Blogs

What does it mean to “support” a program?

I’ve just spent an hour online looking at messenger bags with my son. When he was getting ready to start high school, we bought him a new bag, a more “grown-up” looking bag, a messenger bag that could hold his laptop and all his books. He carried it proudly to school, slung over his shoulder with all his school supplies carefully stowed in all of the pockets.

The learning management system (LMS) has become our academic Rorschach test. We all see different things when looking at the same LMS platforms.

The new Steve Jobs biography details the Apple co-founder's plans to disrupt the textbook industry. But just how disruptive were his plans?

An NPR story, this morning, reported on the Keystone XL pipeline, protests against it in Washington, and a surprising alliance forming against it in Nebraska. Of course, they felt obligated to let TransCanada -- the pipeline company proposing to build Keystone XL -- have its say.

Mentoring graduate students constitutes a significant part of many academics' scholarly activities. On the surface, the mentor's role is straightforward: assist the student’s selection of courses so that she is adequately prepared for comprehensive exams or field papers; guide the student’s selection of a doable and marketable dissertation project; and work assiduously to place the student in the highest ranking university for which she is prepared.

You know that feeling when you’ve suspected something for a long time but couldn’t prove it, and then someone proves it for you? This article had that effect. It’s about how student attrition in STEM majors is actually higher in more selective institutions than in less selective ones. It brought back vivid memories of my days at Snooty Liberal Arts College, and even of late high school.

What if I want or need to get a tenure-track position? I often (but not always) see the words “or related discipline” at the end of the degree requirements in job descriptions. At what point does your research trump your degree? And, what kinds of research output qualify you? Is presenting at Rhetoric and Composition conferences enough? Do I have to have one, two, three, ten articles that are about rhetoric and/or composition? A book? Does co-founding #FYCchat, a Twitter chat for those who teach Freshman Composition help or hurt? Does teaching writing at various levels for almost ten years help or hurt? Does working to innovate how I teach writing (attempting to create my own peer-driven model) help or hurt? Does anything other than the journal article/book even count?