August 20th, 2010
Education News
Roundup
Articles posted by five reliably interesting sources of
news about higher education.
For-Profit, Without Profit
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/20/chancellor
August 20th, 2010
When Michael Clifford and his team stepped in to rescue
struggling nonprofit Myers University in 2008, the investor
who had helped to transform nearly dead colleges into two
publicly traded companies with tens of thousands of students
was heralded as the 160-year-old institution’s savior.
Myers was deeply in debt, placed on probation by its regional
accreditor and struggling to attract students. Clifford’s
Significant Partners LLC bought the institution for $5.25
million and infused millions more into its operations,
renaming it Chancellor University and promising rapid
growth.
The gambit seemed even more promising after Jack Welch, the
former chief executive officer of General Electric and a one-
time skeptic of for-profit higher education, bought a minority
stake in Chancellor last summer at Clifford’s persuasion.
His $2 million went toward creating the university’s M.B.A.
program and the Jack Welch Management Institute.
But the condition of the Cleveland university has in some ways
only gotten worse since Clifford, Welch and other investors got
involved.
Chancellor’s enrollment has fluctuated between 400 and 600
since the fall of 2008; it has yet to see the exponential growth
Clifford promised, and it is operating on an annual budget
deficit. Rather than improving in the eyes of the Higher
Learning Commission of the North Central Association of
Colleges and Schools (HLC), its accreditor, Chancellor slipped
from probation to “show cause” status in February. (This is the
final chance for the university to provide evidence to persuade
the HLC not to end its accreditation.) In April, Bloomberg
reported that Chancellor “explicitly focused recruiting efforts
on local [homeless] shelters” after hearing that the University
of Phoenix was doing the same in Cleveland.
And Clifford, who has built a reputation for infusing cash into
indebted nonprofit colleges and growing their enrollments and
their profits rapidly, has backed away. Though he’s still an
investor, he has left Chancellor’s board and isn’t involved with
its operations. He says he has “the utmost confidence in the
leadership team.”
Published by: philosophyandrew
That leadership team, though, has been spinning through
a revolving door. Bob Daugherty, a Cleveland investor, has
been president since early this summer. Bob Barker, who
spent 20 years as an executive at the University of Phoenix
before becoming a for-profit education entrepreneur, was
Chancellor’s CEO for about six months earlier this year.
George Kidd, a former president of nonprofit Tiffin University,
was president of the university until last year. Other top
administrators haven’t stayed long either.
Barker says he left for “personal reasons” that “had nothing to
do with the business.” At the time of his departure, he “saw
things growing and building” at Chancellor. “I didn’t see a
sense of falling apart.”
The university’s fall from probation to show cause status with
the HLC was the result of “bad management,” Daugherty says,
but he is confident that the university is on the right track
under his leadership. “A number of changes that have taken
place in the past year both from a leadership standpoint and
from an institutional standpoint are putting Chancellor in a
better position."
Chancellor plans to move from its downtown location to "a
brand-new building that will be easier for our students to
get to, modern, safer, and a great learning environment,"
Daugherty says. Significant's purchase price of the university
included a $2.25 million mortgage note on its current building
owed to the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority later
this month. Rather than paying it off in its entirety and staying
in the building, Chancellor has offered payments totaling
$500,000 by the end of the year, and an additional $250,000
to be repaid in the next five years. The agency is expected to
approve the offer.
As the for-profit sector faces closer scrutiny by the federal
government and accreditors, Daugherty is quick to say that he
and his colleagues are “strong advocates of integrity.” Other
institutions, he adds, “some bad actors in the postsecondary
sector, need to be – quite frankly – better regulated.”
Bloomberg's report about the university recruiting homeless
students were, says Barker, "a total misrepresentation of what
actually happened ... the person leading it genuinely wanted
to help students." Clifford defends the practice of seeking out
students who are living in shelters or who are imprisoned.
"Obama said he wants everyone to have a college education.
Does that mean everyone except those who are down in out in
homeless shelters and prisons?" Nonetheless, Chancellor has
ended its recruitment at shelters.
Even if Chancellor’s worst days are behind it, they may have
done irreparable damage to the institution. While it’s still
accredited, the university is required to disclose to current
1
August 20th, 2010
and prospective students that it’s in danger of losing its
accreditation in the coming year. Students usually don’t
understand or ask about accreditation, but hearing about the
university’s tenuous status isn’t likely to convince indecisive
students to enroll.
