BY JOHN W. LAWRENCE In an article published in the May/June 2018 issue of Academe entitled Student Evaluations of Teaching Are Not Valid, I briefly reviewed the literature on whether student evaluations of teaching (SET) are good measures of teaching effectiveness. They are not. First, SET scores reflect race, gender, age and other biases of…
BY BEN TRACHTENBERG The Godfather famously advised, “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” Regardless of whether university trustees view faculty as friends, enemies, or something else altogether, they would be wise to pursue greater closeness with the people doing the teaching and research at their favorite campus. In particular, more universities should include…
BY SANDIE GRAVETT AND STELLA ANDERSON Last week, we formally launched our study Faculty Employment Rights and Hearing Procedures in Public Non-Union Universities by emailing a survey link to faculty members on the higher education campuses in the constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina. These 16 higher education campuses provide an excellent test…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT The case of Jay Smith, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill history professor whose course on college athletics was quashed by university administrators, has received considerable attention because it raises serious questions about academic freedom. Yet, as recent events attest, the case is also important on shared governance grounds. Specifically, it…
BY WENDY BROWN The following is the text of an address delivered at commencement ceremonies for the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, on May 14. Wendy Brown is Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. Her remarks were originally posted at the Remaking the University blog. …
BY CHELSEA FOWLER When Frances McDormand delivered her 2018 Oscars acceptance speech, she left the audience with two final words, “inclusion rider,” which sparked a flurry of Google searches across the US. Inclusion rider is a relatively new term coined by Dr. Stacy L. Smith at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. These…
BY BETHANY LETIECQ When I joined the George Mason University faculty in 2013, I had already had a taste of what could be achieved when faculty, students, community members, and organizations work together in common cause. Earlier in my career, I helped organize a faculty union at Montana State University and, in my community-based work…
BY THE COLORADO AAUP CONFERENCE Fort Lewis College’s AAUP chapter registered a victory in March when President Dene Thomas announced that no faculty no tenured or tenure-track people will be eliminated as part of proposed FLC budget reductions. Her decision followed an FLC-AAUP analysis of the proposed budget that demonstrated cuts could be achieved without sacrificing…
BY RAY HOGLER Teachers from various state school districts rallied in Denver on April 26-27, 2108, to demand increases in pay and benefits. Most affected districts chose to cancel classes on those days rather than attempting to cope with the walkouts. In Fort Collins, Poudre School District Superintendent Sandra Smyser declared that “teachers’ actions are…
BY STEVE MUMME It was a landmark moment when Colorado State’s faculty council voted to endorse the Committee on the Responsibilities and Academic Standing of Faculty’s (CoRSAF’s) proposal establishing “contract” faculty appointments for non-tenure track faculty (NTTF) on campus. The new appointment type effectively brings those faculty out of the shadows and into the mainstream…