Archive for the ‘faculty’ tag
Week in Review: Anxiety Edition
What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.
1. Peace is Patriotic: Anabaptists and the National Anthem (By Duane Shank, Sojourners, 3/3/2010): Did you attend a college sporting event where the national anthem of the host country was not played? Goshen College, a residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition, has just started to play an instrumental version and it’s caused quite a stir. For Goshen’s perspective visit National anthem dialogue and implementation to continue at Goshen College (Press Release by President Jim Brenneman, 2/17/2010). Are they becoming conservative Christian or enculturated/liberal as they seek to be hospitable to guest teams? HT: Fred.
2. Translating Pain: Immigrant Suffering in Literature & Culture by ESN member Madelaine Hron (assistant professor in the Department of English and Film at Wilfrid Lauriern University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) has just been has been shortlisted for the prestigious The Raymond Klibansky Prize, for Best Book in the Humanities published in Canada. For more on the nomination click here. For ESN’s 1/22/2009 pre-release author interview visit here.
3. What do younger faculty want? According to Harvard’s Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE), they don’t want long hours, constant mobility, or career success at the expense of a good family and personal life (Chronicle, March 4). This is based on interviews with 16 “Generation X” faculty members at a variety of schools. The full report can be downloaded from COACHE’s website as a PDF.
4. The State of the Humanities: Inside Higher Ed reports the latest results of the Humanities Departmental Survey. The full report warrants closer reading, but IHE’s summary echoes earlier articles from ESN about the state of the humanities:
At a time when many humanities professors are worried about the future of the tenure track, the data in the report will only add to those concerns — especially because it predates the freezes on tenure-track hiring that have been instituted at so many colleges. Generally, the fields that have the highest percentages of tenured faculty members are among the smallest disciplines. And while the percentages vary, use of non-tenure-track faculty members is significant throughout. Further, the data back up a point made increasingly by activists for adjuncts: that significant numbers of academics are working full time, off the tenure track.
5. Alan Jacobs Makes Mike Jealous: Maybe it’s a bad idea to get a PhD in the humanities, but Alan Jacobs (English, Wheaton) recently reminded me [Mike] why I have always loved the scholarly study of literature. On his New Atlantis blog Text Patterns, Jacobs recently reported the completion of his latest book project, a new critical edition of W. H. Auden’s important long poem The Age of Anxiety. Jacobs writes:
I have worked as hard on this project as I have ever worked on anything, and at the moment I am pleased and proud. There’s something especially rewarding about doing all this work — visiting libraries and archives, working through vast tracts of mostly useless materials, trying to decipher Auden’s terrible handwriting, comparing multiple editions of the poem, reading much of what Auden read as he wrote the poem, carefully marking up the typescript in order to preserve the poem’s intricate formatting — not for the sake of my own critical reputation, but in order to make the work of a poet I love more useful and accessible and comprehensible. I can truly call this a labor of love. But boy, am I tired.
If my GRE were up-to-date, I would have sent off three applications by the end of that paragraph. The book will be published later this year by Princeton UP, I assume as part of their Auden critical editions series.
Bonus:
Donald Kraybill, PhD, (highlighted in Amish Grace & Pop Culture) teaches on The Upside Down Kingdom.
Best Books for New Faculty?
Heaven - I mean, a used book shop
We’ve previously asked for your recommendations for the best books for undergraduates (which had a tremendous response) and best books for graduate students (who must be harder to shop for). Thus, it only makes sense for me to ask:
What are the best books for new faculty?
If you need help getting started, here are a few categories:
- Practical advice books
- Books to take your theology and spiritual life to the next level
- Books on “culture making” (there’s a leading category!), education, or other aspects of faculty life
- Comfort or counsel for those who are facing disappointment with their career
- Books about building relationships
Any suggestions?
Photo: Parnassus Book Services, Cape Cod, MA, by Lochaven via Flickr. Click for a larger image.
Are Christian Professors Politically Conservative?
American Flag at William Jewell College
On Friday, our week in review linked to Patricia Cohen’s article about political liberalism in the academy, “Professor is a Label That Leans to the Left.” The article was based on the work of sociologists Neil Gross (U. British Colombia) and Ethan Fosse (a PhD candidate at Harvard, where Gross worked until recently), who propose that academic liberalism is due to typecasting, similar to how nursing is considered a “woman’s job” by most Americans.
The academic profession “has acquired such a strong reputation for liberalism and secularism that over the last 35 years few politically or religiously conservative students, but many liberal and secular ones, have formed the aspiration to become professors,” they write in the paper, “Why Are Professors Liberal?” (PDF) That is especially true of their own field, sociology, which has become associated with “the study of race, class and gender inequality — a set of concerns especially important to liberals.”
