BY JOHANN NEEM In a recent New York Times column, NYU business school professor Hans Taparia proclaimed (as many have before) that “the future of college is online.” Whenever I hear these words, I think of a student of mine, a dual major in history and anthropology, who testified before my institution’s Board of Trustees…
BY THE COLORADO AAUP CONFERENCE The Colorado Conference of the American Association of University Professors endorsed and promulgated the following statement on May 10, 2020. As Colorado’s universities and colleges ponder the risks and rewards of opening their campuses this fall in the midst of the continuing pandemic, the prospect of renewing normal or even…
BY DEE ANDREWS In History, we often talk about the 5 “C’s” of historical thinking: context, complexity, change, causality, and contingency. That last — the BIG unexpected event – you may have noticed is what we’re going through right now. So that led me to think of a similar scheme for what we’re facing in…
BY AARON BARLOW Those advocating a permanent move online for a much greater proportion of college classes are, I think, purposefully conflating two different needs in their quest. The first is the need for all teachers to be comfortable using digital tools, something we all have been woefully remiss in fulfilling. The second is the…
BY AARON BARLOW The organization Tenure for the Common Good has issued a Statement on Equitiy and Teaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Follow the link to read the whole of it, but here are the first few paragraphs: The COVID-19 pandemic presents significant challenges to higher education. Tens of thousands of faculty are suddenly moving…
BY AARON BARLOW We’re learning a lot about distance education right now. As a group, that is, as faculty. Few of us have ever bothered with using digital tools, much less considered teaching solely online or even in a hybrid situation. We’ve assumed, correctly, that distance education is a pale approximation of learning without electronic…
BY NOAH ZATZ The following is reposted with permission from The Faculty Lounge. Noah Zatz is professor of law at the UCLA School of Law. The post is edited lightly from a letter to the UCLA administrative and faculty leadership, and posted on his Facebook page. I am of the firm and strong view that…
BY KAITLIN POMERANTZ The following is reposted with permission from Hyperallergic, “a forum for playful, serious, and radical perspectives on art in society.” Kaitlin Pomerantz is an artist and educator in Philadelphia. In the short story “Swim Team,” by Miranda July, the protagonist teaches a group of people in a land-locked town to swim without…
BY AARON BARLOW Listen to our students. That’s the best way for us teachers to craft a successful end to a disrupted semester in a nation in crisis. After Kent State in 1970, we students at Utica College (like our contemporaries all over the country) shut our campus down. Under the leadership of faculty, however,…