OCAAUP 2016 Annual Meeting: Resolution 2–Instruction First
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Whereas the primary mission of Ohio’s colleges and universities is to educate students, Whereas colleges and universities have increasingly and irresponsibly devoted resources to bloated administrative bureaucracies, to equally ambitious and expensive sports programs supported by ever-more elaborate and more expensive athletic facilities, and a seemingly endless succession of other expensive…
What's a Teacher/Scholar to Do?
BY AARON BARLOW There’s an essay on Chronicle,com by NYU professor Eric Klinenberg called “What Trump’s Win Compels Scholars To Do.” After discussing the overreach of Big Data, Klinenberg writes: There’s one other thing that universities must do better: teach student skills for learning, discerning, reasoning, and communicating in an informational environment dominated by quick…
The Remove to Representation
Faculty at Western Carolina U Exert Singular Oversight on Koch Center
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Here are excerpts from two articles written by Becky Johnson for the Smoky Mountain News [http://www.smokymountainnews.com/], passed on to me by Connor Gibson of UnKoch My Campus: WCU Faculty Closely Monitoring $2 Million Koch Gift Faculty members have lauded administration for giving them a seat at the table. That wouldn’t happen…
Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson Advocates Destruction of Colleges
BY JOHN K. WILSON Inside Higher Ed reports on a recent interview by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson in which Johnson declares, “we need destructive technology for our higher education system.” This is exactly what Donald Trump wanted to do with his “Trump University.” As I note in my new book, Trump Unveiled: Exposing the Bigoted…
Melania Trump Can Make Lectures on Plagiarism more Stimulating
BY GEFEN BAR-ON SANTOR Guest blogger Gefen Bar-On Santor teaches English at the University of Ottawa. I often feel in competition with the Internet as I search for materials to make my lectures more stimulating—a word many students use to describe what they want. No matter how engaging I try to become, there is still…
Why Overloads Are a Bad Deal for All Faculty
BY JEFF BAKER The word overload can have more than one meaning to higher education faculty. It can mean increasing class size or adding additional course sections to the faculty member’s required minimum teaching load. While many full-time faculty welcome overloads as an opportunity to increase income, they are usually a bad deal. Adjunct…
What's a Teacher to Do?
BY AARON BARLOW When you rely on the numbers, you count out the people. How often have we heard that? How frequently do we remind ourselves that it’s the people—in our case as educators, the students—who matter most, the individuals and not the numbers that reflect the aggregate? Yet our actions continue to be toward…
Impact of GOP Convention on Colleges and Universities
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Writing for Crain’s Cleveland Business, Rachel Abbey McCafferty reports on how Cleveland’s colleges and universities are being impacted by the Republican National Convention: “Cleveland State University’s second summer session is getting underway on Monday, July 18 — the first day of the convention. With the parking restrictions and road closures in the…