Five years ago, two administrators at Southern Utah University worked evenings calling hundreds of students who had dropped out to ask them why. The causes, they learned, weren’t exactly surprising: financial challenges. Family problems. Poor fit. The usual reasons students leave without a degree. But after students repeatedly said they didn’t know where to go or who to talk to about their reasons for leaving, the administrators had a revelation.
“This was Generation Z arriving on campus,” said Jared Tippets, vice president for student affairs. “They’re going to engage and interact with us differently. They’re not going to come and say, ‘I’m struggling. Can you help me?’ We learned through that process that we better start creating authentic relationships with students.”
Often in workshops when I’m speaking about the process of implementing change—deciding what to change and how to change it or considering whether to add a new instructional strategy—the question of risk lurks in the choices being considered. When attending a workshop or program that offers a range of instructional possibilities, teachers typically respond to some favorably. I see it—they write down the idea, nod, or maybe ask a follow-up question to be sure they understand the details. Not all the ideas presented get this favorable response. Occasionally, the response is overtly negative. But more often there is no response. The idea doesn’t resonate.
Elizabeth Warren, it turns out, was a great professor. That’s one of the key takeaways from Rebecca Traister’s fascinating essay, published last month, on the subject of what Warren’s pedagogy means for her political prospects. Traister quotes former students who still rave about Warren’s courses. But the piece is interesting for more than just its recap of her teaching excellence,
As an instructor for large classes, it is a challenge for me to get a range of students to speak up in class. When I invite comments (“Who would like to add or ask?”), there are always a handful of students that rescue me—I think of them as my Hermiones—but the other 100-200+ students remain silent. I contrast this with my small online classes, where I hear from everyone on a regular basis. One August night a couple of years ago, I was lying in bed, thinking about how to incentivize more students to contribute in class, and came up with Fired Up and Ready to Discuss.
For most faculty members, the hardest thing about entrepreneurship is the marketing — figuring out how to "monetize" your academic skills and services.
It’s a tedious and time-consuming process that depends largely on trial and error. It also involves a fair amount of self-promotion, something that is anathema in faculty culture. Words like marketing and monetize tend to make academics very uncomfortable. And yet, without marketing, you’re just a person sitting around waiting for the phone to ring.
Whenever I am approached by academics who want to make the transition from scholarly to public writing, they always ask me the same question: "What should I write about?" But, really, that is a two-part question.
One part is about genre. Newcomers to public writing typically don’t know the genres — that is, the differences between an op-ed, an essay, a profile, a reported article, or a well researched think piece. You have to learn your journalism genres before you can decide which kind of piece to write (more about those genres in a future essay). The other part of the question has to do with figuring out what you have to contribute to public discourse. That’s what this month’s column is about.
She sat in the front row of my classroom, quiet but engaged. She didn’t raise her hand, but when I invited her into the conversation or asked students to speak to one another, she showed she had done the reading and had thought about it. I learned from an informal writing exercise that she was a first-generation college student, paving the way to higher education for her family.
Students who engage in active learning learn more -- but feel like they learn less -- than peers in more lecture-oriented classrooms. That's in part because active learning is harder than more passive learning, according to a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Based on their findings, the researchers encourage faculty members to intervene and correct what they call students' "misperception" about how they learn.
People are often told to find their passion as though passions and interests are pre-formed and must simply be discovered. This idea, however, has hidden motivational implications. Five studies examined implicit theories of interest—the idea that personal interests are relatively fixed
(fixed theory) or developed (growth theory). Whether assessed or experimentally induced, a fixed theory was more likely to dampen interest in areas outside people’s existing interests (Studies 1–3). Those endorsing a fixed theory were also more likely to anticipate boundless
motivation when passions were found, not anticipating possible difficulties (Study 4). Moreover, when engaging in a new interest became difficult, interest flagged significantly more for people induced to hold a fixed than a growth theory of interest (Study 5). Urging people to find their
passion may lead them to put all their eggs in one basket but then to drop that basket when it becomes difficult to carry.
Abstract
Many post-secondary institutions are developing policies and programs aimed at improving responses to sexual assault
experienced by students. In some areas, such as Ontario, Canada, the government has mandated post-secondary institutions
to do so. However significant these initiatives, they are predicated on the assumption that students trust, and want to
engage with, the university following sexual violence. This study explores students’ perceptions of sexual assault policies and
services on one mid-size university campus focusing specifically on how trust factors into reporting sexual victimization and
using services. Findings show that students believe that sexual assault policies and programs exist, but this does not mean
students are willing to use such resources or that they even trust that their university has students’ needs and interests at the
fore. This paper discusses policy and programmatic considerations for building student trust in their post-secondary institutions
to encourage student use of campus support.
Keywords: sexual assault policies, student trust, institutional betrayal, sexual violence, university policy, violence prevention
Canada has a highly educated population, and our overall rates of participation in post-secondary education are among the highest in the world. The problem of accessibility in Canadian higher education lies not in the overall rate of participation, but in the disparities and inequities in participation among elements of the Canadian population. Canadians from lower economic groups are less likely to obtain a postsecondary
education than individuals from wealthier backgrounds. Canada’s Aboriginal populations have extremely low levels of participation compared with
the population as a whole. Once admitted, there may also be important differences in whether students from different groups succeed in completing a postsecondary credential, or whether they are able to continue into professional or graduate programs.
