Tom and I have been busy recuperating from our week at Urbana 09, so there won't be any Week in Review this week. Instead, we're each going to share some highlights of our experience. If you were there, we hope that we were able to make contact. If you weren't there, you can watch videos of many of the speakers and other main session performers at the Urbana website. So, what did the Emerging Scholars Network do at Urbana 09? Serving Christ as a Professor: More than 250 students —mostly undergraduates —attended my … [Read more...] about LAST Week in Review: ESN at Urbana 09
Mentoring
Shaping the Next Generation of Higher Education
Two recent articles on the profession of education worth consideration: In Search of Education Leaders, by Bob Herbert, NY Times Op-Ed, December 4, 2009 The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy's self-renewal, by Louis Menand, Harvard Magazine, November-December 2009. HT: Miller. Anyone willing to take a stab at why the educational system is so leaky and how we find/develop educational leaders which serve their department, discipline, campus, education … [Read more...] about Shaping the Next Generation of Higher Education
Emotional education through the season of Advent
In The Other Education (NY Times Opinion, November 26, 2009), David Brooks comments: For reasons having to do with the peculiarities of our civilization, we pay a great deal of attention to our scholastic educations, which are formal and supervised, and we devote much less public thought to our emotional educations, which are unsupervised and haphazard. This is odd, since our emotional educations are much more important to our long-term happiness and the quality of our lives. Bruce Springsteen serves as one of Brooks' … [Read more...] about Emotional education through the season of Advent
Humility as essential to faculty success
Rob Jenkins, an associate professor of English and director of the Writers Institute at Georgia Perimeter College,* proposes The Five Characteristics of Successful New Faculty Members. The first one on his list is humility, which includes the importance of seeking out an experienced faculty mentor. You might be surprised at how many new hires show up believing they're smarter than their colleagues, or thinking they already know more about how the institution ought to function than do people who have been there 20 … [Read more...] about Humility as essential to faculty success
Week in Review: Numbers Edition
Our Week-in-Review feature has returned, with a new format. We know there's way too much to read out there already, so we're going to be highlighting the top five articles, books, websites, etc., that we've been reading or thinking about the past week. 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. Welcome to Your Quarterlife Crisis - Kevin Offner, who works with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries in Washington, DC, tipped us off to … [Read more...] about Week in Review: Numbers Edition