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
Connecting with Gen Z Through Course Design (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 12, 2024): Suggestions from Sadé Lindsay who teaches public policy and sociology at Cornell.
Interactive Experiences: Shaping the Future of Teaching (Bonni Stachowiak, Teaching in Higher Ed, September 12, 2024): Andres Cross and Alyshahn -Virani talk about encouraging faculty to turn students “loose to go off and find something that they find interesting, a little bit of free choice learning” (36-min. podcast).
Creating Community Around the Class (Laura Browder and Ryan Steel, Faculty Focus, September 11, 2024): Two faculty members discuss the benefits – for themselves, their students, and the community – in connecting their courses on drug history and policy.
Is Reading Over for Gen Z Students? (Jack Stripling, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 10, 2024): Students are arriving at college woefully unprepared, professors say. Many lack the necessary endurance to read long passages, and some question the point of reading at all. Why is this happening? And what can be done about it? 36-minute podcast.
Beyond the Caretaker Era (Timothy Burke, Eight by Seven, September 6, 2024): Burke reacts to Rita Koganzon’s essay, An Infantilizing Double Standard for American College Students (New York Times, September 3, 2024).
All Things AI
Here are the slides from the CTL’s August 28 presentation on AI, No Robot Left Behind: AI and Our Fall Classes, hosted by Lew Ludwig and featuring Alexis Hart (Allegheny) and Caitlyn Deeter (Rollins). Lew offers a useful compendium of other AI guides and resources here.
AI Is Already Advancing Higher Education (Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed, September 10, 2024): Generative AI has enormous potential to advance, enhance and expand higher education in the future. Few realize how AI already is improving what we do today in myriad ways.
AI-Powered Study Tools for Students (Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed, September 9, 2024): A new initiative at the University of Delaware uses generative artificial intelligence to identify key themes and ideas in professors’ lectures, which can be transformed into flash cards and other digital learning tools.
Mental Health Issues
Slides and resources from the CTL’s August 14 workshop on Strategies to Support Student Mental Health in the Classroom led by Jan Miyake and Angie Roles (both at Oberlin) can be found here.
Fewer College Students Reported Mental-Health Challenges for the First Time in Years (Christa Dutton, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 11, 2024): Experts caution that this year’s Healthy Minds Study is good news about bad news, because the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation is still high.
Building a Learning Sanctuary: Fostering Resilience in Our Students, Part 1 (Mays Imad, The Teaching Professor, August 26, 2024): Imad sees a “learning sanctuary” as an intentional response to the global challenges that affect student well-being, hoping to transform anxiety and uncertainty into empowerment and wisdom. (Thanks to Lew Ludwig for calling attention to this article.)
Speech Issues and the Academy
Free Speech Survey Signals Distrust and Disconnection (Jessica Blake, Inside Higher Ed, September 9, 2024): A recent report from FIRE shows that while protests over the Israel-Hamas war are driving campus conversations around free speech, administrators and students aren’t always on the same page about how to respond.
More on Academic Boycotts
Boycotts Cannot Become the New Normal (Ronald R. Krebs, Inside Higher Ed, September 12, 2024): The author argues that the new AAUP statement on academic boycotts undermines scholarly values and opens the door to further politicization of the academy.
Affirmative Action
Harvard’s Black Student Enrollment Dips After Affirmative Action Ends (Anemona Hartocollis, New York Times, September 11, 2024): The proportion of Black first-year students enrolled at Harvard this fall has declined to 14 percent from 18 percent last year.
More Selective Colleges Report Diversity Dip (Liam Knox, Inside Higher Ed, September 10, 2024): The University of Pennsylvania, Middlebury, Haverford, and Swarthmore all report a drop in the share of students of color in their first-year classes this fall.
At Brown University, Black Freshman Enrollment Drops 40% (Talia LeVine, Brown Daily Herald, September 6, 2024): The first-year class is the first admitted since the Supreme Court outlawed race-based affirmative action.
Campus Protests Policies
We Looked at Dozens of Colleges’ New Protest Policies. Here’s What We Found (Declan Bradley and Garrett Shanley, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 12, 2024): The Chronicle reviewed nearly four dozen campus policies — 29 at public colleges, 15 at private colleges — that were created or updated since the spring semester to restrict the time, place, or manner of student protests. The new guidelines address the use of masks, amplified sound, and tent encampments, among other issues.
Future Imperfect
When Threats of Violence Come to University Libraries (Ellen O’Connell Whittet, Literary Hub, September 11, 2024): Libraries are under constant existential attacks, facing book bans, Draconian budget cuts, and lawsuits to stop the lending of digitized books. Support for public libraries has not wavered, despite these assaults on intellectual freedom, yet the danger has ramped up in recent weeks from political talking points to what seems, at least in one case, like a politically motivated violent threat.
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)