Looking ahead:
Another World is Possible: A Global Racial and Social Justice Summit: Call for Presenters: Please join us on February 13-16, 2025, for an in-person Global Racial and Social Justice summit at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The conference is being sponsored by the Coretta Scott King Center for Cultural and Intellectual Freedom at Antioch College. Further information here.
Teaching and Learning
A Call for Digital Literacy Across the Curriculum (Tahneer Oksman, Inside Higher Ed, October 4, 2024): Digital literacy skills are too important to relegate to the margins of the curriculum.
‘Students Resent Professors Who Ignore Public Events’ (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 3, 2024): Helping students navigate the election and its aftermath should not fall on the shoulders of any one professor. Colleges themselves have work to do
Voices of Student Success: Building a Culture of Mentorship (Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed, October 2, 2024): Prior research shows students who have at least one connection to campus are more likely to persist, retain and complete a college degree, particularly for students from historically marginalized or less privileged backgrounds.
My Imagined Climate Fiction and the University Syllabus (Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, October 1, 2024): A climate fiction reading list inspired by Bryan Alexander’s Universities on Fire: Higher Education and the Climate Crisis (Johns Hopkins, 2023)..
Want Your Students to Write Better? Assign Video Essays (Michael Blancato and Natalie Kopp, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 27, 2024): Video composition makes sense to students. The genre excites them. Why not harness that interest in class?
All Things AI
What Kind of Writer Is ChatGPT? (Cal Newport, The New Yorker, October 3, 2024): Chatbots have been criticized as perfect plagiarism tools. The truth is more surprising.
Make AI Part of the Assignment (Marc Watkins, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 2, 2024): Learning requires friction. Here’s how to get students to disclose and evaluate their own usage of tools like ChatGPT.
AI Is an Existential Threat to Colleges. Can They Adapt? (Megan McArdle, Washington Post, September 30, 2024): Schools should worry about threats to education if students use artificial intelligence to cheat.
Mental Health Issues
Should Student Success Include Wellness? (Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed, October 4, 2024): Research shows experiences in higher education can produce positive student well-being outcomes over time. A new paper argues higher ed needs to expand metrics of success to emphasize lifelong wellness of learners.
Speech Issues and the Academy
Censorship and Consternation Mar Oct. 7 Campus Remembrances (Johanna Alonso, Inside Higher Ed, October 4, 2024): From canceled and contentious speakers to backlash over interfaith vigils, campus communities are grappling with how to honor the lives lost on Oct. 7 and throughout the year.
It’s the Anniversary of October 7. Will College Presidents Say Anything? (Kate Hidalgo Bellows, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 2, 2024): A year after Hamas’s attack on Israel, we have the first real test of the institutional-neutrality era.
Court Rules U of Maryland Must Host Student Events on Oct. 7 (Jessica Blake, Inside Higher Ed, October 2, 2024): Administrators had banned Students for Justice in Palestine from hosting a prayer vigil, which a federal judge ruled was “neither viewpoint- nor content-neutral.”
What Can $100 Million Do for Free Speech on Campus? (Christa Dutton, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 27, 2024): An anonymous donation will beef up a free-speech program at the University of Chicago. Some faculty members are skeptical.
How Free Speech Failed at Harvard – and How to Rescue It (Ryan D. Enos, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 27, 2024): Academic freedom must be free from politics.
Affirmative Action
Our Comprehensive, Inconclusive Diversity Database (Liam Knox, Inside Higher Ed, October 2, 2024): IHE has compiled colleges’ first-year demographics in an interactive database to track how they changed after the affirmative action ban. Draw conclusions at your own risk.
Extra Credit Reading
The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books (Rose Horowitch, The Atlantic, October 1, 2024): Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.
The Post-Presidential Era (Holden Thorp, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 30, 2024): Academic visionaries have been replaced by narrow technocrats. [You might also want to read Pamela Paul’s opinion piece in the New York Times (September 26, 2024): It’s Easy to see What Drove Jonathan Holloway to Quit.]
Future Imperfect
A Battle Over Florida’s General Education Courses (Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed, October 3, 2024): New cuts on top of removing sociology after state officials declared the discipline to be inherently liberal.
It’s the End of Tenure as We Know It (Ellyn Lem, Inside Higher Ed, October 3, 2024): The Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents votes to terminate tenured faculty as a cost-saving measure. [See, as well, Megan Zahneis’ article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, This Tenured Professor Says She was Fired. Her Case Tests the Limits of Academic Freedom (October 2, 2024).]
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).
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)