In August, a report by Rand Europe confirmed what many had long suspected: that academics face a greater mental
health risk than the population at large. About two in five scholars have common mental health disorders, such as
depression or stress-related problems. Among the reasons behind this, the report, which was commissioned by the
Royal Society and the Wellcome Trust, identified environmental risk factors such as heavy workloads and lack of job
security and management support. But is there anything that academics themselves could do to boost their wellbeing?
Here, scholars from disciplines ranging from philosophy to neuroscience share their insights into how the
search for happiness should be conducted – if it should be conducted at all
How should colleges cater to professors nearing retirement? With 10,000 Americans turning 65 each day the population of tenured faculty is growing older—at some prestigious universities, one in three academics are 60 or older.[1] Between 1995 and 2015, the number of post-secondary aged 65 or older tripled, shooting from 4.4 percent to 11.6 percent according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (figures include teachers at trade schools as well as colleges).[2] This demographic shift may allow universities to retain the deep knowledge base of older faculty, but also open up a wealth of questions: about the need for adequate positions for younger faculty;[3] and about planning for this older cohort as they edge towards retirement.[
As the number of faculty members whose position lies outside the tenure system continues to rise at American universities, college deans, department chairs and program directors must consider how to support the careers of these colleagues. The differences that commonly exist between the opportunities available to tenure-system faculty and those offered to other academics can be a recurring source of friction. That not only erodes unit cohesion and climate, but it may also impede efforts to retain valued long-term employees who are not in the tenure system.
Since the configurations and names of these people and positions vary widely across disciplines and institutions, I will denote them collectively as “academic staff.” At Michigan State University, we have several categories of faculty members who work outside the tenure system -- including outside professionals in business, law, medicine or media who teach an occasional career-oriented course in their specialty; instructors with full teaching loads and short-term contracts; and individuals with a mix of teaching, advising or other duties who have long-term appointments. As a dean, I have seen that as my college hires more faculty members outside the tenure system, identifying ways to support such academic staff professionally is an increasingly common topic of conversation. And as an associate provost, as well, charged with advancing the careers of all MSU faculty and academic staff, I am finding support for academics outside the tenure system to be an area of institutional concern.
Dear parent of a university student,
You might want to sit down because I’ve got news you’ve dreaded for some time: your child has enrolled in a creative writing course.
I know it’s scary. As the course’s instructor, I’ve heard the same stories you have. On the street, they call creative writing the most potent of the humanities’ gateway drugs. Students get their first hit, and before you even have time to threaten to cut them out of the will, they’re writing every text message as a haiku and studying Soviet film.
Your child might have already hinted to you that creative writing was a possibility. They might have mentioned something called a “workshop.” You probably laughed, because the poets and novelists whose photographs you’ve seen in newspapers seldom look like they know how to work much of anything, never mind a drill or power saw.
You might be angry with the university for allowing your child to take a creative writing course. You might be angry with me for teaching it. Let me assure you: in class, I do everything possible to pull back the curtain on creative writing. We talk about how hard it can be put anything on the page without lapsing into clichés. I explain just how much there is to learn about things like form, style and genre. I tell them what a misery it can be to sit alone at a keyboard for hours, moving words around.
I say these things, but every year, students keep signing up for the course. They just seem to love writing. They seem to love it even though it involves struggle. Maybe because it involves struggle. They seem to relish the challenge of describing the world closely; of imagining how it could be different; of treating language as a puzzle and a game; of discovering new things about themselves. Sometimes, getting the right words in the right order feels impossible, but they seem to think that it can be important work.
Looking for inspiration on teaching or some specific strategies? David Gooblar, a lecturer in rhetoric at the University of Iowa and a blogger on teaching, writes about classroom issues in these pages. Here is a sampling of his recent columns.
After all, the basic science of nutrition hasn’t changed: People who consume more calories than they burn tend to gain weight. But just telling people to cut down on calories isn’t enough to change their behavior. (If it were, we’d all have our ideal BMI.) So what did the researchers behind the JAMA study do differently? They taught people how to adopt the sort of eating habits that naturally lead them to consume fewer calories.
