Blogs

Earlier this week, The Boy’s baseball season ended, and the team went out for ice cream. The Girl and I had been at the game, so we went, too. While the team took over the inside booths and did the things that sugared-up eleven year old boys do, TG and I stood in line by the outside window to get our cones.

For the past couple months I've been planning a trip to Rome, Italy. Sounds wonderful right? Wrong. I'm here doing some pre-dissertation research that will be pivotal to not only writing grants but doing my dissertation proposal this Fall. This trip has a lot of weight in how the next couple years are going to proceed. I understand that I shouldn't be complaining or nervous about going to Rome, I mean it is a beautiful city full of amazing archaeological things to do. However, I'm not here to be a tourist. I'm here to do research that could change the outcome of whether I get funding or pass my proposals. I had this discussion with a friend of mine who is dealing with a similar problem, although her's is worse because she's worried about going to Hawaii.

I find it interesting when economics is applied to offbeat topics.This is done in the best seller “Freakonomics,” which looks at a variety of social issues using the tools of economics. My own research applies the discipline of economics to studying altruism and nonprofit organizations, topics that are probably not the first things that come to mind when one thinks of economics. I also recall the professor who taught me macroeconomics many years ago, whose own research was on “envy”. I found myself thinking of him recently as I ran into one of my daughter’s former teachers as we stopped by the library on the way home from her summer camp. With wet hair and a bathing suit under her shorts, the teacher said that she looked like she was having fun. I could only add “I want her life.”

In our teaching roles as graduate students, we often are called on to assess students' participation in classroom activities like discussion; often, this evaluation assumes the form of assigning an actual grade to such effort. As I look back on my graduate school career (yes, I successfully defended my dissertation last month!), one constant stands out, at least in terms of the many courses I've taught and the discussion sections I've led: "Grading participation" is a tricky but necessary business.

Not a week goes by that I don’t hear about (or from) some Federal initiative asking community colleges to solve this social problem or that one, generally by being innovative and forward-looking. And I’m actually sympathetic to many of the calls.

It's been several months now since I cleaned all the tech blogs out of my RSS reader, a process that I talked about here. Needless to say, I haven't added them back. I'm experimenting with Prismatic, a social news discovery app instead.

I’m preparing to speak at the GMAC Annual Conference next week and thought I’d preview one of the topics here, to get your reaction.

The Good News: Audible.com has finally started to roll out some social features designed to crowdsource audiobook buying recommendations by connecting subscribers with reviewers (and reviews) that may be of interest. The Bad News: I only have 2 followers.