U.S. Higher Education News from September 29, 2015

The board of trustees at the State College of Florida have voted to phase out continuing contracts for the college’s faculty. Those contracts have been available to faculty who have five years of seniority. Although the phasing out of such contracts seems consistent with Governor Rick Scott’s professed interest in restricting, if not eliminating, tenure…

BGSU Chapter President and Colleague Coordinate Presidential Poll in Ohio

At Bowling Green State University, Melissa Miller and David Jackson, both faculty members in the university’s department of political science, have worked with the university’s office of communications and contracted with Zogby Analytics to poll likely Ohio voters on their preferences among the presidential candidates of both parties. This poll is the first sponsored by…

Dominican University Forms New A.A.U.P. Chapter

Dominican University in River Forest, a suburb of Chicago, has formed a new A.A.U.P. chapter. They received a welcoming letter e-mail from Alexis Pearlstein, administrative assistant in the Department of Organizing. It included a copy of the Association’s constitution, which is not in the current Redbook. I am linking it here. From: Alexis Pearlstein Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2015…

Brooks Falls Apart

The W. B. Yeats poem “The Second Coming” first appeared in 1919, almost a century ago. That’s probably why, though he alludes to it frequently in his column “Enter the Age of the Outsiders,” David Brooks never quotes from it directly–nor does he mention Yeats directly. He knows that most of his readers will understand…

Flexibility and Pedagogy

In his influential “‘Good-bye, Teacher… ‘” Fred Keller lists five aspects of his Personalized System of Instruction that differentiate it from more conventional methodologies: (1) The go-at-your-own-pace feature, which permits a student to move through the course at a speed commensurate with his ability and other demands upon his time. (2) The unit-perfection requirement for…

Opposition to Secret Presidential Searches Spreads

The decision last month of the Iowa Board of Regents to name former IBM senior vice president J. Bruce Harreld as the University of Iowa’s next president, despite widespread opposition to his candidacy among faculty and others, has brought renewed attention to presidential searches.  This past weekend at the request of the UI AAUP chapter…