Blogs

As a faculty administrator with a travel schedule that gets me away from my station, I rely on a small group of dependable colleagues (who need to be tenured faculty) to act as officer-in-charge (OIC). I literally live much of my official life vicariously through a parade of OICs who have to make routine and (less often) controversial decisions in my name. At the opposite end, I haven’t had much experience being a temporary administrator.

There's a difference.

It starts innocently enough. We save a PDF file to our desktop or in a folder. After some more work we suddenly have a folder stuffed with files and we lose the sense of structure that ties the work together. Folders and subfolders appear to try and capture structure, filenames no longer carry any meaning, and the mass of files and folders loses meaning. Then the process repeats itself.

Part of my non-work identity is defined by three interests – Broadway musicals, chocolate and cars. In the cars category, I read virtually every car magazine and look at virtually all car related websites. I don’t claim this is in any way intellectual but growing up at the time that cars helped define the national and individual identity, and personified progress, made a tremendous impact.

If you're female but not a mother, you can't be a truly great writer. On the other hand, if you are a mother, you are by definition selfish and entitled for also wanting to be a human being sometimes. At least, that is the takeaway I got from reading two articles.

Women’s studies courses were some of the most useful courses I’ve ever taken. Moreover, I can imagine them being incredibly useful for other men in management roles.

We can debate Brian Kibby's vision that higher ed should go completely digital in 36 months. Many of us have already commented on his essay "Digital Deadline", and I'm sure that you will have some strong opinions as well when you go back and read his piece and the subsequent discussion.

Sometimes you can learn things by watching "reality TV", so long as you keep in mind that it's not ... you know ... real.