Opinion

For years, I've used the metaphor of lifestyle diseases -- obesity, diabetes, heart disease -- to help students understand that seemingly desirable behaviors, when taken to excess, can lead to negative and entirely unintended consequences. Eat too much, enjoy too much leisure, degrade a system -- your body -- that evolved to prosper under circumstances of scarce food and regular exertion. As a metaphor, it's served to help students understand that seemingly desirable social behaviors like production, consumption and energy (particularly, fossil energy) utilization can degrade a climate system that served humanity well under circumstances of minimal resource utilization and long-term carbon (coal, oil) sequestration.

How might institutions that focus on science and engineering provide a more blended education that provides opportunities for students to study and apply what they have learned outside the sciences?

Are you Charlie Bucket enough to get the job?

My colleague from São Paulo, Fredric Litto, offers insight and counsel for those interested in exploring academic opportunities and partnerships in Brazil.

In first statement on confidentiality and academic governance, AAUP recommends against blanket bans on faculty members sharing information.

Legislators are masters of compartmentalizing. This law addresses this, and that law addresses that. And much of the time, it’s possible to construct a reasonable argument for a particular decision, taken in complete isolation.

Where I suggest something revolutionary, radical, and probably completely naive. So what else is new?