Filter & Sort
Metaphor and medicine
For years, I've used the metaphor of lifestyle diseases -- obesity, diabetes, heart disease -- to help students understand that seemingly desirable behaviors, when taken to excess, can lead to negative and entirely unintended consequences. Eat too much, enjoy too much leisure, degrade a system -- your body -- that evolved to prosper under circumstances of scarce food and regular exertion. As a metaphor, it's served to help students understand that seemingly desirable social behaviors like production, consumption and energy (particularly, fossil energy) utilization can degrade a climate system that served humanity well under circumstances of minimal resource utilization and long-term carbon (coal, oil) sequestration.
Synthesizing Science and the Liberal Arts
How might institutions that focus on science and engineering provide a more blended education that provides opportunities for students to study and apply what they have learned outside the sciences?
Dalkey Archive Press Goes All Willy Wonka
Are you Charlie Bucket enough to get the job?
Saudade Brasil
My colleague from São Paulo, Fredric Litto, offers insight and counsel for those interested in exploring academic opportunities and partnerships in Brazil.
When Laws Crash Into Each Other
Legislators are masters of compartmentalizing. This law addresses this, and that law addresses that. And much of the time, it’s possible to construct a reasonable argument for a particular decision, taken in complete isolation.
Accrediting Individuals, Not Institutions
Where I suggest something revolutionary, radical, and probably completely naive. So what else is new?
Higher Ed, "Sweet Tooth", and the Battle of Ideas
Sweet Tooth is my favorite novel of 2012. Ian McEwan's story of literature meets spies is at once completely original and totally engrossing.
Long Distance Mom: Getting Ready for College
After taking the fall semester off, my son Nick is ready to begin his college life in January at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, the "jewel by the bay." As he reported in this blog, Nick went through a period of distracted, teenage depression — his high school burn out years. He spent more time on YouTube than Algebra, causing his parents undue worry as they received calls from guidance counselors telling them that Nick was close to not graduating.