Blogs

When I first began working at the University, I was absolutely terrified of making an idiot of myself. I had graduated ten years earlier with an honours degree in Psychology, and had done very little of academic note since then. And while I still don’t relish the idea of broadcasting my ignorance when it happens to come up, I have realized that faculty and administration do understand that everyone comes from diverse educational backgrounds: one person’s expertise in bats does not make another’s knowledge of tree rings any less significant or noteworthy.

Great expectations UK-style: foreign students = export earnings (in an era of austerity)

My campus is in the middle of a strategic planning process, and I have the good fortune of participating in the "digital" working group.

In geometry, we define “similar” structures as being of the same shape but of different sizes. I found myself thinking of this recently as we drove through a town in New York named “Ludingtonville.” It reminded me of a statue in the middle of my home town that shows a figure on a horse obviously shouting something to anyone who would listen.

If you create video content and use YouTube as your communications platform, then you have to check out the YouTube Creator Playbook. Billed as a compilation of important tips, best practices, and strategies, the Creator Playbook is a must-read for all levels of YouTube users. It literally is 70 pages of awesome. Seriously, if you want to get better at using YouTube, read the Creator Playbook.

A couple of weeks ago, some economists from UMass published an open letter of support for the Occupy movements around the USA and the world. Maybe it was simply in the spirit of public scholarship, maybe it was an attempt to expiate some of the responsibility of their profession for recent failures, maybe it was just a case of having "enjoyed" about as much as they could stand. Regardless, their statement has now been signed by over 250 of their professional colleagues -- a significant portion of the profession is speaking truth to power

Last week a new custodian, while emptying my office trash, took one look at a framed photo of my daughter and asked me brightly, “Is that your granddaughter?” I graciously corrected him and continued working. When I mentioned this to friends their responses were uniformly horrified. It is a truth universally acknowledged that telling a woman she’s old is an unforgivable insult.

Meet Dave. Dave doesn’t exist, but his real-life counterparts do.