I often return to the quote, “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry,” by William Butler Yeats, which I first became aware of through his Irish countryman and fellow poet and Nobel Prize recipient, Seamus Heaney. I don’t take this utterance to mean that what we…
Full disclosure, up front: I drink Starbucks every day, Sumatra if you must know, but I brew it at home because I like the affordability factor this option provides me. I have always liked the way Starbucks goes the extra mile when it comes to its employees, especially when I consider the working environment it…
Recent news about a former provost who allegedly touched inappropriately, repeatedly inappropriately, colleagues, got me thinking about a serious and pervasive practice in higher education. This was after some initial sophomoric snickering and thoughts I am sure even the most “serious” academic would have after reading about this case. Letters of recommendation are written to assist…
By now it is a cliché, the math or science professor whom no one can understand. If one complains one might be accused of being culturally insensitive or racist. Or told to be open-minded and listen more carefully (I suppose the mind and ear are connected). Or worse, and commonly, “Well, we couldn’t find…
This is not so much in response to Mary Flanagan’s essay, “The Classroom as Arcade,” recently published by Inside Higher Ed, which features a vivid observation of a student in class who “check[ed] out from a class he likes” to play a role-playing game on an electronic device while others “openly engaged with their Facebook pages,”…
Today’s Inside Higher Ed prominently features an article about faculty complaining about The Vagina Monologues being in part performed at a year’s end celebration ceremony coinciding with commencement at Mercer County Community College. Surely this news is a kick in the pants that we need to consider what really constitutes acceptable ceremonial material. Having alumni…
An article with the attention-grabbing headline of “Home Depot, The Place to Go for Toilet Paper?” in Friday’s issue of The Wall Street Journal made some interesting points about how to drive consumer traffic. Yes, I do not like to use that term either or to apply it to higher education, but that seems to be where…
I remember at one point in my career working in an old building that clearly needed to be renovated. But as those things go, funds are at times allocated for different projects on campus and priorities change. Long story short, the building was not renovated but it was decided to renovate instead the bathrooms inside…