Blogs

All my life, I've been an extreme introvert. A thoughtful, quiet child, I was continually told by strangers to “Smile!” At the beginning of graduate school I scored 98% introversion on the Meyers-Briggs test. A vocational test in high school suggested that I was temperamentally suited to be a sculptor.

Student Affairs Divisions, Units, Departments, and Offices have been using Facebook Pages as communications and engagement platforms for almost as long as there have been Facebook Pages. In many ways, Facebook Pages have become our outposts for engagement.

Do you find that social media platforms help you with your teaching, research or advising?

So, to protect my own fragile ego, I like to have practice runs of my big presentations in more casual events--but not where the entire audience is made up of my friends and family. Brown bags are a great resource for practicing your presentation, building your confidence, and sharing your research. We have them on campus all the time and they give you an opportunity to present your materials in a somewhat casual, but somewhat formal setting. Sometimes you'll get some friendly and familiar faces in the crowd, but more often than not, it simulates the "real thing" in a more effective setting than sitting in front of a mirror and practicing your speech.

Isn’t it time to give it up with those silly global rankings already?

As regular readers know, I grew up in a city with minor league baseball. As it happened, a few of the players from the years I paid attention went on later to significant major league careers; one of them even became a first-ballot Hall of Famer. (Yes, I saw him play in the minors. Even then, you could tell he’d be special.)

We need more dialog about our teaching failures, including how we define failure in the classroom.

The techno thriller is fast becoming one of my preferred fiction genres. Zero Day is a terrific beach book (or whatever the winter February school vacation equivalent is, the time period in which I interfaced with the book).