Photo Credit: bbaltimore via Flickr
Week in Review: Special Saturday Edition
Here’s the top five articles, books, websites, etc., that we’ve been reading or thinking about the past week. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. In addition, if you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.
1. Week in Review: Big Questions Edition touched on if Universities have lost sight of their purpose and the potential value of increased career services. The Chronicle of Higher Education opened this week with Are Too Many Students Going to College? (November 8, 2009) and What Do Parents Think? (November 9, 2009). Both articles wrestle with whether the whole population can afford or should pursue this American dream. In the survey of 1000 parents of pre-college students:
Nine of 10 parents told us that, despite the toughest economic climate in decades, they still view sending their kids to college as an essential part of the American dream … Almost eight in 10 Americans agreed that it’s very important to obtain a degree, while only a little more than half said their parents had felt it was very important for them to attend college (William F. Glavin Jr. What Do Parents Think? Chronicle of Higher Education. November 8, 2009).
2. In Why College Professors Don’t Envy the Young (Chronicle of Higher Education. November 08, 2009), Gina Barreca, professor of English/Feminist Theroy at UConn, delivers a unique perspective on midlife crisis as an older member of the academic community observing the younger members (and reflecting upon her own past).
While friends in other professions are waking up to their midlives (or what we choose to call midlife but how many people do you know who live past 100 — not counting Lévi-Strauss?) and frantically wishing they could return to their twenties or thirties, those of us who have been dealing with undergraduate and graduate students don’t want to time-travel back to those years. … To be adorable and energetic would be great, but to feel that perpetual trepidation that I’ll never find a job, a partner, a place in the world, or an apartment that I don’t have to share with six other people? No deal. To feel as if the whole world is open to me would be lovely, but to live with the anxiety that I’ll end up on the outskirts or end up an outcast? No thanks. To wonder whether I’ll ever do work meaningful to me, let alone anyone else? Not a chance. …
3. Reduce the Technology, Rescue Your Job (Chronicle of Higher Education. November 09, 2009) by Michael J. Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University and author of Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age (Oxford University Press, 2004) provides a number of practical recommendations.
4. Getting Started with Zotero – Zotero is a free citation and research manager that you can add on to Firefox. Amy Cavender at ProfHacker.com started a series this week to introduce new users to Zotero, which I (Mike) have never really used but have heard great things about.
5. Someone’s Trying to Find You – In a good way. IVP Editor Dan Reid, writing on IVP’s Addenda & Errata blog, expresses his frustration, and bafflement, at how hard it is to find faculty information on some universities’ websites. Dan uses the information to look for potential new authors, but the benefit of easy-to-find, easy-to-read faculty pages goes beyond that:
This is important not just for the sake of publishers and others finding your faculty. Good academic websites also contribute to a faculty member’s platform. And it is a good thing for academic institutions to have faculty with a platform that extends beyond the classroom. This doesn’t really need to be argued, does it?
Studying the Bible Together on Campus
This was the top hit on my Creative Commons' search for "Bible study." Insert your own metaphor!
Today, I’ve been invited to a faculty Bible study at Northern Kentucky University, and I hope that my schedule will let me attend. InterVarsity is committed to building “witnessing communities of students and faculty,” and group Bible studies are an integral part of those communities. With our upcoming ESN Book Club discussion of The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship
Photo: Bible Study BBQ by amanky via Flickr
ESN’s partner, InterVarsity Faculty Ministry, has created a number of Bible study resources for faculty, and I think graduate students would benefit from them as well. Faculty Ministry has collected a few Bible studies written specifically for faculty. On Friday, FM published a new Bible study on 1 Peter, along a daily quiet time guide and several essays related to 1 Peter by Bruce Winter, Miroslav Volf, and Gilbert Meilaender.
If you’ve had good experiences with on-campus Bible studies, how did they help you? What did you study? And, if your experience have been, er, less than great, what were the problems? Did you encounter barriers specific to the academic context?
Week in Review: Ethics
Norman Borlaug’s Nobel Prize Lecture – The death of Borlaug, one of the founders of the Green Revolution, sparked numerous tributes (NY Times, WSJ, Guardian). Gregg Easterbrook in the WSJ estimates that Borlaug’s agricultural work has saved more than 1 billion lives and counting. Leave it to GetReligion, however, to highlight the link between his Lutheran roots and his agricultural work. In his 1970 Nobel Prize lecture, Borlaug cites Genesis 41, Isaiah 8 and Isa. 35, Joel 1, and Amos 4 as justification for both his work and his hope in its success. [It reminds me of Walter Bradley's work that won the Bosscher-Hammond Prize at Following Christ. ~ Mike]
The Game of Ghost Writing – Doug Lederman at Inside Higher Ed reviews a couple of new studies that examine the practice of scientific “ghost writing”: journal articles written by pharmaceutical companies or other corporate interests but published under the names of academics who had little to nothing to do with the research. (Mike’s note: I agree with the commenter who observes that “ghost writing” is hardly the term for this practice.)
