Two news releases came across my EurekAlert feeds containing findings that I’m shocked– shocked!– to learn about. The first delivers the startling news that “A high percentage of young males appear willing to purchase alcohol for underage youth.” They conducted a “shoulder tapping” study, in which young-looking students approached strangers outside liquor stores, and asked… Continue reading Shocking News from Academia: Special Alcohol Edition
Category: Academia
Oh, No, William and Mary Won’t Do
I mostly read science-oriented blogs these days, where I get to hear again and again about how awful the treatment of academic scientists is, and how physics departments are horrible Kafkaesque operations dedicated to crushing the souls of postdocs and junior faculty. Which makes the train wreck that is the Philosophy department at William and… Continue reading Oh, No, William and Mary Won’t Do
Blogwars!
Scott Eric Kaufman must have a dissertation deadline coming up, because his procrastination is getting intense. He’s just set up a text adventure game on his blog: You are standing near the Moral High Ground. To your South are Theists (or Theorists). To your North are Atheists (or Anti-Theorists). To your East and West are… Continue reading Blogwars!
Education and Media Relations
The great media relations debate is starting to wind down, but there’s still a bit of life in it. In particular, I want to comment on something that Bora said, that was amplified on by Melinda Barton. Here’s Bora’s comment: Everyone is afraid to use the F word, but the underlying tension is, at its… Continue reading Education and Media Relations
Small Victories
Here’s my achievement for the week: OK, that may not seem like much, but this is what it looked like before I started:
Shocking News from Academia
That’s shocking mostly in a Claude-Rains-in-Casablanca sort of sense (“I am shocked–shocked!”), but there are a couple of stories in Inside Higher Ed this morning presenting new findings that seem like they ought to be really obvious. The first is a new study of the University of California system that finds that different majors are… Continue reading Shocking News from Academia
Ranking the Unmeasurable
Today’s Inside Higher Ed has a story about growing resistance to the US News rankings: In the wake of meetings this week of the Annapolis Group — an organization of liberal arts colleges — critics of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings are expecting a significant increase in the number of institutions where… Continue reading Ranking the Unmeasurable
Great Moments in Student Course Evaluations
In response to a question about “Other aspects of the instructor’s teaching,” one student in my recently completed E&M class wrote: Prof. Orzel gives the impression of an everyday guy who just happens to have a vast but hidden knowledge of physics and the course was taught in that slightly utilitarian approach. I’ve been looking… Continue reading Great Moments in Student Course Evaluations
Graduation Day
Today is, at long last, Commencement at Union. At around the time this is posted, I’ll be parading around in academic robes, or possibly listening to a variety of boring speeches. Of course, I can’t really claim that I don’t enjoy this. After all, Kate and I drove back here from Boston last night after… Continue reading Graduation Day
We Live to Serve
Inside Higher Ed has an opinion piece today in which a a provost and a professor talk about service, which is the catch-all category of faculty activities that aren’t teaching and research. As the title of the piece says, this is a particularly unloved area: Yet this is the area that is least discussed in… Continue reading We Live to Serve