Tell Us What You Would Find Useful as We Plan CTL Programming for Next Year
This past year, the CTL has successfully organized programming on diverse topics including AI technology, support for faculty of color, and strategies for managing challenging conversations in the classroom. As we plan for our upcoming events, your feedback is important in shaping our future programming. Please fill out this anonymous brief FORM to share your suggestions for topics you’d like the CTL to explore. Whether it’s building on previous themes or venturing into new areas, your ideas will help ensure we continue to provide programming that meets your needs and enriches our collaborative community. We look forward to receiving your thoughtful suggestions. Thank you!
Teaching and Learning
Can You Teach Students to Read Effectively? (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 23, 2024): Professors have long complained about students not doing the reading. But something different is happening these days, and that has to do with students’ critical literacy skills. McMurtrie talked to a number of professors, teaching experts, and others to figure out why.
Metacognition in the Classroom: What it Looks Like and How to Foster It (Lindsay Tierney, Learning Scientists, May 23, 2024): Supporting the development of metacognition is a powerful way to promote student success at all levels.
The Problem with Participation Grades (and How to Solve It) (Anna Broadbent, Inside Higher Ed, May 21, 2024): The benefits are well documented, but the practice can be subjective and prone to instructor biases.
Rethinking Respect (Jeff Spinner-Halev and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Inside Higher Ed, May 21, 2024): Colleges can help students cultivate civic respect – a value more easily affirmed than granted in our polarized climate.
The Five Whys: Helping Students Engage in Deeper Learning (Sarah Forbes, Faculty Focus, May 20, 2024): A “root cause” approach to learning.
All Things AI
How Generative AI Might Change Teaching and Learning: Key Podcast (Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, May 22, 2024): A conversation with four teaching and learning experts (27 min. podcast).
Empowering Student Learning: Navigating Artificial Intelligence in the College Classroom (Melissa Parks and Mary Ellen Oslick, Faculty Focus, May 22, 2024): As the conversations in faculty offices turned to AI and the students’ use of the tool, the authors worried that students in their undergraduate courses would use AI to generate all assignments and their learning would essentially cease. To begin to understand how the students perceived and worked with AI, the authors brought their concerns to the students in their undergraduate courses.
Colleges Bootstrap Their Way to AI Literacy (Goldie Blumenstyk, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 22, 2024): Reports from 5 colleges and universities on how they are preparing to teach and operate in a world suffused with artificial-intelligence tools.
Teaching with AI (Bonni Stachowiak, Teaching in Higher Ed, May 16, 2024): José Bowen shares about teaching with AI (49 min. podcast).
Campus Protests Continue
New Congressional Hearings:
Campus Leaders Stand Their Ground Before Congress (Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed, May 24, 2024): In previous hearings, presidents equivocated on moral questions or were accused of throwing faculty under the bus. This time, leaders pushed back against lawmakers.
Yet Another Congressional Hearing Came for Higher Ed. College Presidents Tried to Fight Back (Erin Gretzinger, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 23, 2024): Lawmakers’ sharpest questions were directed at Northwestern University’s Michael H. Schill, who didn’t take it quietly.
In House Hearing, Republicans Demand Discipline for Student Protesters (Anemona Hartocollis, Nicholas Borgel-Burroughs, Sharon Otterman, Ernesto Londoño, and Michael Levenson, New York Times, May 23, 2024): Leaders of Northwestern, U.C.L.A. and Rutgers, drawing lessons from prior hearings, sought to avoid enraging either the Republicans on the committee or members of their own institutions.
A Tale of Three Protests (Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed, May 23, 2024): An encampment at UCLA sparked violence, while Rutgers and Northwestern reached deals with protesters. Now the leaders of all three institutions must answer to Congress.
Third Antisemitism Hearing Could Further Disrupt Higher Ed (Katherine Knott, Inside Higher Ed, May 22, 2024): In the 36 days since the last House hearing, colleges and universities have seen a wave of protests, armed crackdowns and intensifying Congressional scrutiny. Here are the key developments as Thursday’s session looms.
4 Things to Watch for During Thursday’s Antisemitism Hearing (Maggie Hicks, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 22, 2024): Previous testimonies were disastrous for higher ed. Could this one be different?
News of the ongoing student protests:
Police Remove Tent Encampment at University of Michigan Protesting Israel (Niraj Warikoo and Dave Boucher, Detroit Free Press, May 21, 2024): Police end one of the longest-running university encampments in the country this year.
Wesleyan Students Agree to Clear Pro-Palestinian Encampment (Angela Fortuna, NBC Connecticut, May 20, 2024): The move followed an agreement with the Connecticut university under which its president explained its investments in detail and the protesters will meet with and propose changes to the Wesleyan board’s investment committee. The protesters also agreed not to disrupt commencement or reunions, and the university said no students would face discipline.
Bard Student Protesters Reach a Deal with the College to End Ludlow Occupation (Maria M. Silva, Times Union, May 20, 2024): A deal was reached after a total of 19 hours of formal negotiations between students and campus leaders.
UPenn Protests (Steve Keeley and Fox 29 Staff, FOX 29, May 18, 2024): 19 arrested, 6 of them students, as protesters attempted to occupy campus building.