Maimonides on Trustworthy Sources (Harper’s) – Reader David O’Hara sent us this great quote from Jewish medieval philosopher Maimonides.
More on the challenge of humility. What does it mean “to serve” and “put the interest of others” ahead of one’s own in the context of higher education? Bearing the Burden reviews some recent posts on how
the service burdens are unfairly distributed, falling mainly on academic do-gooders, “who work hardest for the institution” yet “reap the fewest material benefits because they publish at a slower pace.” … academic do-gooders need to learn to just say no. … “those of us who overwork are covering up for and enabling those who under perform. Most universities have no mechanism for forcing tenured people teach better, teach more, show up at office hours, give students responsible advice about their program of study, or do the committee work they have been assigned” – Gabriela Montell, Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/18/2009.
Lots of provoking material in Academic Bait-and-Switch, Part 2 (Henry Adams, Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/15/2009).
- Freshman disinterested in reading, mastering the basics of writing sentences, and earning their grades as the “interesting distinctions between the worldviews of freshmen and graduate students at Elite National U.”
- A summary of the graduate student’s encounter with a parent over the “F” he had awarded their son.
- The final sentence of the essay reads, “If the Blunts didn’t want their son taught by a TA, I wondered why they sent him to Elite National U, but I thought it wise to keep that to myself.”
Review: Life on the Tenure Track
James Lang's Life on the Tenure Track
I have a terrible confession to make: I’ve been giving away copies of a book that I had never read. For the past two summers, we’ve surveyed ESN members about their past year, and members who had made a recent career transition – earned a degree, started a new job, received tenure – have been offered the free book of their selection. I included among our offerings a book, James Lang’s Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year
But my shame has been lifted. This afternoon, I finished reading the final chapter. Even better: I’m glad that I’ve been giving it out.
Lang’s book is not meant to replace the myriad other advice books that are available to young and aspiring faculty. While Lang has studied the art and science of teaching, his book is primarily a memoir of his first year as an assistant professor of English at Assumption College, a Catholic liberal arts college in Worcester, Mass. The book takes the reader through the entire first year, with each month matched up with a dominant theme of academic life from that time period: teaching, grading, writing, and so on. While Lang includes general advice to new professor, he mostly focuses on his own experiences of learning how to teach a full schedule while trying to fulfill service and writing commitments, balancing his work with the needs of his young family, navigating relationships with faculty colleagues, and learning his way around a small college in an unfamiliar city. Read the rest of this entry »
Sharing the Gospel with Faculty Colleagues
As you may know, evangelism is a core value of InterVarsity, and InterVarsity’s Graduate and Faculty Ministries (of which ESN is a part) has named “Evangelism and Service” as one of its four core commitments. But several of us within InterVarsity have been discussing the unique challenges for faculty who want to share the gospel with their colleagues. By extension, these challenges apply to those who want to become faculty, as well. Evangelism by an undergrad who expects to graduate within a few years, or by a campus minister who is already an outsider on campus, is one thing, but evangelism when you hope to spend your career at the university – a career which might be considerably shortened by your evangelism! – is something else entirely. Read the rest of this entry »
Who is in your class?
Would you agree with my idealistic enthusiasm for My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, the story of a professor of anthropology at a large state university who realized that she no longer understood the behavior and attitudes of her students and returned to the classroom? And my uneasiness when reading that some Online Professors Pose as Students to Encourage Real Learning (Chronicle of Higher Education, 5/29/09), in the class which they’re teaching? Can you offer testimonies, tips, or sources regarding what it takes to stimulate an on-line learning community? We would love to have specific suggestions regarding how to direct the conversation of the ESN Book Club: Your Mind Matters.
Note: If you don’t have a copy of John Stott’s Your Mind Matters, I’d encourage you to borrow/purchase so you’re ready to go on Tuesday. If you’d like a head start on reading but don’t have a copy of the book, visit InterVarsity Press’ website for PDFs of the Foreward and Chapter 1.
Do You Get The Lamp Post?
Just a quick, unscheduled post today. ESN works very closely with InterVarsity’s Faculty Ministry, which publishes a quarterly email chronicle called The Lamp Post. The next issue is coming out this week. If you aren’t receiving it, you should be! Here’s a sneak peek at this week’s issue:
- David Thomas of Union University reviews Mark Noll’s new book, God and Race in American Politics: A Short History
- Andrew Lee of ISAAC (the Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity) writes about integrating spirituality with your classroom teaching
- A small group discussion guide for George Marsden’s The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship
- A survey asking for your thoughts about sharing the gospel on campus
To subscribe to The Lamp Post, just follow this link.
