Blogs

Full title: New Routines, Old Routines; Good Routines, Bad Routines. Yes, my life has become one sad, sad Dr. Suess book, but with fewer rhymes.

"Radical activism" taking over the University of California? I wish.

Social media increases student engagement. How do I know this? Well, let's try an analogy. Let's say that you are a carpenter in the early 1900s. You have a certain toolkit that you use to go about your work. You build houses with said toolkit. Now, let's hop in a DeLorean to 2012. Carpentry is a totally different gig. The tools have changed…a lot. Big box stores provide ample selections of tools and all sorts of gadgets. Carpentry has evolved, in part, because the tools have made increases in efficiencies possible. In the sense that Student Affairs practitioners are like carpenters - instead of building houses - we build community, increase student engagement, and foster opportunities for student development.

What can we learn in higher ed from the new TEDBooks initiative? I have no idea, but I do have some questions:

With all the talk about how our attention spans are suffering from our collective technology addiction, perhaps there is at least one positive consequence of thumb-typing and 140-character limits.

I always enjoy a good laugh bit it rarely happens when I am reading economics. I’ve never thought of economics as the “dismal science” but likewise, it never seems to be a barrel of laughs. Two weeks ago, while reading one of the Sunday newspapers, I came across an interview by Mary Ann Gwinn of The Seattle Times with Yoram Bauman, Ph.D. who describes himself as “the world’s first and only stand-up economist.”

Every summer, my undergraduate school offered a ten-week summer theater intensive. Students studied acting, directing, playwriting, stagecraft, movement, and voice all day, five days a week, and in the evenings and on weekends they prepared a play for performance.

A month of teaching was just what I needed at the end of my first two years as president. And a transition for this blog ...