Participants attended classes — once a week for the first two months, then less frequently throughout the year — to learn about healthy eating habits. Class size was small (with no more than 22 students), and the instructors focused on making "sustainable lifestyle changes, not simply following a temporary ‘diet.’" Moreover, based on early feedback, the researchers
modified their teaching to make it "less dense, less didactive, and more interactive." Instructors lectured less and began organizing classes around activities, including students cooking their own recipes.
Small class sizes? Fewer lectures? More active-learning activities? Does any of that sound familiar?
Scholarly reading is a craft — one that academics are expected to figure out on our own. After all, it’s just reading. We all know how to do that, right?
Yes and no. Scholarly reading remains an obscure, self-taught process of assembling, absorbing, and strategically deploying the writing of others.
Digital technology has transformed the research process, making it faster and easier to find sources and to record and retrieve information. Like it or not, we’ve moved beyond card catalogs, stacks of annotated books and articles, and piles of 3x5 cards. What hasn’t changed, however, is the basic way we go about reading scholarly work.
Last week, in my final rhetoric class of the semester, we did an end-of-term exercise that I’ve assigned for the past few years. I use notecards to write a series of prompts meant to encourage students to reflect on the semester and what they’ve learned. Each student comes to the front of the classroom, takes a notecard, and responds to the prompt in front of the class. There are also doughnuts.
Among the prompts is this one: "Before this class, I thought rhetoric was [fill-in-the-blank]. Now I think rhetoric is [fill-in-the-blank]." I got the format from Kimberley Tanner, who calls such prompts "retrospective post-assessments."
How can you make sure your online students take tests without cheating? It’s one of the most-frequent questions asked by new online instructors and even some experienced ones. The short answer: You can’t.
You might be tempted to join the “arms race” in cheating-prevention tools, or to adopt punitive approaches such as proctored online exams and time limits for online tests. But the reality is, students will always find new and creative ways to get around your policing
efforts. So what to do?
While there is a tremendous amount of value to being able to see your students’ faces during distance learning, we can’t force them to be on camera, just as during in-person teaching, we can’t force unengaged students to lift their heads or remove hats or hoodies that obscure their faces.
With experimentation and persistence, however, you can arrive at strategies that work. Whether they need options, encouragement, or trust in order to turn their cameras on, there’s likely a solution that is the right fit for your classroom, circumstances, lessons, and students.
When it comes to skills development, sometimes you have to make advantage before you can take advantage.
I’m sitting at my desk in the Research Institute at SickKids, putting the finishing touches on our skills and career development curriculum for the upcoming academic year. Our office has an open-door policy, so one of the institute’s PhD students pops in to talk about internships. They’re interested in participating in our administrative internship program, which places grad students and postdocs in departments like grant development, knowledge translation and tech transfer. What they really want though is to work in the project management unit. They’re seriously interested in moving into a project management role after they graduate, but they want to get some practical experience first to find out if they really enjoy the work and to build their network.
In this study, we explored experiences of Ontario students who engaged in a university-to-college (UTC) transfer. Data was
collected through qualitative interviews with 20 participants who began their post-secondary journey in a university program
but left before completing it and subsequently pursued a college program. We focused on motivations for transfer, the decision-
making process, and participants’ reflections on their decision to transfer. Framing the transfer decision within a model of
educational decision-making that draws on Rational Action Theory (RAT) and Bourdieu’s habitus, we argue that motivations
for leaving university were distinct from, though related to, motivations for pursuing college. Reasons for leaving university
were clustered around three themes: academic struggles, mental/physical health/special education need struggles, and future
prospects. These were highly interconnected and characterized by difficulties, from mild to severe, coping with university.
