The GLCA and its 13 member colleges are pleased to announce the winners of the 55th New Writers Award, recognizing first published writers for poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction (full announcement here). We also wish to extend our gratitude to the 2025 judging panels!
Poetry: Sarah Ghazal Ali, Theophanies, (Alice James Books)
Judges: Chanda Feldman, Oberlin College; Michael Leong, Kenyon College; Aza Pace, Ohio Wesleyan University
Fiction: Jessica Elisheva Emerson, Olive Days (Counterpoint Press)
Judges: Lauren Holmes, Allegheny College; Michael Croley, Denison University; Andy Mozina, Kalamazoo College
Creative Non-Fiction: KB Brookins, Pretty (AA Knopf)
Judges: Deborah Geis, DePauw University; Brooke Bryan, Antioch College; Daimys Garcia, The College of Wooster
Award recipients agree to participate in New Writers visits to GLCA colleges by invitation. These campus visits are an integral part of the award, allowing the authors to meet with students, offer readings of their work, and participate in discussions, lectures, colloquia, workshops, seminars, and interviews. The visits can be scheduled for fall of 2025 through the spring of 2026. Please share this opportunity with your colleagues. Don’t hesitate to contact Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org) with questions about scheduling a visit to your campus!
The New Semester
How to Teach a Good First Day of Class: Advice Guide (James M. Lang, Chronicle of Higher Education): Lang focuses on what he calls four key principles: curiosity, community, learning, and expectations. He also presents several classroom scenarios to help map out what a first day might look like in different kinds of courses.
6 Ideas to Perk Up Your First Day of Class (Kristi Rudenga, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 5, 2024): How to start the semester in ways that will pay off for the rest of the course.
Planning for the First Day of Class (Tony’s Teaching Tips/Patreon, January 8, 2025): The first day of class can have a lot riding on it: it’s first impressions of you and your students as people, but also of the course, its topic, and maybe even the entire field you are teaching! First impressions can be lasting ones, so here are some tips for trying to get the semester started right.
How to Create a Syllabus: Advice Guide (Kevin Gannon, Chronicle of Higher Education): There’s never a bad time to re-examine and rethink how to write your syllabus. This guide walks you through everything you need to know, with specific tips and strategies, to craft an effective syllabus.
Teaching and Learning
Prompt Student to Reflect Before Your Course Even Starts (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 9, 2025): Supiano describes how a professor of math builds reflection into his course from the very beginning.
Teaching about Race and Racism in the College Classroom (Bonni Stachowiak, Teaching in Higher Ed, January 9, 2025): Interviews Cyndi Kernahan about her book of that title (43-minute podcast).
What Is Your Why? (John Warner, Inside Higher Ed, January 9, 2025): Students want to learn, but they’re not necessarily clear on what we’re teaching.
Rekindling the Life of the Mind Within Today’s Neoliberal Universities (Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed, January 9, 2025): How higher ed can bring back the life of the mind—where knowledge is more than a means to an end.
We Need to Distinguish Applied Humanities from Experiential Learning (Kathy Hansen, Faculty Focus, January 8, 2025): “Experiential learning” is sometimes used interchangeably with “applied learning,” which runs the risk of clouding the specific benefits of each approach.
Put Your Teaching Evaluations in a Jar (Constanza Bartholomae, Inside Higher Ed, January 4, 2025): You can just ignore them, or you can take some positive steps to ensure that they will push you forward in your teaching.
Relationship-Rich Education at Scale (Bonni Stachowiak, Teaching in Higher Ed, January 2, 2025): Interview with Peter Felten on helping students understand that relationships matter for learning, well-being, and success (48-minute podcast).
Some Assembly Still Required (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 20, 2024): How K-12 reforms and recent disruptions created Gen Z’s baffling habits.
All Things AI
AI’s Not a Genie in a Lamp: It’s a Space to Think (Josh Thorpe, Inside Higher Ed, January 9, 2025): The author writes that one small change in our approach to teaching about AI makes a big difference.
