The idea that a Ph.D. can prepare you for diverse careers — not just for the professoriate — is now firmly with us.
ost doctoral students in the arts and sciences start out with the desire to become professors. But that’s not where most of them end up. By now, most graduate advisers understand that their doctoral students will follow multiple career paths. And increasing numbers of professors and administrators are trying to help students do that.
The number of Ph.D.s who pursue nonfaculty careers varies by field, of course. But the reality in many disciplines is: f you’re teaching a graduate seminar with eight students in it, only two of them, on average, will become full-time faculty members. What happens to the rest? And as important, how do they feel about where they end up?
Those questions raise a different one for graduate faculty: How do we assess our efforts to train Ph.D.s for myriad careers? It’s one thing to try to help, and another to know that we are helping.
Who should we be looking at? What should we measure? And how?
At a time when graduate schools are under pressure to produce more minority Ph.D.s, surveys at Yale and Michigan show the challenges facing nonwhite doctoral students.
Canadian accomplishments in science and scholarly inquiry have long been a source of national pride. However, by various measures, Canada’s research competitiveness has eroded in recent years when compared with international peers. The change coincided with a period of flat-lining of federal spending through the four core funding agencies that support researchers in universities, colleges, institutes, and research hospitals. In those years funds were also directed preferentially to priority-driven and partnership-oriented research, reducing available support for independent, investigator-led research by frontline scientists and scholars.
Fifty years ago, the position of university president was viewed in the US as the pinnacle of the academy and the capstone of an individual’s career. It came with a grace-and-favour home, working hours considered to verge on the leisurely and a certain sense of standing and prestige. It was not uncommon for a man to stay in the position for 15 years or more.
I say man because they were nearly always men – white, married, Protestant men who were invariably affable, intellectually curious, willing to spectate at college sports games and comfortable asking alumni for gifts and bequests. Almost all came through the ranks of the professoriate, often at the institution they went on to lead.
One of the most frequent questions faculty ask about the flipped classroom model is: “How do you encourage students to actually do the pre-class work and come to class prepared?”
There is a general misconception that our beliefs are the cause of our actions. Often it is the other way around.
Just like the fox, people will tell themselves a story to justify their actions. This helps to protect their ego during failure or indicate why they committed a certain action. Teachers need to place students in situations where they can persuade themselves that they were intrinsically motivated to behave a certain way or to carry out certain actions.
Kathryn DeWitt conquered high school like a gold-medal decathlete. She ran track, represented her school at a statewide girls’ leadership program and took eight Advanced Placement tests, including one for which she independently prepared, forgoing the class.
Expectations were high. Every day at 5 p.m. test scores and updated grades were posted online. Her mother would be the first to comment should her grade go down. “I would get home from track and she would say, ‘I see your grade dropped.’ I would say, ‘Mom, I think it’s a mistake.’ And she would say, ‘That’s what I thought.’ ” (The reason turned out to be typing errors. Ms. DeWitt graduated with straight A’s.)
Background: It would be easy to think the technological shifts in the digital revolution are simple incremental progressions in societal advancement. However, the nature of digital technology is resulting in qualitative differences in nearly all parts of daily life.
What is “mindful teaching”? It entails, as Elizabeth MacDonald and Dennis Shirley explain, an “openness to new information, a willingness to explore topics that are marginalized in the dominant reform fads of the moment, and a readiness to review one’s previous assumptions as a part of a life-long career marked by critical inquiry, reflection and compassion” (p. 27). That definition seems reminiscent of reflective teaching. It certainly appears related.1 But there seem to be qualitative differences between reflective teaching and mindful teaching. Within the last decade a body of literature has blossomed; it is a literature that borrows from western and eastern contemplative traditions, underscores the role of the self and emotions in teaching, and attempts to consider the conflicts, conundrums, and paradoxes of teaching. Parker Palmer (1998), Irene McHenry and Richard Brady (2009), Rachael Kessler (2000), Linda Lantieri (2001), and Maria Lichtman (2005) are a few of the authors who have ventured into these dimensions of vocational exploration. It is a growing literature and one worth examining. Within this space MacDonald and Shirley, a public school teacher and an academic respectively, offer valuable insights and a description of an unusual program.
Metrics are used throughout Ontario’s postsecondary education system—for determining university funding, judging institutional performance, and gauging student perceptions. But metrics are not always the best tool for evaluation, and often have unintended consequences.
Some are stocking naloxone kits, while others are pushing increased public awareness.
On April 14 last year, British Columbia’s chief health officer declared a public health emergency due to the high number of opioid overdose deaths in the province – and the death toll has continued to rise since then. In December, Vancouver police reported up to nine opioid overdose deaths in a single night. At a conference on the opioid crisis held in Ottawa in November, Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins said that, in his province, opioid overdose is now the third leading cause of accidental deaths, accounting for about 700 deaths a year.
