statements about the brain and its influence on learning, of which 15 were neuromyths. Additional data was collected regarding background variables (e.g., age, sex, school type). Results showed that on average, teachers believed 49% of the neuromyths, particularly myths related to commercialized educational programs. Around 70% of the general knowledge statements were answered correctly. Teachers who read popular science magazines achieved higher scores on general knowledge questions. More general knowledge also predicted an increased belief in neuromyths. These findings sug-gest that teachers who are enthusiastic about the possible application of neuroscience findings in the classroom find it difficult to distinguish pseudoscience from scientific facts. Possessing greater general knowledge about the brain does not appear to protect teachers from believing in neuromyths. This demonstrates the need for enhanced interdisciplinary communication to reduce such misunderstandings in the future and establish a successful collaboration between neuroscience and education.
Please contact leesa.wheelahan@utoronto.ca for a copy of any of the publications below
It is easy to silo away postsecondary education within the confines of our provincial borders. Our hope with this project is to shed light on an issue with which all students regardless of jurisdiction have to deal. The mental health of students is a unifying theme and priority for student organisations such as ours’ across the country.
Unlike some more-easily defined issues being tackled by student organisations, such as high debt
levels and youth employment, mental health-related problems remain somewhat of a taboo subject for legislators and university officials alike.
Traditional lack of awareness and a societal inability to separate mental illness from physical
ailments has contributed to a grossly underfunded and poorly-equipped postsecondary sector that, while well-intentioned, has failed to grasp the magnitude of the mental health challenges facing its students.
In a recent survey of nearly 4,000 postsecondary students and graduates, we discovered that a shockingly high percentage of students had considered leaving their institution in this past year. A whopping 23% of current students said that in this academic year, they’d seriously considered leaving their current institution. For even the most optimistic administrator, this is a
distressingly high number.
On October 17 1990, the members of the Canadian Federation of Students presented the first edition of its alternative funding model for post-secondary education. The proposal, entitled Strategy for Change, articulated students’ concerns about public funding for post-secondary education, as well as problems with federal student financial assistance programs.
In the intervening seventeen years since the first version of this document was published, federal funding and student aid policies have changed substantially, as have many provincial approaches to post-secondary education. Perhaps the single over arching trend is the federal government’s retreat from a leadership role in broad higher education policy.
In fall 2015, overall postsecondary enrollments decreased 1.7 percent from the previous fall. Figure 1 shows the 12-month percentage change (fall-to-fall and spring-to-spring) for each term over the last three years. Enrollments decreased among fouryear for-profit institutions (-13.7 percent), two-year public institutions (-2.4 percent), and four-year private nonprofit institutions (-0.3 percent). Enrollments increased slightly among four-year public institutions (+0.4 percent). Taken as a whole, public sector enrollment (2-year and 4-year combined) declined by 2.3 percent this fall.
Research on role congruity theory and descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes has established that when men and women violate gender stereotypes by crossing spheres, with women pursuing career success and men contributing to domestic labor, they face back- lash and economic penalties. Less is known, however, about the types of individuals who are most likely to engage in these forms of discrimination and the types of situations in which this is most likely to occur. We propose that psychological research will benefit from supplementing existing research approaches with an individual differences model of sup- port for separate spheres for men and women. This model allows psychologists to examine individual differences in support for separate spheres as they interact with situational and contextual forces. The separate spheres ideology (SSI) has existed as a cultural idea for many years but has not been operationalized or modeled in social psychology. The Sepa- rate Spheres Model presents the SSI as a new psychological construct characterized by individual differences and a motivated system-justifying function, operationalizes the ideology with a new scale measure, and models the ideology as a predictor of some important gendered outcomes in society. As a first step toward developing the Separate Spheres Model, we develop a new
measure of individuals’ endorsement of the SSI and demonstrate its reliability, convergent validity, and incremental predictive validity. We provide support for the novel hypotheses that the SSI predicts attitudes regarding workplace flexibility accom- modations, income distribution within families between male and female partners, distribu- tion of labor between work and family spheres, and discriminatory workplace behaviors. Finally, we provide experimental support for the hypothesis that the SSI is a motivated, system-justifying ideology.
The ability of postsecondary students to write and communicate proficiently is an expectation identified by many, including not only organizations such as the OECD but also other public and employer groups. There is concern, however, that students and thus employees often fail to meet expectations in these areas. To address this concern, it is necessary to understand more about the writing skills that students learn during their postsecondary education. This research project was designed to examine whether and how students are taught to write at university.
I started my first semester as department chair this fall. While I had an afternoon of training over the summer, it didn’t prepare me for the job. I’ve already made a ton of mistakes, my colleagues are treating me differently and I feel extremely isolated. I haven’t written anything this semester, and I’m kicking myself for agreeing to a three-year term.
I honestly don’t know how I’m going to make it through the rest of the academic year. I’ve tried reaching out to other new chairs on my campus, but when we get together we just end up complaining about how awful the job is (and that makes me feel even worse).
I don’t know what I’m doing and why this is so hard. I need to do something over this break to make things better or figure out how to quit. Please tell me there’s something I can do to make things better.
Sincerely,
Chair in Despair
reconceptualizing Cohens politics of deviance, this paper leans on post-structuralist thinkers to develop a conceptualization of the cultural repertoires of marginalized communities, hereafter referred to as deviantly marked cultural repertoires, that places at the center labeled practices of deviance. It is posited that in these labeled deviant cultural practiceswhich are often overlooked, shunned, and ignoredare valuable and me experiences of learning and development.
Faculty members play a central role in the development, implementation, and long-term sustainability of online and blended education programs. Therefore, faculty recruitment and retention strategies for these programs must align with the needs of the faculty. This article highlights the results of an institutional study conducted at a public comprehensive university in 2012 that examined factors influencing faculty participation and retention in online and blended education. This article also provides a comparative overview of the results of a similar institutional study conducted at The George Washington University (GWU) in 1997 that examined factors influencing faculty participation in distance education. The original surveys from the 1997 GWU study were updated for the 2012 Armstrong study. The results revealed that while technology and learning platforms have continued to evolve over the past 15 years, many of the needs and concerns of faculty are relatively similar. The results also revealed that faculty involvement is quintessential in the development and expansion of online and blended programs as well as in the design of faculty development initiatives.