It’s no surprise that would-be academics find reading a faculty job ad to be a highly confusing experience. For one thing, there is no standard format for the description of faculty positions. Throw in the fact that institutions are creating more and more part-time
positions with never-before-heard titles, and the result is a lot of perplexed young Ph.D.s.
As a new season of academic hiring gets under way, I want to offer a basic primer on how to interpret a faculty job ad, aimed at early-career scholars going on the market this fall.
Terry Wareham of Lancaster University once suggested that an article on ‘change’ in higher education be entitled ‘Quiet Flows the Don?’ While this may raise a wry smile, it is a little unfair. Try changing health or agriculture. Attempts to change higher education are likely to be protracted and uncertain, as these books illustrate.
Most developed countries are struggling with the structure of their higher education systems. England and Wales (but not Scotland), some countries of continental Europe, and Australia have yet to settle the relations between its sectors or tiers, or if they are to have a unified system, how to arrange it. Meanwhile, most of continental Europe and, until recently, England have been struggling to finance their greatly expanded systems. These enduring issues, associated with the transition from elite to mass higher education, have been made more urgent by the ‘intellectual arms race’, in which universities are competing for a place in the ‘knowledge economy’.
When I write CIHR grant applications, it’s easy for me to argue that my project is important: it’s because of the impact my work will have on the health of Canadians. But when I write SSHRC grant applications, I can’t make that same argument, because the reviewers would think I’ve applied to the wrong funding agency. How do I argue to SSHRC review committees that my work is worth funding?
Dr. Editor’s response:
The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada – while specifying different criteria for different competitions – is generally looking to fund projects that are significant, important, and valuable.
In SSHRC’s Insight Grant competition, for instance, their evaluation criteria are “challenge,” “feasibility,” and “capability”. As part of the “challenge” criterion, they’re considering the “originality, significance, and expected contribution to knowledge” of the project; under the “capability” criterion, they’re considering the “quality, quantity and significance of past experience and published and/or creative outputs” (see SSHRC Insight Grants). Other SSHRC competitions want to know about your top five “most significant career research contributions” (see SSHRC Partnership Grants).
Now that we are into the realities of teaching in a COVID-world, I keep hearing similar sentiments from my colleagues, something to the effect of, “It’s going fine, but I don’t feel like a good teacher anymore.” What I hear in these statements is not a bad teacher but one who has lost confidence in their teaching. Whether teaching fully online, a hybrid model, or in-person with social distancing requirements, everyone has had to make changes to the way they teach. The pedagogical style and practices that we previously relied on are either no longer an option or are not as effective given the current constraints. So, we have
adapted, learned the technology, and made necessary adjustments. We’re doing it, but we don’t feel like we’re doing it well. We’ve lost our confidence, and thus feel like we’re not good teachers anymore. The good news is that we don’t have to wait for teaching to return to “normal” to feel like good teachers again. We can start to feel confident again by building self-efficacy in our own online or hybrid teaching.
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.
I wager that you can put a name and highly familiar face to that second scenario. Colleagues in our departments and programs, whether department chairs, assigned mentors or members of a teaching committee, almost always conduct peer reviews of teaching. Frequently enough, we are responsible for inviting a colleague of our choice to review some course materials, visit class and craft a letter based on their observations. When it comes to our scholarship, however, peers external not only to our departments but also to our colleges and universities conduct reviews behind a double blind of anonymity.
I’ll get right to the point because I know you don’t have much time. A new semester is looming, and you are overwhelmed. It could be because you’re early in your teaching career and still feeling your way. Or it could be related to the impossible amount of work you are facing, as teaching loads grow ever heavier. But some of it arises from a common problem that you can help to alleviate yourself: You are overpreparing for class.
Teaching in a hybrid in-person/remote model requires significantly more planning than teaching in the traditional classroom model. Tasks that were once quick, such as monitoring students’ progress during class and following up on late and missing
assignments, have become laborious, and everyday activities like making sure that students have access to material from the school library and determining the best technology tools to meet students’ needs take a tremendous amount of planning. More than ever, it’s important that I use my time efficiently and allow myself time to recharge.
The numbers are striking: Within just three years, the College of Arts and Sciences at Emory University has more than tripled the proportion of faculty hires from underrepresented minority groups. How? We took many steps, but a key one was the increasingly popular, yet controversial, strategy of "cluster hiring."
As a new hiring season gets underway across academe, we all are determined to diversify our faculties — both to meet student needs and to better reflect the full spectrum of American society. Most important, we know that diversity is a critical element in
undergraduate education, research, scientific discovery, and artistic expression.
“Make sure you know which train or bus to catch, at what time(s), and the stop closest to your destination. Check the timetable! Even in large cities, bus services can be few and far between in the evenings. Avoid waiting alone at a bus stop at night, particularly in poorly lit or deserted
areas.”
You might assume that this advice was written by a fearful parent for a nervous teenager embarking on their first solo trip to a distant town. In fact, it is taken from a training leaflet titled “How can I be safe while interviewing people?”, written for its postgraduate students by the Centre for Urban History at the University of Leicester.
This is just one example of the extent to which the modern culture of fear has infiltrated university campuses. The leaflet evokes a vision of urban Britain in which the perils of a bus journey and the dangers posed by visiting people in their homes demand “that someone knows where you are going”.