C. Todd Jones, president of the Association of Independent
Colleges and Universities of Ohio, says members of his
group of nonprofit institutions “continue to have to compete
very actively to attract students” who are drawn to lower
sticker prices at the state’s public institutions. Part of
Chancellor’s growth strategy was to build up its on-the-
ground enrollment of low-income, minority students and
Cleveland professionals seeking further education. “I’ve never
understood how Chancellor thought they’d grow locally, even
with tuition cuts,” he says.
In the spring of 2009, Shaun Redgate, who was then
the university's chief operating officer but has since left
the institution, told Crain's Cleveland Business that the
institution was on track for a fall 2010 enrollment of 1,050, the
enrollment needed to break even. Chancellor, it seems, will fall
short.
According to HLC data, Chancellor’s enrollment totaled 422
students this spring. In an interview, Daugherty cited the
spring enrollment as about 600. In the fall of 2009, the
university reported 512 full-time and part-time students to the
U.S. Department of Education. Retention, Daugherty says, is
“improving,” though he declined to provide statistics.
In the fall of 2008, just as the for-profit team took charge of
the university, Chancellor reported a total enrollment of 422.
The year before, it was 570, and in the fall of 2006, it was
942.“They’re totally focused on quality,” says Clifford. “They’re
not concerned about making money, they’re not concerned
about going public. It’s about the students having a superior
experience.”
That’s not quite what Clifford told The Wall Street Journal in
June of 2009. He said then that he hoped the university would
have 800 students that fall and 5,000 by the fall of 2011, and
that he would eventually be able to take the company public.
His vision may have changed since then – and he says he does
not speak for the management of the institution -- but Clifford
still insists that he and his fellow investors did the right thing.
“It’s in better shape than when we stepped in,” he says. “The
easiest thing would’ve been to close it down and walk away,
but we responded and put tens of millions of dollars into it.”
(And, at the same time, Clifford says the Welch M.B.A.
program has had "thousands of applicants from around the
world" but has intentionally limited its growth.)
Still, Chancellor is struggling. Daugherty says the university
has 38 new students who’ve enrolled for fall classes. The
university must submit a show cause report to the HLC by Dec.
1 illustrating that it:
• “Operates with integrity to ensure the fulfillment of its
mission through structures and processes that involve
the board, administration, faculty, staff and students.”
Published by: philosophyandrew
• Plans and allocates resources responsibly “to fulfill
its mission, improve the quality of its education, and
respond to future challenges and opportunities.”
• Shows evidence of student learning and effective
teaching.
An HLC evaluation team will visit Chancellor’s campus in
early January to validate the claims the university makes
in its report, and to ensure that the concerns identified by
HLC’s board in issuing the show cause order have been
sufficiently addressed. If the agency isn’t satisfied, it will pull
accreditation.
John Hausaman, an HLC spokesman, said the agency and
Sylvia Manning, who became its president in July 2008, had
no further comments on Chancellor’s status.
Though Chancellor could continue to operate if it were to lose
HLC’s imprimatur, its credits would no longer be transferrable
to other institutions. It would also lose its eligibility to
participate in the federal financial aid program.
The Ohio Board of Regents, which authorizes private
institutions’ degree-granting powers, placed Chancellor on
three-year “provisional” status last fall, requiring it to submit
annual progress reports each September. Michael Chaney, the
board’s chief communications officer, says that Chancellor
submitted part of its 2010 report in July and has requested an
extension until Oct. 1 to fill in the gaps. Even if the report is
up to snuff, Chancellor’s authorization is “contingent on their
maintaining their regional accreditation,” Chaney says.
Daugherty says he is confident the university will show
evidence to HLC that its governance, finances and student
outcomes are all in good shape. “I expect we will be
reaccredited this winter,” he says. “We don’t want to be de
minimis, we want to be the summa cum laude example.”
With Clifford’s active role in the institution diminished,
Daugherty says the focus is on upholding “the standards
that you would expect from a guy like Jack Welch are now
permeating our institution.” Welch’s assistant said he was on
vacation and authorized Daugherty to speak on his behalf.
Welch’s involvement, though, appears limited to the M.B.A.
program. “He has read and reviewed every piece in the M.B.A.
program,” says Daugherty, who declined to say whether
Welch had invested more than his initial $2 million share,
which bought him a 12 percent ownership stake. In several
interviews, Welch has characterized his decision to invest in
the university despite his initial skepticism about for-profit
higher education as being about building his “legacy.”
Even as observers eye Chancellor with skepticism, Daugherty
says the institution is finally on the track to sustained and
sustainable growth, as well as survival. “We’re not here to
make a quick buck,” he says. “We’re here to be here for a very
long time.”
