Opinion

Ellen McCulloch-Lovell proposes a method to track the way colleges contribute to society in ways that go far beyond the salaries of graduates.

I like this story a lot, even though it’s a little pessimistic. Apparently, Klamath Community College, in Oregon, has decided to make a series of changes to improve student success rates. Some of the changes are relatively straightforward, such as requiring academic advising and new student orientation. But it has gone farther than that, and eliminated late registration.

My biological sons have some time yet before they will fly into adulthood. However, I have entered the second half of my seventh year as a fellowships adviser. My first blog for UVenus explained my state of being as Mater de facto et de jure. In 2010, I had yet to grasp the full impact of my de facto children would play as precursors to the triumphs and traumas of motherhood yet to come.

Cool stuff people I know are up to.

Nearly half way through my first semester of college, I found myself trying to divine some cosmic answers about life from my bowl of cereal. Like a mystic scattering bones, I sifted my spoon through the peanut butter and chocolate flavors of the Reese’s Puffs, looking for some sort of fateful implication. Oh starchy balls of Red 40 and Yellow 5/6 dye, won’t you tell me what my future has in store? The cereal answered by becoming soggier. Soon the rioting of my slightly malnourished stomach overcame my pending existential crisis.

Everyone's talking about Emlyn - Emlyn Hughes, the Columbia University physics professor who began his students' immersion in his subject by turning down the lecture theater's lights, stripping off his street clothes and putting on a ninja uniform, and then showing a film featuring disconnected images of violence and atrocity - the destruction of the Twin Towers, goose-stepping Nazis, Mussolini strung up, Major Kong on his bomb from Dr. Strangelove.

Ruth Starkman considers how departments are (and should be) considering digital scholarship -- and what young scholars should know about how their work will be evaluated.