Motivations for pursuing college were more practical, relating to subject interest, college learning environment, location, and
future prospects. Both decision processes showed evidence of rational cost-benefit analysis characteristic of RAT, but within
a framework of habitus-influenced ideas about success and identity. While most participants reflected positively on their
decision to transfer, there were some negative reflections related to a sense of personal failure and/or the negative reactions
of others, particularly parents. Personal and external negative reflections were tied to cultural and societal expectations about
high achievement and perceptions of university education as superior to college education, again showing the influence of
habitus. We conclude with policy recommendations.
Keywords: post-secondary education, post-secondary transfer, Ontario, education policy
Canada ranks first among OECD countries in the proportion of the adult population whose highest level of education is a credential from a community college or similar type of educational institution. Canada’s rate of attainment of this type of educational credential is more than three times the average for OECD member countries, and only three member countries have rates that are more than half Canada’s rate. This paper explores the factors that contribute to Canada’s high rate of short-cycle tertiary education attainment relative to other countries. The factors examined include: the role and prevalence of short-cycle postsecondary institutions in different countries; the proportions of students who begin postsecondary education in a college rather than a university; college graduation and transfer rates; and different approaches to workforce preparation. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of some of the implications of the international differences that were explored.
Résumé
Plusieurs travaux soulignent des difficultés particulières auxquelles certains titulaires d’un doctorat sont confrontés sur le marché du travail en dehors du milieu universitaire. Une des principales raisons de ces difficultés serait la méconnaissance ou l’inadéquation des acquis de la formation doctorale en ce qui concerne les compétences recherchées par les organisations. Or, en dehors de données statistiques, peu de travaux nous renseignent sur les perceptions que les différents acteurs ont de ces compétences. Cet article apporte une contribution dans ce sens. Il est basé sur les résultats d’une recherche mixte à devis séquentiel. La première étape a consisté en une étude qualitative par entretiens semi-directifs réalisés auprès de 85 diplômés du doctorat en emploi et 21 responsables d’organisations. Les résultats de cette étude, dont les données ont été traitées par la méthode Alceste, ont servi à la conception d’une échelle de 45 items sur les compétences des titulaires d’un doctorat. Cette échelle a été mesurée lors de deux enquêtes par questionnaire auxquelles ont répondu 2139 diplômés du doctorat en emploi et 215 responsables d’organisations. Des analyses descriptives de comparaison de moyennes standardisées (d de Cohen) mettent en évidence des points de convergence qui montrent que la formation doctorale pourrait constituer un
atout pour le développement des compétences du futur, notamment celles difficiles à automatiser : la gestion de la complexité, la créativité, l’esprit critique.
Mots-clés : doctorat, transition, compétences, compétences du futur, intentionnalité, employabilité
Abstract
A number of studies point to particular challenges that some PhD graduates face in the labour market outside of academia. One of the main reasons for these difficulties is said to be a lack of knowledge or inadequacy of what doctoral graduates have acquired in terms of the skills sought by employers. However, apart from statistical data, there is little work that tells us about the perceptions that the various groups and individuals involved have of these skills. This article makes a contribution in this direction. It is based on the results of a sequential mixed methods study. The first stage consisted of a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews of 85 employed PhD graduates and 21 organizational leaders. The results of this study, whose data were processed using the Alceste method, were used to design a 45-item scale on the skills of doctoral graduates. This scale was measured in two questionnaire surveys completed by 2,139 employed doctoral graduates and 215 organizational leaders. Descriptive analyses comparing standardized averages (Cohen's d) highlight points of convergence that show that doctoral training could be an asset for the development of future skills, especially those that are difficult to automate: complexity management, creativity, critical thinking.eywords: PhD, transition, skills, future skills, intentionality, employability
Internationalization continues to be a priority within many Canadian universities. While it is imperative to attend to the ethical dilemmas that accompany the intensification of internationalization, different ethical frameworks operate according to different orientating assumptions. In this paper, we seek to pluralize and deepen conversations about the ethics of internationalization
by illustrating how three global ethics approaches address questions of international student mobility, study and service abroad, and internationalizing the curriculum. We conclude by emphasizing the need for both scholars and practitioners to engage in multi-voiced, critically-informed analyses, and dissensual conversations about complex ethical dilemmas related to internationalization.