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Abandoning an Experiment
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/20/rice
August 20th, 2010
Rice University Press is being shut down next month, ending
an experiment in an all-digital model of scholarly publishing.
While university officials said that they needed to make a
difficult economic decision to end the operation, they acted
against the recommendations of an outside review team that
had urged Rice to bolster its support for the publishing
operations.
Some supporters, in fact, are in discussions about raising
private support to continue the press as a scholarly publishing
outfit that might not be attached to any single university.
Many supporters of academic publishing had high hopes for
the Rice project, which was launched in 2006 with the goal
of merging the quality and rigor of scholarly peer review with
the convenience and low cost of digital publishing. The demise
of the project led to immediate speculation about whether the
Rice experience suggested difficulties for the economic model
or if other factors may have been decisive.
Several experts suggested that the crucial factor may be
size. The Rice operation was small (no more than a handful
of books a year). Earlier this week, word spread that the
University of Scranton Press was being shut down, and in
May Southern Methodist University suspended operations of
its press (although a committee is now studying whether it
might be revived in a different form). While the Scranton and
SMU presses are larger than Rice's, they are both relatively
small. While threats of the closure of university presses surface
from time to time -- the operations of both Louisiana State
University at Utah State University were at risk in 2009, but
survived -- closures have been rare.
Death and Rebirth and Death at Rice
Indeed one of the last closures was Rice University Press,
which in its more traditional form was killed off in 1996.
A statement from Eugene Levy, who recently concluded a
term as provost at Rice (during which he helped finance
the revived press and helped decide to end the project),
explained the decision this way: "The hope was that, without
the burden of having to maintain a print inventory, the press
might sustain itself largely on revenues from print-on-demand
book sales. Unfortunately, book sales remained very slow,
and projections discouraged the anticipation that revenues
Published by: philosophyandrew
would, in the foreseeable future, grow to a level that could
materially cover even minimal costs of operations. Combined
with pressures on the university budget from the broad fiscal
crisis of recent years, the university concluded that it could
not continue indefinite subsidy of the RUP experiment, as
painful budget reductions were being absorbed across the
entire university, including in the core of Rice's educational
and research mission."
The press used Connexions, a Rice open education resources
project, as a platform to publish, and the Rice press books that
have appeared will continue to be available there. Connexions
is remaining open with its many projects beyond the press.
Levy, the Andrew Hays Buchanan Professor of Astrophysics at
Rice, said in an interview that the press was costing $150,000
to $200,000 a year. "This was intended as an experiment," he
said.
The results leave him wondering about the ability of small
publishing operations, he said. While the hope was to save
money by not printing books, he said that there "are base costs
that are irreducible" for a publisher "and printing is only one of
them." One model many have suggested is for small academic
publishers to merge more of their administrative functions or
even their entire operations.
Levy said he understood that idea from a financial perspective
but was bothered by it. One of the key strengths of scholarly
publishing, he said, is the "intellectual pluralism" that is
promoted by having many presses.
While Levy portrayed the decision as a necessary one, not
everyone agrees. One member of the board of the press, who
asked not to be identified because of the need to build support
for continuing the press without the university, said that Rice
unfairly judged the press as unworthy because it couldn't
support itself.
"Sales are not going to be the way presses" develop new
models for academic publishing, the board member said.
Scholarly presses are receiving far more from universities
other than Rice -- and universities should focus on the role
of disseminating scholarship, not pure sales. "We're moving
to a different era of scholarly communication where it's more
accessible to more people, and where we don't have to worry
about the commercial viability," the board member said.
The reality, the board member added, is that "there is no
commercial viability" in academic publishing and that the
emphasis on such questions "is killing humanities publishing."
Indeed the outside reviewers who recently finished a study of
the press recommended in their report -- a copy of which was
obtained by Inside Higher Ed -- that the press move further
away from a book-oriented model and become a teaching
and research center that explored new forms of scholarly
communication. Such a broadening of the press role, the
committee said, would attract outside financial support and
enhance the university's programs.
Turning the press into a scholarship laboratory, the report
said, "challenges and transforms the traditional notion of
the university press, which now becomes not a 'press'
in any ordinary sense of the word, but rather a node
for experimentation, research, and dissemination, linking
3
August 20th, 2010
together the teaching and research core of Rice University, the
Rice University Libraries (in the form of the Center for Digital
Scholarship), the university’s main research centers (HRC,
etc.), within the framework of an outreach structure (RUP with
Connexions serving as only one of a number of supports).