Chapman University and Students Reach Agreement; Gaza Solidarity Encampment to Dismantle (Jonathan Horwitz, Daily Bulletin, May 16, 2024): No students in the protest will face discipline, and they will make a presentation on divestment from Israel before the university board’s investment committee in September, after which the panel will vote on their proposal.
Chicago Police Clear Out Pro-Palestinian DePaul Quad Encampment; 2 Arrested (Jessica D’Onofrio, Michelle Gallardo and Tre Ward, ABC7Chicago, May 16, 2024): The police raid early Thursday followed what the university’s president described as “good-faith efforts” to reach an agreement with the protesters. He also said the protests had attracted violent threats by outsiders, impeded DePaul operations, and antagonized the university’s neighbors. Protesters were allowed to leave without being arrested.
Follow-up reporting on earlier protests:
How Yale University Surveils Pro-Palestine Students (Theia Chatelle, The Nation, May 20, 2024): Documents reveal a pattern of targeted monitoring.
College Presidents Are Getting in Trouble for Cutting Deals With Protesters (Kate Hidalgo Bellows, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 17, 2024): Critics say the agreements excuse protesters’ rhetoric and violations of campus policy.
What Student Journalists at Columbia Really Learned (Anna Oakes, et al, The Nation, May 17, 2024): In the classroom, professors taught the importance of the free press, at the same time as the administration stifled the work of student journalists and intimidated them through the NYPD.
Business Titans Privately Urged NYC Mayor to Use Police on Columbia Protesters, Chats Show (Hannah Natanson and Emmanuel Felton, Washington Post, May 16, 2024): A WhatsApp chat started by some wealthy Americans after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack reveals their focus on Mayor Eric Adams and their work to shape U.S. opinion of the Gaza war.
Further analysis, responses, and context:
The Hammer (Greg Gonsalves, Inside Higher Ed, May 23, 2024): Why are campus leaders so quick to call in the cops?
Future Imperfect
After Learning Her TA Would Be Paid More Than She Was, This Lecturer Quit (Adrienne Lu, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 21, 2024): Lecturer at the University of California at Santa Cruz learned that her TA for two 120-student lecture classes would be earning $300 more than she was to be paid.
Louisiana Set to Become 1st State Requiring 10 Commandments to Be Posted in Schools (Chelsea Brasted, Axios New Orleans, May 17, 2024): Requirement to be displayed in all schools that receive public funding, including colleges and universities.
Extra Credit Reading
Value of College Degree Is Clear, but Public Skepticism Persists (Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed, May 24, 2024): A new report from the Pew Research Center shows that the wealth gap between people with and without college degrees remains wide.
Can I Just Make Room for Interesting Things? (Kristin Brennan and Stephen Perkinson, Inside Higher Ed, May 24, 2024): In the liberal arts, we don’t have an employability problem, we have a messaging problem.
Higher Education Isn’t the Enemy (Robert E. Rubin, The Atlantic, May 21, 2024): Those who threaten academic freedom, from outside or inside campus, are threatening higher education itself – to America’s peril.
Higher Education Needs More Socrates and Plato (Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Harun Küçük, New York Times, May 19, 2024): Colleges and universities must reassert the liberal arts ideals that have made them great but that have been slipping away.
On the Bookshelf: Academic Freedom – a brief reading list of books that can place the current crisis in perspective:
Derek Bok, Attacking the Elites: What Critics Get Wrong – and Right – About America’s Leading Universities (Yale, 2024)
Nicholas B. Dirks, City of Intellect: The Uses and Abuses of the University (Cambridge, 2023)
Louis H. Guard and Joyce P. Jacobsen, All the Campus Lawyers: Litigation, Egulation, and the New Era of Higher Education (Harvard, 2024)
Valerie C. Johnson, Jennifer Ruth, and Ellen Schrecker, eds, The Right to Learn: Resisting the Right-Wing Attack on Academic Freedom (Beacon, 2024)
Keith E. Whittington, You Can’t Teach That!: The Battle Over University Classrooms (Polity, 2024)
The Chronicle of Higher Education (May 17) asked 22 scholars to recommend books to make sense of this moment. You can find their list, “What Every Student Needs to Read Now,” here.
Don’t Leave Without Reading This:
The Chronicle of Higher Education each year publishes an interactive story, Who Does Your College Think Its Peers Are? which tracks which colleges and universities think their peer institutions are, a data point passed along to the US Department of Education. In a follow up, the CHE asked the person who developed the tool to compile a list of “which colleges were the coolest kids on the block, a.k.a. the campuses cited as peer institutions most often” (their words, not mine). Here are the top five:
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- Carleton College (named as a peer by 51 other institutions)
- Kenyon College (48)
- Elon University (47)
- Oberlin College (47)
- Allegheny College (45)
Well, from your editor’s humble perspective, that puts 3 GLCA colleges in the top 5 of the “coolest kids on the block.” Take that, SEC and the Ivies!
Have a short article or some news related to teaching and learning at your institution that you’d like to share with colleagues? Send your contribution along to us. Also, please email Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org) if you have colleagues who would like to receive this weekly report.
Steven Volk (steven.volk@oberlin.edu), Editor
GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning
Co-Directors:
Lew Ludwig (ludwigl@denison.edu)
Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org)