A GLCA Opportunity: Revitalize Your Research: Effective Project Management for Busy Scholars
Does your research cause you anxiety? Are you drowning in documents and files when you try to work? Do you find yourself spending too much time hunting for important writing, data, or administrative information?
If so, we hope you will join us Wednesday, October 30 at Noon EDT for a presentation on Effective Project Management for Busy Scholars. This talk will introduce key stages and principles of research project management. Learning how to effectively organize and manage your research is essential for improving both your work and your well-being. By establishing clear organization in your research, you can reduce your stress, improve your research, and better communicate your methodological and theoretical choices to reviewers and funding agencies, while also fostering the development of new ideas and innovative project extensions.
Sign up here for this online event (a Zoom link will be sent the day before).
Teaching and Learning
Addressing Math Anxieties (Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed, October 11, 2024): Many college students feel overly nervous about math courses. Here are seven strategies to help them navigate math anxiety.
To Prompt or Not to Prompt (Carolina Kuepper-Tezel, Learning Scientists, October 10, 2024): Effects of prompt-questions and educational videos on learning.
Joyful Connections Through Intentional Teaching Practices (Bonni Stachowiak, Teaching in Higher Ed, October 10, 2024): 43-minute podcast conversation with Teresa Thompson. “We have to recognize,” she argues, “that our students have a lot going on. Sometimes, even despite their best intention, they may not be able to be a 100% attentive in our classroom.”
Mindful Teaching in Moments of Tension (Rosalie Metro, Inside Higher Ed, October 8, 2024): The author offers ideas for facilitating sensitive classroom conversations with compassion this election season.
Helping Students Navigate a Maze of Simulacra (Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed, October 7, 2024): In hyperreality, truth is a construct, fact is a matter of perception and the line between reality and fiction disappears.
Building a Learning Sanctuary: Fostering Resilience in Our Students, Part 2 (Mays Imad, The Teaching Professor, September 23, 2024): The second part of a consideration of the importance of resilience in creating a place where students can learn and grow in spite of the challenges they face outside the classroom. [Part 1, from August 26, here.]
Teaching After an Election (Center for Teaching Excellence, Boston College, August 8, 2024): When deciding how to talk about the election, it can be helpful to bear in mind your own goals for teaching and learning, the fact that major events can be distracting and make it more difficult to teach and learn, and that students in your class may have differing perceptions of what is at stake in the election in light of their own histories and identities.
All Things AI
How Does Equity Fit Into the Next Phase of AI? (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 10, 2024): What is AI literacy and how do colleges teach it? Is it possible to incorporate AI strategically to enhance learning? How do instructors keep up to date with the ever-evolving tech?
The Future Is Hybrid (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 3, 2024): Colleges begin to reimagine learning in an AI world.
Plagiarism and AI (Carleton College, Writing Across the Curriculum, Winter/Spring 2024): At what point does a student’s use of artificial intelligence in their writing stop being the legitimate use of a tool and become plagiarism or academic misconduct?
Speech Issues on Campus
What’s Behind the Push for ‘Institutional Neutrality’? (Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, October 10, 2024): Since last Oct. 7, several institutions have pledged to refrain from speaking on political and social issues. But what does it mean for a university to go neutral?
Indiana Passed a Law to Promote Free Speech in Class. A Lawsuit Says It Does the Opposite (Brian Rosenzweig, The Herald Times, October 8, 2024): The law, enacted in July, compels faculty at Indiana’s public universities to “foster a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity” by making doing so a requirement for tenure reviews every five years.
America’s Censored Classrooms 2024: Refining the Art of Censorship (PEN America, October 8, 2024): In 2024, higher ed censorship policies went underground—and became even more dangerous. Supporters of censorship largely abandoned open calls for restricting faculty speech; instead, they embraced—to great effect—camouflage, misdirection, and actions behind the scenes.
How Activist Speech Threatens Educational Values (Nicholas C. Burbules, Inside Higher Ed, October 8, 2024): The author argues that activist speech, while generally protected, exists uneasily in a campus context.
October 7: A Year Later
A Year of Investigations, Punishments and Arrests of Scholars (Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, October 8, 2024): Dozens of faculty members and grad student workers have faced discipline from colleges, universities, and police since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Some have now returned to work. Others lost their jobs.
October 7 Is Not the Time for Institutional Neutrality (Michael Roth, October 7, 2024): Silence from college presidents is an abdication of leadership.
Campuses Are Calmer, but They Are Not Normal, Students and Faculty Say (Sharon Otterman, New York Times, October 7, 2024): A year of war in Gaza has left college students and faculty feeling shaken and angry, with the world and with each other.
Views from a Tumultuous Year for Higher Ed (Elizabeth Redden, Inside Higher Ed, October 7, 2024): A summary of many of the opinion essays in the year since Oct. 7.
October 7 Kicked Off a Difficult Year for Higher Ed. How Should Universities Move Forward Now? (Bob Moser, Inside Higher Ed, October 7, 2024): IHE asked higher ed leaders and thinkers to take stock of the fraught year just past and offer a vision for the future. They gave it a quarrelsome, eloquent earful.
Universities Failed to Nurture Meaningful Dialogue after 7 October. But Some Students Are Still Trying to Talk (Alice Speri, The Guardian, October 6, 2024): Divisions remain deep, with some afraid to participate and others uninterested in talk while destruction continues.
Three stories of pro-Palestinian actions by students at Columbia, Harvard, and Tufts.
Affirmative Action and DEI
AAUP: DEI Statements Can Be Valuable to Faculty Recruiting (Laura Spitalniak, Higher Ed Dive, October 11, 2024): The increasing attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts often conflate “institutional values with imposed orthodoxies,” the group said.
Extra Credit Reading
When Politicians Pressure Presidents to Find Prejudice (Silke-Maria Weineck, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 10, 2024): A campaign to root out antisemitism goes awry.
Election Information for Ohio Student Voters (Oberlin College, October 10, 2024): From Oberlin, what student voters in Ohio need to know before they vote on November 5.
Immigration Fuels Numbers, Diversity at American Colleges (Karin Fischer, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 9, 2024): Immigrant-origin students are the fastest-growing group of students on American campuses, accounting for 32 percent of all higher-education enrollments. [See, as well, Disparities in the American Dream (Sara Weissman Inside Higher Ed, October 11, 2024): For immigrant families of color, affording the full costs of college is still often out of reach, even after generations in this country, according to a new data analysis.]
Here’s What Voters Want the Next President to Do for Higher Ed (Katherine Mangan, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 8, 2024): 84 percent of respondents said it was somewhat or very important for the next president, in their first 100 days, to expand apprenticeship programs and facilitate hiring based on skills rather than degrees.
What to Expect in Your First Year of Work at a Small College (Lisa Jasinski and Lisa Anderson-Levy, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 4, 2024): How to make a smooth transition from doctoral student at a research university to faculty member on a liberal-arts campus.
Free to Think: 2024 (Scholars at Risk Network): The 2024 annual report documents 391 attacks on scholars, students, and institutions in 51 countries and territories, from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024.
Future Imperfect
An LGBTQ Studies Minor at Texas A&M Drew Complaints. Now Dozens of Programs Could be Eliminated (Garrett Shanley, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 9, 2024): University officials said they’re reviewing minors and certificates with low enrollment. They acted after Republican lawmakers and right-wing media outlets claimed that the LGBTQ studies minor was promoting progressive orthodoxy.
Republicans Threaten to Punish Colleges That Allow Pro-Palestinian Protests (Ed Pilkington, Guardian, October 9, 2024): In video, House majority leader outlines plan of attack on universities tht fail to quash criticism of Israel.
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)