Category: Department

The Distracted Academic Self

What is your passion?

By Donald E. Hall (Lehigh)

When I published The Academic Self: An Owner’s Manual (Ohio State University Press) 10 years ago, there was one point I hoped to make above all others: I wanted academic readers to understand the absolute necessity of continuously working to sort out what we can change or influence in our own lives and selves, and what we cannot.

Much has changed since then, but I believe that point is just as valid today.

Back in 2002, my work life was so hectic that I had to microschedule everything just to keep my sanity intact. I was working at California State University at Northridge, a teaching-intensive institution, holding two administrative appointments, and commuting two or sometimes three hours a day on Los Angeles freeways.

The context of my work has changed significantly in the past decade. I have made two Continue reading “The Distracted Academic Self”

Into the Future With MOOC’s

How will open online courses affect the future of education?

By Kevin Carey (New America Foundation)

In the spring of my freshman year in college, I took “Principles of Microeconomics” in Lecture Hall 1, a 400-seat auditorium. The professor was an economist and thus possessed a certain perspective on human nature. On the first day of class, he explained that our grades would be based on two midterms and a final. If we skipped the first midterm, the second would count double. If we skipped them both, the final would count for 100 percent of our grade. I may or may not have waited until the hour ended before walking out the back door of Lecture Hall 1 toward the nearest bar.

Fifteen weeks later, suddenly mindful of various dire warnings from my father about passing grades, continuing financial support, and the strong connection between them, I cracked my Continue reading “Into the Future With MOOC’s”

The Future Is Now, and Has Been for Years

How will open online courses affect the future of education?

By James O’Donnell

I think I taught the first MOOC in history. It was the spring of 1994.

I call it the best idea I ever had in the shower. About to teach a standard course, introducing the life and thought of St. Augustine, I wanted to do better. What about, I thought in midshampoo, inviting the rest of the world into the classroom? The Internet, after all. …

By today’s standards the technology was primitive. The first graphical Web browser had just been released, but very few people had it—or enough network connection to use it. So we depended on Gopher, the early Internet protocol, to deliver the Continue reading “The Future Is Now, and Has Been for Years”

For Love AND Money

How do you get the most out of college?

by Brian Strow (Western Kentucky)

A flourishing life is not one dimensional.  It involves the search for truth and a striving for self-awareness/ self-improvement.  It requires the development of one’s mind, body, and soul.  A flourishing life requires faith, exudes hope, and shows love to others.  It also requires a broadly defined definition of education.

Self-improvement should be a lifelong passion.  Universities and colleges offer a unique development opportunity where students are enabled, and encouraged, to embrace their flourishing in a meaningful way.  Universities and colleges are not meant to produce perfect graduates, but rather people who are better equipped to pursue their view of a flourishing life.  Too often students obtain their degree without actually Continue reading “For Love AND Money”

Perhaps Someday We Can Forgive Our Common Enemies

What would you tell your grandchildren?

by Brooke Allen (Q4Colleges)

 

Dear Grandchildren,

You and we have a common enemy: your parents.

This is just the natural order of things. Parents and children put each other through hell everywhere. Your dysfunctional family is no big deal.

Think about it. You imagine you are the center of the universe even though you can’t even wipe your own butt. Unless your parents sell you into slavery, you cost way more than you are worth. The reason babies are cute is because otherwise parents would kill them.

And your parents are the Devil incarnate. They are hell-bent on controlling you – telling you what to do, how to do it, and what to think. Even if by some miracle you feel your parents are not idiots it is only because they are good at manipulating you. If children were not dependent on their parents they would kill them. Continue reading “Perhaps Someday We Can Forgive Our Common Enemies”

The Problem with Talking about Intellectual Virtues

What should colleges teach?

By: Brooke Allen (Q4Colleges.com)

The problem with talking about Intellectual Virtues is that it can give intellectuals the feeling they are virtuous when they are just talking.

Colleges might not think of themselves as being in the business of teaching virtues (like honesty, courage, fairness, wisdom, and love of the truth) but the fact is they can reinforce or squash good instincts. For example, a student I know wrote a college admissions essay that began with a graphic description of the earth under attack by aliens when he, as super-hero, arrived to save the day. His essay concluded by saying he wanted to go to college to save the world.

Three years into college I introduced the student to the Heroic Imagination Project (www.HeroicImagination.org). Its founder, Dr. Phillip Zimbardo, wrote to the student asking how they might work together to change the world. The student wrote to me, “I’d rather not change the course of history than risk changing it for the worse.” I can not tell you how imagined courage become timidity but I can tell you when and where it happened.

Question: How can the people at colleges do a better job teaching courage? Continue reading “The Problem with Talking about Intellectual Virtues”

A Song of Vice and Mire

What do academics do wrong?

By Rob Jenkins

For fun, I’ve been reading George R.R. Martin’s marvelous fantasy epic, A Song of Ice and Fire, about a medieval-ish kingdom and its wars and intrigues. If you haven’t yet encountered the books (five in the series so far), I highly recommend them, as Martin deftly intertwines fantastical elements, such as dragons and wights (medieval zombies), with a quasi-historical storyline to create a kind of J.R.R. Tolkien-meets-Philippa Gregory effect.

What fascinates me most about the narrative, however, is the extent to which it parallels my experiences as a community-college professor and administrator. As I follow the political machinations of the fictional court at King’s Landing—the alliances and conspiracies, the jealousies and betrayals, the dalliances and beheadings—I am frequently put in mind of actual people I have known and events I have witnessed over my 27-year career. Sometimes I wonder if George R.R. Martin isn’t really just a Continue reading “A Song of Vice and Mire”

Every Monograph a Movie

Are students learning the best way?

by Marshall T. Poe (University of Iowa)

Although we often forget it, reading is a profoundly unnatural act. We were not evolved to read. Eyes are for seeing, ears are for hearing, but we have nothing specifically designed for reading. That makes reading difficult in two ways. First, it’s hard to learn to read, largely because you have to rewire your brain to do it. That takes a lot of time and effort, so much so that some people never learn to read well at all. Second, even if you have learned to read well, it’s often not physically pleasurable. Natural selection gave us psychological reward systems that favor listening and watching. We generally like to listen and watch regardless of what we are listening to or looking at. In short, we were built to enjoy listening and watching more than reading. The proof of that is manifest. Over the Continue reading “Every Monograph a Movie”

My Mission is to Use My Talents and Help Others do the Same

What is your mission?

an Interview with Beth Adubato (Rutgers)

Q4Colleges: So what’s your personal mission and how did you come by it?

Beth: Well I was thinking about it and it sounds like a Miss America answer; I hate to say it but it’s really true. My personal mission is to make use of all the talents I was given, and try and help and inspire people to do the same. And to raise a child that has the same sense of caring about community. Continue reading “My Mission is to Use My Talents and Help Others do the Same”

Over Planning is Not the Answer in Today’s Uncertain World

How should you organize your life?

by Len Schlesinger  (Babson)

The world was a very certain place when I was growing up in New York City. From an early age, I had my life planned out.  Everything was marvelously scripted: I was going to go to a specialized high school; I was going to go to a great university; and I was going to be a lawyer. Despite the fact that my family had no money, through my academic performance I was able to excel in elementary school and junior high school and believed that I could do just about anything I wanted. And much of what I wanted came true. I went to an Ivy League college—and then I got to day one of law school and discovered that I had absolutely no interest in law as a career. Continue reading “Over Planning is Not the Answer in Today’s Uncertain World”