We are often warned against being judgemental. “Judge not, lest ye be judged”, for example, reminds us how vulnerable we are to others’ estimations of us, and how likely those estimations are to be biased.
Nevertheless, we continue to make judgements, both positive and negative, because we have evolved to do so. Human brains have been “domesticated” by our need to live in groups to survive. We assess others carefully, and monitor their views of us; if those views are negative, we may be cast out of the group.
I joined the University of Virginia in 1982 as an assistant professor of business and reveled in the thrill of teaching and writing. As I advanced up the tenure-promotion ladder, I assumed various responsibilities to strengthen the institution: chair of this program and that committee and executive director of an institute.
In 2005, the president of my university called to ask if I would serve as the dean of the business school for a year. He’d been conducting a search and hadn’t been able to fill the slot in time for the start of the next academic year. He just needed a placeholder for a short while until he could close the sale with one of a number of candidates.
As sites of work-force development, community colleges must be responsive to the demands of the rapidly changing job market. Now, many communitycollege systems are turning to job-market data that are more up to date and more precise than ever before.
To build an effective network that can lead to referrals, starting early is best.
Networking can happen anywhere; both formally (at an official networking event) and informally (meeting a friend of a friend who works at a company that interests you), as well as online, and in person. However, the very thought of actively meeting new people and conversing can make students shudder (especially us awkward folk), but the process of creating and managing your network connections doesn’t have to be so daunting. While it is work, it can also be incredibly rewarding!
StudentsNS prioritizes the accessibility of post-secondary education (PSE) as one of its four foundational values because we believe that education is critical to the growth and development of individual Nova Scotians, their families, their communities, and the Province as a whole. This position paper will identify and describe the major barriers that exist in Nova Scotia and attempt to understand their impact on the post-secondary participation of historically marginalized populations. Existing public policy and programs aimed at preparing Nova Scotians for post-secondary education (primarily the K-12 public school system) are critically examined as well as other policies, programs, and community initiatives that make up Nova Scotia’s system of economic and social supports. Unfortunately, many Nova Scotians face significant economic, social, or other personal barriers in the pursuit of PSE and the many benefits that flow from it. Depending on individual circumstances, facing just one of these barriers could be enough to make PSE an unattainable goal. The sad reality is that many Nova Scotians face multiple barriers at the same time, which perpetuates cycles of multi-generational disadvantage. Based on our analysis, we make a total of 17 recommendations that would allow us to better understand the social barriers to post-secondary access, prepare adolescents for success at the post-secondary level, and make post-secondary institutions more welcoming, inclusive environments for students from historically underrepresented communities.
The Ontario government has indicated its intention to negotiate individual mandate agreements with each of Ontario’s postsecondary institutions and to amend funding formulas to focus resources on what each institution does best. These actions signal the government’s desire to pursue a policy of greater institutional differentiation within the Ontario public postsecondary system. The purpose of this paper is to advance the conversation by examining differences among Ontario’s 24 colleges on key variables related to programmatic diversity and participation in degree granting.
Baylor University’s newly named president, Linda A. Livingstone, has had a long career in higher education. But there’s one position that’s not on her résumé: provost.
Increasingly, that’s not an unusual step to skip, according to a report, released on Wednesday, that analyzed 840 college presidents’ CVs. While serving as provost was once a clear steppingstone on the way to the president’s office, many deans are now moving straight into the top job, according to the report, which was issued by Deloitte’s Center for Higher Education Excellence and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Center for 21st Century Universities.
The university as workplace has been imaginatively described by many observers of higher education: at any one university we might find Sanskrit scholars, accountants, glass blowers, philosophers and curators of pregnant hamsters (Henry Wriston, Academic Procession: Reflections of a College President, 1959). However, the quaintness of these occupations (barring the accountants) belies the full reality of the working university in that it fails to include all members of the campus community.
One of the scariest conversations to have with an adviser can be telling that person that you are not interested in an
academic career. Depending on your field, they may have high expectations that you will follow their path to a tenure-track position. But you may not even be sure whether you want to go into academe or another industry, and you’d at least like to talk about your different options. So how do you mention to your adviser that you are considering nonacademic career fields?
Background/Context: The literature on emotional and social intelligence, based on the the-oretical constructs of several authors, identifies self-awareness as a core skill for leadership development. However, there is very little research or theory on how one might develop a ped-agogy of self-awareness for leaders.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study describes an innovative leadership development program in self-awareness in the Summer Principals Academy at Teachers College. It describes both the theoretical and practical pedagogy of self-awareness training. What follows is a description of that pedagogy and some preliminary research results based on the journals and feedback of 45 students who completed the program in 2006.
Project-Based Learning
This challenging time provides an opportunity for students to work on real-world problems
they see every day.
Amid a pandemic, educators are trying to figure out how to make sure that kids are socially in tune, emotionally intact, and cognitively engaged. Moreover, we’re all attempting to figure out how to do this across a plethora of mediums, including computer screens, video cameras streaming into classrooms, and engaging students face-to-face albeit across shields, masks, and plexiglass.
