One of my least favorite end-of-term rituals for faculty is the dreaded student course evaluations. These have two components: the numerical bubble-sheet evaluations, which provide the pseudo-quantitatvie evaluation used to compare courses, and written responses to a half-dozen very general questions. The latter are at least potentially more useful, particularly when the standard questions are […]
Category: Academia
Graduation Thoughts
Miscellaneous thoughts prompted by yesterday’s Commencement: – Like most of the graduations I’ve been to, Union’s academic procession is led by a pipe and drum band. Why is that? What is it about academia and bagpipes? – Also like most of the graduatiions I’ve been to, Union’s graduation is held early on Sunday morning, with […]
Last of the Firsts
Today was Commencement at Union, and a cold and miserable morning for it. Normally, the faculty are grateful for our spots on the Library collonnade, where we’re out of the sun, and able to enjoy a slight breeze, but today, it was about twenty degrees colder than normal, and the breeze was more of a […]
Switching Into Research Mode: Priceless
By the numbers: Exams graded: 16 Mean exam grade: 64% Mean final grade for Physics 121: B- Papers assigned: 17 Papers received and graded: 16 Mean final grade for Physics 311: B+ Students receiving grades of Incomplete: 1 Large bottles of Scottish ale drunk while watching “Dr. Who”: 1 And another academic year is in […]
How the Other Half Grades
My Quantum Optics class this term is a junior/ senior level elective, one of a set of four or five such classes that we rotate through, offering one or two a year. We require physics majors to take one of these classes in order to graduate, and encourage grad-school-bound students to take as many as […]
Intake Police
Two news stories today relating to students’ intake of various substances, and the people who want to control them: First, an essay in the New York Times about misguided anti-obesity measures in the public schools. It’s got the requisite list of dodgy medical statistics, and some shots at the BMI as a measure of “obesity.” […]
Fact and Fiction
A couple of link-worthy posts dealing with the true nature of academia: Over at the Little Professor, Miriam Burstein addresses the movie cliches of academia (spinning off a post at Michael Berube’s blog). Meanwhile, Dr. Free-Ride discusses the finer points of tailoring academic regalia, which is useful information as graduation season approaches. (My own cheap […]
The Nature of the Job
On one of the occasions when I called the gastroenterologists to complain that my heartburn wasn’t getting any better (there were a couple of rounds of such calls, before I went back to my regular doctor), the woman I spoke to asked “Are you experiencing stress at work?” “Yes,” I said, “and before you say […]
A Day in the Life
Woke up, got out of bed Ran a comb across my head…
Evaluate This!
Timothy Burke, my go-to-guy for deep thoughts about academia, had a nice post about student evaluations last week. Not ecvaluations of students, evaluations by students– those little forms that students fill out at many schools (not Swarthmore, though) giving their opinion of the class in a variety of areas. (Probably not entirely coincidentally, as this […]