You’ve Got AI. Is It Terminal? (Timothy Burke, Eight by Seven, January 2, 2025): While open to new possibilities of information technology, and generative AI in some form and in some use cases, he worries that to a substantial degree, those uses are not driving AI development and they’re certainly not driving the way AI is being incorporated without foresight, intention or controls into virtually everything we do, say and think.
Affirmative Action and DEI
Academic Freedom Requires DEI (Jonathan Feingold, Inside Higher Ed, January 9, 2025): The AAUP has explained why DEI statements need not conflict with, and often fortify, academic freedom and why anti-DEI laws—including DEI statement bans—exact a double toll on academic freedom.
New AAMC [Association of American Medical Colleges] Data on Medical School Applicants and Enrollment in 2024 (AAMC, January 9, 2025): The number of first-year enrollees (matriculants) in U.S. MD-granting medical schools rose 0.8% in the 2024-25 academic year. Matriculants from groups historically underrepresented in medicine declined, most by a percent change in the double digits.
Academic Freedom and Speech on Campus
Institutional Neutrality Is a Copout (Rev. John I. Jenkins, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 7, 2025): Colleges must speak with their own true voices.
It Can Be Lonely to Have a Middle-of-the-Road Opinion on the Middle East (Sharon Offerman, New York Times, December 22, 2024): Some college students and faculty members are seeking space for nuanced perspectives on the Israel-Hamas war on deeply divided campuses.
Extra Credit Reading
Trump Wants to Change Colleges Nationwide. GOP-led States Like Idaho Offer a Preview (Heather Hollingsworth, Jocelyn Gecker, Williesha Morris, and Kevin Richert, Idaho Ed News, January 9, 2025): Dozens of diversity, equity and inclusion programs have already closed in states including Idaho, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas. In some cases, lessons about racial and gender identity have been phased out. Supports and resources for underrepresented students have disappeared.
What’s Next for Colleges After Judge Vacates Biden’s Title IX Rule (Katherine Knott and Johanna Alonso, Inside Higher Ed, January 9, 2025): Republican state officials are celebrating the order as a “massive win,” but uncertainty looms for colleges as they respond to yet another Title IX change.
The Number of 18-Year Olds Is About to Drop Sharply, Packing a Wallop for Colleges – and the Economy (Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report, January 8, 2025): America is about to go over the ‘demographic cliff.’
Blending the Work of Head and Hand (Scott Carlson, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 8, 2025): What the biennial firing of a kiln in rural Minnesota says about the connections between colleges and communities and between art and blue-collar work.
Private-College Presidents Brace for a Year of ‘Conflict’ (Eric Kelderman, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 8, 2025): Private colleges are preparing to navigate many conflicts with elected officials, trustees, faculty members, students, alumni, and the general public.
Universities and the Coming Storm (Francois Furstenberg, American Prospect, January 6, 2025): It’s difficult for colleges to defend democracy if they aren’t run democratically.
Future Imperfect
For Federal Censorship of Higher Ed, Here’s What Could Happen in 2025 (Jeffrey Adam Sachs and Jeremy C. Young, PEN America, January 2, 2025): The GOP’s victory in the November 2024 election will have major implications for academic freedom, free speech, and university autonomy in American higher education as many recent proposals aimed at restricting ideas on campus are now more likely to become law or policy.
Off the Bookshelf
Part of Arkansas Book Ban Law is Unconstitutional, Federal Judge Rules (José Olivares, Guardian, December 24, 2024): A federal judge has struck down portions of an Arkansas law that could have sent librarians and booksellers to prison for providing material that might be considered harmful to minors.
On the Bookshelf
Academic Freedom and Civil Discourse in Higher Education: A National Study of Faculty Attitudes and Perceptions (AAC&U, AAUP, and NORC-University of Chicago, January 2025): A national survey of higher ed faculty to understand their perspectives and experiences related to academic freedom. (A downloadable report). [Watching Their Words: Faculty Say They’re Self-Censoring (Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, January 9, 2025), summarizes the report.]
In Remembrance
‘Simple Justice’: How Jimmy Carter’s Commitment to Education Equity Transformed Atlanta HBCUs (Karys Belger, 11 Alive, January 7, 2025): In 1980, Carter signed Executive Order Executive Order 12232 which ensured federal support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
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)