Still, there is an opportunity here to give students a chance to discuss the challenges of their own environment, the barrage of news they face daily, and the core content they need for long-term success. One of the best options to meet these demands is for students to engage in rigorous problem- or project-based learning (PBL)—an approach that ensures students develop high rigor and experience high relevance by solving problems or
completing tasks in a remote or face-to-face environment.
Student requests for academic accommodations are increasing across university campuses, and Bruce Pardy, Professor of Law at Queen’s University, believes students are taking advantage of available accommodations, such as extra time on exams, to get ahead of their peers.
Pardy argues against providing accommodation with this analogy: that if Andre De Grasse asked for a 20-metre head start in the recent World Track and Field Championships to accommodate for his injury, no one would take him seriously. This comparison assumes that academic accommodations give disabled students an advantage over others. The difference, however, between De Grasse and students with a mental illness, is that students are not asking for a 20-metre head start; mental illness and other disabilities are setbacks which have students starting the race from 20-meteres behind the starting blocks. The purpose of accommodation is not to give them an edge over other students, but to bring them forward to the starting line with everyone else.
When Harvard University announced Lawrence S. Bacow as its president-in-waiting on Sunday, the institution focused heavily on his illustrious academic history, past presidential experience at Tufts University and family story as the son of immigrants.
Less discussed was Bacow’s age. He’s 66, about four years older than the average college president. If he stays at Harvard for 10 years -- the tenure he has previously said is about right for a president -- he will be stepping down in his mid-70s.
One academic’s journey in search of new perspectives.
What you are about to read is an argument for inviting more academics, and academic administrators, to second themselves for periods of time to new roles within and beyond the university. It’s a reflection on three mid-career adventures that taught me more than I bargained for. Returning now to teach tax law and policy at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, I realize just how much I’ve learned on the road and how it is energizing my work as a faculty member. Paradoxically, I’m also keenly aware of what I missed by being away. Out of this strange mix, a few ideas are emerging about why we should promote a stronger culture of secondments in academia.
Over the past months, since the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States – in particular after the transition – many articles have been published about the negative impact of these two events on the internationalisation of higher education in the United States and the United Kingdom and beyond.
The increasing wave of nationalist, populist, anti-immigration and anti-globalisation trends in the United States, Europe and countries like Turkey and the Philippines make us wonder if the end of internationalisation is near.
This policy paper examines the various avenues in which entirely-online post-secondary learning, specifically entirely-online courses and programs, could develop in Ontario over the coming years.
Online education has the potential to make higher education more accessible, and it has the ability to overcome the financial, social and geographic barriers faced by some students via their pursuit of a post- secondary education. It also has the potential to enhance student learning, both inside the classroom and within distance education context. However, if implemented in the wrong way, it has the potential to be disengaging, impersonal, and costly. Broken down into sections based on OUSA’s mandate of seeking accessible, affordable, accountable, and quality post-secondary education for all willing students, this paper addresses some of the major concerns that surround fully-online learning, and provides possible solutions for these issues. There is currently a lot of potential for growth in this area, but a lot of questions remain as well. The following summary presents some of the topics discussed in this paper:
OUSA’s policy on system growth is a broad based look at the future structure and function of Ontario’s post-secondary system. Throughout the past decade, Ontario has seen unprecedented growth in undergraduate enrolment across universities and colleges, successfully achieving the highest provincial post-secondary attainment in Canada. OUSA is supportive of the
Ontario government’s work towards the goal of a more prosperous society and workforce.
However, these commitments have come at a price to students within the postsecondary system. While per-student operating grants have kept pace with increasing enrolment, provincial funding into postsecondary still falls dramatically behind all other provinces, both in terms of real dollars and percentage of GDP. Meanwhile, universities are experiencing unsustainable rising costs, particularly salaries and pensions, which threaten universities’ and students’ collective futures.
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Every morning, before the coffee kicks in, I unload the dishwasher. This is more or less mindless work, but there often comes a moment when I'm forced to pause. I take out the silverware basket, put it on the counter, and look at the disorganized jumble: forks and spoons and knives sticking out every which way. For a split second, I am overwhelmed with a kind of paralysis — I don’t know where to begin. Of course, I soon snap out of it and start putting everything away.
That strikes me as similar to what instructors — particularly novice ones — face at the beginning of the fall semester.
It can be overwhelming to think of all of the objectives you have for your students. In my own writing courses, I want my students to learn how to construct an argument and how to write good sentences. I want them to understand the place of research, and how to integrate outside sources into their writing. Of course to become good writers, they need to be good readers, understanding how other writers create. And what about learning how to draft and revise? Trying to balance that glut of important skills, my head can become very muddled, very quickly.
Throughout the summer, I have often found myself in discussions about international students. During these discussions I have constantly heard about the “benefits” these individuals bring to Canadian universities described as “unique perspectives in class discussions” or “a significant economic impact.” This is true – international students do provide immeasurable benefits; however, they also face significant barriers while attending our institutions. We need to start shifting our focus from the benefits these students bring, to ways that we can help them succeed while they are attending our institutions.