"Like a conventional university press, RUP would, through
the work of its publisher, continue to seek out and recruit
internal and external projects that live up to its mission
of modeling the future of scholarship. A traditional peer
review process would be applied to the evaluation of these
projects, however unconventional their form (a multimedia
publication, geo-spatially organized repository, a print/digital
hybrid 'augmented' book). But RUP would also serve as the
completion and publication site for the most innovative locally
produced (via Rice’s research centers and institutes) projects,
subject to precisely the same peer review controls."
The report concludes by explicitly rejecting calls to close the
press and says instead: "The Lab/Press model promotes the
most innovative forms of research on campus and, through
the press, interconnects them to the most innovative forms
of research being carried out at other universities both
nationally and worldwide. No other university press has dared
to integrally reinvent itself along the lines of scenario one, so
Rice University Press could play a leadership role in this regard
both nationally and internationally."
The Overall Press Picture
While Rice has opted not to move ahead with that vision, other
universities have decided not to maintain more traditional
university presses. Are these decisions connected? Richard
Brown, director of Georgetown University Press and president
of the Association of American University Presses, said he
viewed all of the closures as distressing, but that the cases were
quite different. "I hate to see any university press struggling,"
he said. "But you have to look at them case by case."
He said that Rice's project was "an interesting experiment"
and that it may not have found a viable model. "It's clear that
we're in a transition period right now," he said. Brown said
that it was important to remember also that despite the actions
at a few universities, "most are really committed to scholarly
publishing."
While much of the discussion about new models in scholarly
publishing has focused on medium (digital or print),
there is also discussion of new organizational structures.
The University of Michigan Press, for example, last year
announced not only that it was shifting most monograph
publishing to digital formats, but that it was becoming part of
the university's library system.
Brown said that a library could be "a safe harbor," particularly
for smaller presses, but he said he wasn't predicting a major
move in that direction by many presses.
Laura Brown (no relation to Richard Brown), executive vice
president of strategy and research for Ithaka, an organization
that studies the future of publishing and has promoted new
models for university presses, said it was "hard to disentangle"
all of the factors that may have been at play in the failure of the
Rice press to create a new economic model.
Published by: philosophyandrew
She noted that in the current economic environment, "scrutiny
of the subsidy" that presses receive can make them more
vulnerable -- especially those presses that are small. A big part
of the problem, she said, is that certain functions are needed
whether a press is big or small. "You can't just get rid of half of a
finance person and half of a marketing person" in the same way
that a large operation may be able to eliminate some positions,
she said. "There are a lot of costs of running an enterprise."
The model of joining the library may work, she said, if there is
genuine university commitment to expanding the library role.
But she said that it wasn't clear that this would always be the
case. If a university press goes to an open-access digital model
and gives up the revenue from print books, the institutional
subsidy may be greater -- putting pressure on a library budget.
Indeed Levy, the former Rice provost, said that when the idea
for reviving the press there was talked about five years ago,
one proposal was to make it part of Rice's library operations.
And he said that the library's leaders were willing to have that
happen. "I"m the one who said no," Levy said. "My feeling was
that we needed to be supporting the library more rather than
raiding its budget." So Levy found general university funds and
set up the press as a largely independent unit, typical of the
way university presses are managed.
Does he now think that the library -- which, like a university
press, is focused on disseminating scholarship instead of
making money -- might be a better home for a university press?
"I have an open mind," he said, "because both publishing and
libraries are evolving so quickly."
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A Full View of Faculty
Development
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2010/08/20/karukstis
August 20th, 2010
Success in the academic world is often equated with attaining
certain significant career milestones. For assistant professors,
tenure is their holy grail. The aspiration of mid-career
faculty is generally promotion to full professor. Receiving an
endowed professorship – an honor conferred upon a select
few faculty members – is definitely a landmark occasion.
Indeed, these are highly coveted achievements. Any beginning
4
August 20th, 2010 Published by: philosophyandrew
faculty member presented with a genie in a bottle would likely The absence of formal services for experienced faculty can
have three wishes that included one or more of these goals. be viewed as the opportune circumstance to create the
Yet those of us in higher education don’t gauge our day- appropriate resources needed and to simultaneously promote
to-day level of satisfaction with our careers solely by these the notion that such career support is designed to allow
momentous – albeit highly desirable – milestones. While these successful faculty to thrive even more. So, what type of
accolades are rewarding, they are generally not sustaining. career assistance might be most beneficial to senior faculty
If faculty members relied only on a formal institutional at baccalaureate institutions, especially for women? Let me
reward structure to provide their motivation, the lack of such suggest three key approaches.
incentives, especially after tenure and promotion, might lead Opportunities for periodic professional renewal. Of course,
to professional paralysis. the concept of a sabbatical is well-entrenched in academic
Defining Job Satisfaction life. But professional enrichment must and can occur on
a more frequent time scale than the seven-year cycle.
