Blogs

While I have not always agreed with some of the tenets of the phenomenon known as "personal branding," I do value the importance of certain aspects.

A correspondent pointed my attention to Dylan Walsh's NY Times green blog entry from yesterday.

Long ago, when I heard or read about the huge pressure continuously faced by serious and appreciated academics to publish as much as possible (following the overused and abused slogan “publish or perish“), I was extremely surprised – if not automatically cynical. How could an academic do anything else but write?

I’m working on the executive summary for an annual report on a major grant. Much of the report involves importing budget numbers from wherever, and I have help with that, but the summary part is my own. Which means I have to write in the office.

Today was my first day back at work after a 10-day holiday which was a whirlwind of trips up and down the east coast. We arrived home late, exhausted. In early January the campus is eerily quiet. The coffee shop is closed and so are most of the cafeterias. Still, there was plenty of work waiting.

For-profit higher ed evangelists, agnostics, and critics should all read Change.edu. If you are inclined to see for-profit higher ed as a positive force for innovation in post-secondary education (as I am), then you will find much to like in Rosen's argument for the place of proprietary institutions in the higher ed ecosystem.

The end of 2011 was a mad, crazy flurry in our household. Between the season’s added extras: visits from family and friends, shopping for gifts, driving kids around, a science fair experiment (etc) and finishing some high priority work items over the holidays we did manage to catch up on some tasks (and sleep!) postponed through much of the fall. Still, a lot still remains to be done.

I’m wondering if there are other productive ways of using January.