Opinion

If you use textbooks in courses, writes Thomas D. Sigerstad, there are concrete steps that cut costs -- and don't hurt the quality of education.

By lucky coincidence one of my closest friends is on sabbatical at the same time as I. Although we joked...

A returning correspondent writes: Here's the situation: I worked as a TA for an intro level survey course for a...

My nomination a couple of weeks ago for the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching required letters of support...

Here's the situation: I worked as a TA for an intro level survey course for a truly awful adjunct. She was condescending, vague about my role inside and outside the classroom, unclear about how strict/lenient grading should be, and frequently imposed impractical deadlines. With the students in the class, she was vague about expectations, a truly harsh grader, thematically all over the place, and in particular, refused to explain to the students what she meant by "good writing" (probably just wasn't capable of, is more like it). She also was terrible about answering student emails/keeping the students informed about changes to the syllabus. All in all, pretty much your standard nightmare with a PhD. As her TA, I struggled pretty much daily with what my role both in- and outside of the classroom. My suggestions for how to improve the class (like a suggestion for a session on improving student writing, which I even volunteered to organize and run outside of class time) were met with hostility and disgust. I helped the students best I could, but a lot of the time, there wasn't much I could do (since it was unclear what this woman even wanted from her students, outside of a textbook recitation of facts, etc)...advice/dean_dad/bossfired

There's a fairly wide, if shallow, literature out there on different generations in the workplace. It's often fun to read...

A graduate student I know at a well-respected public university had a baby last year. This spring her husband’s job...

Wandering around the Lyceum with an entourage, Aristotle would hold forth on his conception of the universe: one in which...