Also attending the Ottawa conference was Aaron Orkin, an emergency physician with Sinai Health System in Toronto and a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Dr. Orkin studies opioid overdose and the distribution of naloxone, a medication that can block the effects of opioids and revive those who have overdosed. “People who are dying from opioid overdoses are not dying alone. They die in the company of friends and family members, people who care about them,” he told the conference. “This is where the idea for naloxone distribution programs came from.”
Perhaps the best career advice I ever received came from my Reiki teacher, Marty Tribble, who cautioned, “The
absence of a strong yes is actually a no.”
This advice ran counter to decision-making practices I’d developed over the years, especially during my own
academic job search. I’d talk with colleagues and confidants, consider my goals and priorities, create spreadsheets
comparing choices and weigh the relevant information. I’d work to make a well-informed decision, taking in others’
advice and ultimately pursuing the pathway that I “should” follow. Though these were useful practices, what I found
is that I’d get into trouble whenever acting from the place of “should.” I was inadvertently shutting out my own
intuitive compass and relying on external guidance systems.
In the first year on the job, a college president may feel pressure to put out a glossy five-year-plan or begin an ambitious capital campaign. But a new report by the Aspen Institute’s Task Force on the Future of the College Presidency lays out a model for what a productive first year should look like — and it doesn’t mention either of those big-ticket items.
London, ON, February 23, 2018: When Canadians have the opportunity to go to school or access training while better balancing family responsibilities, they are better placed to find and keep good jobs. Making post-secondary education more affordable for Canadians is how we will continue to grow our middle class and strengthen our economy.
At a recent academic conference, I attended a plenary session on active learning. While spouting the virtues of
student engagement, the presenter seemed to be admonishing cellphone use in class, labelling it as a sign of
distracted and bored learners.
I was feeling uncomfortable in the second row from the front because I was using my phone to take pictures, livetweet the lecture and engage with other conference attendees on social media. I wondered, “Is he talking about
me?” However, not only was I paying attention, but I was also completely engaged in and interacting with his
content in a self-directed way. If that’s not active learning, I don’t know what is.
In my own classes, I do not have a cell phone policy, and I generally encourage free use of devices of any kind.
However, many of my colleagues do not feel the same way and, in fact, discourage the use of phones in class. They
view them as a distraction rather than a supplement. It confuses me that these faculty members want their students
to be independent learners who engage with their content, yet they don’t want them to use devices (i.e., research
tools) during class. When do they expect students to engage with the content and research independently? After
class when they don’t have valuable access to the instructor?
Imagine that a student enters an English class to find that it's that most dreaded of days -- graded paper pass-back day. As he receives his paper, his teacher begins to criticize him for his mistakes saying, "You should have known better than to write your thesis that way." What if the teacher went on to add, "That's the third time this month. What am I going to do with you?" before sending him to the office for his mistake?
We've got some big Canadian labour news, folks, but it's a little bit sweet and sour. The sweet is that college faculty
in Ontario are currently leading the charge in Canada to secure a less precarious workplace for sessional
instructors. The sour is that it means they're out on the picket line at the height of the fall semester, and they look
likely to be there for some time.
Context: The past decade has witnessed a sustained emphasis on information and communication technologies (ICT) in education, coupled with the rise of online social media and increasing pervasiveness of personal media devices.
Research Question: Our research question asked: How has this changing context affected the educational experiences of American high school students?
Setting: The exploratory, qualitative study took place at two high schools in a large metropolitan district in the southeastern United States. One high school was in a downtown area, and the other was in a suburban setting.
Research Design: The researchers used various qualitative research approaches, including interviews, on-site observations, and document analysis. Our interview participants included classroom teachers and support staff as well as students drawn from across each school’s grade levels. We also shadowed 10 of the student interview participants through their entire school days.
One of the biggest differences between the experience I had as a student and the experience students have in my classroom has to do with assignments. When I was a student, assignments often had no discernible relationship to what we were doing in class. Oh, we would have to write about a text we read for class. But once the assignment was given out, we were generally on our own — there were no opportunities to work on it in class, to reflect on the skills the assignment asked us to practice, to share and workshop our ideas with our classmates.
The courses I teach are different. A sequence of major assignments form the backbone of the semester. Almost everything we do in class is explicitly linked to one or more of those assignments. We break them down into stages, work on them collaboratively, and discuss the challenges students might face along the way. Like many teachers, I design assignments not just to assess performance, but also to give students opportunities to practice and develop important skills.
Each year, the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) presents the results of its annual survey. These results give community colleges objective and relevant data about students’ experiences at their colleges so they can better understand how effectively they are engaging their students and identify areas for improvement.
This year, the CCSSE report also includes results of the first administration of the Community College Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (CCFSSE), which provides insights into faculty perceptions and practices. Because many items on CCSSE and CCFSSE are aligned, the report includes side-by-Lori Gates side views of faculty members’ and students’ responses.