Teaching and Learning
2 Ways to Support Students’ Mental Health (Katie Rose Guest Pryal, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 18, 2024): How to take steps that will both help your struggling students and lessen the burden on you.
A Guide for Creating an Empathetic Learning Environment (Nancy A. Bellucci, Faculty Focus, June 17, 2024): Empathy, in course development, refers to an educator’s ability to understand the problems, needs, and desires a group of learners faces through research and inquisition.
Helping Students Unlearn ‘Learned Helplessness’ (Erin Andrews, Inside Higher Ed, June 17, 2024): The challenge is to promote help-seeking behaviors without fostering dependency.
Survey: Most Students Approve of Education Quality, Climate (Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, June 17, 2024): Initial findings from Inside Higher Ed’s annual Student Voice survey challenge popular narratives about how college is failing students, while also pointing to areas for improvement.
All Things AI
British Academics Despair as ChatGPT-Written Essays Swamp Grading Season (Jack Grove, Times Higher Education, June 21, 2024): “It’s not a machine for cheating; it’s a machine for producing crap,” says one professor infuriated by the rise of bland essays.
Are You Drowning in an Ocean of AI? (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 20, 2024): The author looks at what faculty members have experienced this past semester when it comes to teaching and AI, how to discourage AI misuse, and how to use AI constructively in the classroom.
AI Meets Academia – Navigating the New Terrain (James Bennet, Inside Higher Ed, June 20, 2024): The author describes how he’s using AI to help translate the ways of academia to students.
Higher Education Has Not Been Forgotten by Generative AI (Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed, June 20, 2024): The generative AI revolution has not ignored higher education; a whole host of tools are available now and more revolutionary tools are on the way.
Campus Protests Continue
Congressional Hearings:
How to be Jewish: On Being Schooled by the House Committee on Education (Steven Volk, After Class, June 14, 2024): Some thoughts on the most recent grilling of university presidents by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held in late May.
News of the ongoing student protests:
Cal State L.A. Encampment Is Shut Down Days After Takeover of Building with Administrators Inside (Jaweed Kaleem and Jaclyn Cosgrove, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2024): Encampment had been on the campus for about six weeks; the last protesters left voluntarily.
Further analysis, responses, and context:
Amid the Israel-Hamas War, Colleges’ Responses Were All Over the Map (Amelia Benavides-Colón, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 20, 2024): A report analyzes statements that about four dozen colleges issued after the war broke out. About half condemned Hamas and antisemitism, while 43 percent condemned Islamophobia.
Middle East Scholars Are Under Pressure (Marc Lynch and Shibley Telhami, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 14, 2024): Tensions on campus are real and intense.
Free Speech and Academic Freedom
Better Speech Policies Start with Campus Buy-In (Karl K. Schonberg, Inside Higher Ed, June 21, 2024): To prepare for the next speech crisis, colleges should seek campuswide consensus on institutional values.
A Harvard Dean’s Assault on Faculty Speech (Keith E. Whittington, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 20, 2024): Laurence D. Bobo’s proposal [see below] would turn academic freedom upside down.
For two takes on civility and academic freedom, try Faculty Speech Must Have Limits (Lawrence D. Bobo, The Harvard Crimson, June 15, 2024) and this response, Academia: Shalt-Not Addendum (Timothy Burke, Eight by Seven Substack, June 16, 2024).
Future Imperfect
Florida Argues It Could Stop Professors From Criticizing Governor (Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, June 21, 2024): A nationally prominent conservative lawyer, hired to defend the state’s Stop WOKE Act, asserted that what public university professors say in classrooms “is the government’s speech.” The national implications for academic freedom could be dire.
New Louisiana Law Seeks Crackdown on Civil Disobedience in Campus Protests (Piper Hutchinson, Louisiana Illuminator, June 17, 2024): Supporters say the legislation intends to prevent campus free-speech policies from protecting acts of civil disobedience, a common form of protest that includes sit-ins, hunger strikes, and intentional trespassing. In other words, per the law, any act that carries a criminal penalty would not be covered by free-speech protections.
Alverno College to Cut 14 Majors After Declaring Financial Exigency (Ben Unglesbee, Higher Ed Dive, June 17, 2024): Majors to be cut include English, math, history, and molecular biology.
UNC Fires Professor They Secretly Recorded (Liam Knox, Inside Higher Ed, June 17, 2024): The university recorded Larry Chavis’s class without his consent for a professional review. Last week he was told his contract would not be renewed.
Extra Credit Reading
Will Republicans Save the Humanities? (Jenna Silber Storey and Benjamin Storey, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 20, 2024): Colleges in red and purple states have been going on a hiring spree.
Scott Muir, Expanding Access to Undergraduate Humanities Education: Models and Strategies (National Humanities Alliance, 2024). Based on a national survey of more than 300 faculty and administrators at a wide variety of institutions, this resource identifies effective strategies for attracting a diverse population of students to the humanities.
Workshops and Webinars
The Antioch Writers’ Workshop returns to its original home campus this summer, July 8-12, with authors Dr. Feroz Rather (fiction workshop on writing place and displacement), Rebecca Kuder (generative writing practice), and Robin Littell (flash fiction) offering morning seminars, afternoon meetings, with additional evening events and readings. Discounts offered to GLCA faculty, and day passes are available. More information: https://antiochcollege.edu/2024-antioch-writers-workshop/
Permaculture Design Certification at Antioch College: As the push to live more sustainably becomes part of a global conversation, Antioch College is offering the chance to learn how to design those holistic and harmonious systems for sustainable living. Anyone can register for the 72 hour, intensive Permaculture Study which is held over three weekends next month: July 12-14, July 19 – 21, and July 26 – 28. Upon completion, participants will earn a Permaculture Design Certification provided by the Cincinnati Permaculture Institute. Register and learn more at: https://antiochcollege.edu/academics/permaculture-design-certification/
Save the Date: Strategies to Support Student Mental Health in the Classroom, August 14 (Noon, EDT), Presented by Angie Roles and Jan Miyake of Oberlin College. Registration information coming soon.
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)