Blogs

As we reported earlier this month, we have started rolling out the results of our fall surveys with those newer-to-higher ed (“newbies”) and those that have been in higher ed for a longer period of time (“veterans”). Today we’ll let you know what these 459 people told us about what surprised them when they first started working in higher ed.

I'm not a big television watcher, especially when baseball is in the off-season, but I am a Food Network junkie. This semester, my rethinking feedback (how to give it, what it should focus on, how it contributes to the conversation of a course) while also watching "Chopped" and "Next Iron Chef: Redemption" got me noticing how the programming on the channel is actually focused a lot on giving feedback.

I was asked by some colleagues if I could recommend any web based and/or mobile collaborative platforms for virtual teams. The requirements include the need to manage and track projects, share and collaboratively author and edit documents, and engage in virtual meetings.

At the last school board meeting there were two distinct discussions, both excellent. The first, not surprisingly after the tragedy in Connecticut, dealt with school security and the second dealt with an early exposure world languages program.

With due consideration and appreciation to all players in the knowledge and discourse domain, universities remain the sole credible bastions of critical inquiry, though they remain largely overlooked and their potential poorly tapped. To be more direct, knowledge, innovation and discourse generated and developed by African universities, albeit meager, remain largely underutilized, and worse, often ignored.

Last Friday, Ben called me at work. I answered with some trepidation, because 1) he knows not to call me during supervision hours unless it is an emergency, and 2) he never calls, only texts.

Well, it’s like ballet.

I am a sociologist. I teach some of those courses that many academics wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. One such course is Sex, Gender, and Society. I also teach other courses or segments of other courses that deal with sexuality, globalization, imperialism, wars, religion, sweatshops. These are all difficult courses and topics to teach. Many of my colleagues think I am a glutton for punishment for wanting to teach these courses (if these weren’t enough I just added Sociology of the Body and Embodiment to the list of courses I teach).