Opinion

I am getting a bit obsessed with the news coming from the University of Virginia. It is frightening, and it’s all too familiar a scenario. A group of political appointees decide to take the very real power they have and use it under the mistaken impression that they must know better than anyone else how to run a university because, well, they’ve been given that power.

My college needs a “what if?” committee, but I’m not sure how to make it happen. Most of the existing committees are task-based. Curriculum committee, for example, approves or disapproves suggested changes to courses or programs. That’s a necessary function, and it’s fine as far as it goes. But it’s necessarily reactive; it responds to proposals brought to it.

These are the first words that I have typed on my new laptop. After years of living with a succession of 15 inch MacBook Pros, I finally pulled the trigger on a 13 inch MacBook Air.

May wasn't a good month for Facebook. Their long-awaited IPO didn't go exactly as planned. Articles such as "7 Reasons Why Facebook IPO Was A Bust" from Forbes summed up the situation rather bluntly. Now I don't invest in the stock market, but I do know that people invest in a company because they think that it will make money which will in turn make them money. With Facebook, it would seem that people aren't convinced that the world's largest social network can deliver on its promises.

At THATCamp CHNM this year, Mark Sample proposed a session on "Building a Better Blogging Assignment". Those present shared their experiences from assigning blogs in past courses and also exchanged models and ideas for assignments that best fit their course objectives.

My daughter said recently, “Mom does still have a tiny sense of humor, it’s just buried deep down inside the momness.” As we finished off the semester and are preparing for our move across the country in August, there is always just too much to squeeze into a day, leaving much stressful unfinished business that seems to get done only just before it absolutely needs to. In these times, you need to remember to laugh, and I thank my daughter for reminding me.

Closures speak volumes about a university's priorities and about academe's priorities, writes Jeffrey R. Di Leo.

The conclusion that remedial education has failed is based on flawed interpretations of data and unsupported assertions, write Hunter R. Boylan and Alexandros Goudas.