The most famous dictum of the science fiction writer and futurist Arthur C. Clarke may be his Third Law: “Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.” And for most of us, the efficiency of 21st-century search engines — Google, Bing, Yahoo and others — can be uncannily accurate. But when it comes to learning, instant gratification can be as much a bug as a feature.
Take high school students today. They have grown up using search engines and other web resources; they don’t need to understand how these tools work in order to use them. In fact, thanks to what’s called machine learning, search engines and other software can become more accurate — and even those who write the code for them may not be able to explain why.
The university reward structure has traditionally placed greater value on individual research excellence for tenure and promotion, influencing faculty’s allocation of time and definition of worthwhile labour. We find gender differences in Canadian natural sciences and engineering faculty’s opinions of the traditional criteria for measuring academic success that are consistent with an implicit gender bias devaluing service and teamwork. Most women recommend significant changes to the traditional model and its foundation, while a substantial minority of men support the status quo. However, this comparative qualitative analysis finds more cross-gender similarities than differences, as most men also want a more modern definition of success, perceiving the traditional model to be disproportionately supportive of one type of narrow research scholarship that does not align with the realities of most faculty’s efforts.
Thus, this study suggests a discrepancy between traditional success criteria
and faculty’s understanding of worthwhile labour.
Names … why do we have such trouble learning them? For those of us who struggle with names, it never gets easier, no matter how many tricks we try. It can be embarrassing—to ourselves and to others. I remember once visiting a mall while out of town and hearing someone calling my name.
Soon, a vaguely familiar person was greeting me with enthusiasm. “I am so happy to see you! It’s
been so long? How are you?”
Who is this?, I’m thinking to myself. Course rosters roll through my mind. Nothing. No associations. No connections. Finally, in embarrassment I admit. “I’m terribly sorry but I can’t remember your name.
McGill University is committed to creating and sustaining a safe environment through proactive, visible, accessible and effective approaches that seek to prevent and respond to Sexual Violence. The University further recognizes the singular importance of striving toward an equitable environment in which all Members of the University Community feel respected, safe and free from
violence, especially Sexual Violence.
The University does not tolerate Sexual Violence in any form. It acknowledges that attention to Sexual Violence is particularly important in university campus settings, and that the University has a role to play in preventing and responding to Sexual Violence. It further acknowledges that, while Sexual Violence impacts all members of society, Sexual Violence and its consequences may disproportionately affect members of social groups who experience intersecting forms of systemic discrimination or barriers (on grounds, for example, of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, race, religion, Indigenous identity, ethnicity, disability or class).
aculty dread the grade appeal; anxiety prevails until the whole process is complete. Much has been written about ow to avoid such instances, but the potentially subjective assessments of written essays or clinical skills can be specially troublesome. One common cause of grade appeals is grading ambiguity in which the student and faculty ember disagree on the interpretation of required content. Another cause is inequity, whereby the student feels thers may have gotten more credit for very similar work or content (Hummel 2010). In the health-care field specially, these disagreements over clinical-skills assessments can actually result in student dismissal from the program and may lead to lawsuits.
McGill University is committed to creating and sustaining a safe environment through proactive, visible, accessible and effective approaches that seek to prevent and respond to Sexual Violence. The University further recognizes the singular importance of striving toward an equitable environment in which all Members of the University Community feel respected, safe and free from
violence, especially Sexual Violence.
The University does not tolerate Sexual Violence in any form. It acknowledges that attention to Sexual Violence is particularly important in university campus settings, and that the University has a role to play in preventing and responding to Sexual Violence. It further acknowledges that, while Sexual Violence impacts all members of society, Sexual Violence and its consequences may disproportionately affect members of social groups who experience intersecting forms of systemic discrimination or barriers (on grounds, for example, of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, race, religion, Indigenous identity, ethnicity, disability or class).