Despite reward structures, most faculty members would
Experiences that provide faculty with the time and resources
profess passion for their teaching and scholarly pursuits as the
for growth and reflection enhance an institution’s success and
personal motivating factors that provide career contentment
should be both encouraged and rewarded. This is especially
and drive them to continued growth and success. Also
important because established faculty members often neglect
gratifying are the high degree of autonomy and independence
their own continued professional development in deference
of our positions and the level of job security that comes
to the service needs of their department or institution.
with tenure – both justifiably prime reasons for entering
For example, the HERI survey indicated that significant
and remaining in the profession. Thus, it is not surprising
proportions of full professors at baccalaureate institutions
that faculty members report higher levels of satisfaction with
mentor new faculty “to a great extent” – 29.8 percent of
their occupations than the general American public. According
male full professors and 44.5 percent of female full professors
to a report released earlier this year, only 45 percent of
reported serving in this capacity. Furthermore, whereas 36.8
5,000 American households surveyed say they are satisfied
percent of female assistant professors and 27.7 percent of
with their jobs. That statistic represents the lowest level of
male assistant professors at predominantly undergraduate
job satisfaction in two decades. In contrast, an overall job
institutions report spending five or more hours per week on
satisfaction of 74.8 percent was reported in the recent Higher
committee work and in meetings, 51.5 percent of the female
Education Research Institute (HERI) survey of over 22,000
full professors and 43.0 percent of the male full professors at
full-time faculty members at nearly 400 accredited four-year
these institutions report similar time commitments.
colleges and universities who teach undergraduates as all or
part of their duties. How does an institution demonstrate its belief in the
importance of professional development and encourage
Despite the apparent contentment with our professions, do
faculty members to not view scholarly activity as the only
faculty members believe there is room for improvement?
means of career development? One way is to provide
Absolutely – even at the full professor level! A closer look at the
separate funds (distinct from research support) for a variety
results of the HERI survey at predominantly undergraduate
of professional development strategies to suit the needs
institutions reveals several components of job satisfaction
of each faculty member. For example, participation in
with low ratings, particularly at the full professor rank
conferences sponsored by professional organizations such
and especially for women. Of course, increases in salary,
as the Association of American Colleges and Universities,
adjustments in teaching load, enhanced levels of clerical
the Council on Undergraduate Research, and Project
support, and greater availability of child care are always
Kaleidoscope enable faculty to examine the latest issues in
desirable. But what is most striking is the discontent with
higher education, enhance professional skills and exchange
three factors that one would assume would not be issues for
successful practices, and network with others at similar
those faculty members – full professors – at the pinnacle
campuses or facing comparable challenges. Professional
of their careers. These factors are: visibility for jobs at
coaching services offered by the Association for Women
other institutions/organizations (62.8 percent of male full
in Science, the American Council on Education Fellows
professors cited satisfaction vs. 54.2 percent of female full
Program for those interested in exploring higher education
professors); prospects for career advancement (67.2 percent
administration, the ACE Department Leadership program for
vs. 58.2 percent); and opportunities for scholarly pursuits
chair development – all are examples of specialized career
(66.0 percent vs. 50.8 percent). These data suggest that
development programs that will benefit a contingent of faculty
professional development initiatives that are directed toward
members. Allowing faculty to suggest individualized programs
enhancing the visibility, leadership, and productivity of senior
of professional development would serve the greatest range
faculty – particularly women – might enhance careers and
of career needs. Institutions can provide faculty with both the
contribute to greater job satisfaction.
time and the resources to receive this enrichment.
Career Resources for Senior Faculty
Opportunities to build a faculty member’s leadership
Professional development for senior faculty? Such a notion is capacity. Faculty governance is an important characteristic
the antithesis of most faculty development programs today, of predominantly undergraduate institutions, and formal
with institutions typically providing an extensive array of positions such as department chairs and associate deans
support mechanisms for junior faculty. Balancing faculty certainly develop leadership skills. But such positions of
resources among all ranks would be a more logical approach to responsibility can be small in number and infrequently
ensuring institutional success through faculty career growth.
5
August 20th, 2010
available on some campuses. Informal mechanisms for
creatively sharing major responsibilities can enable additional
faculty members to take leadership roles in department
and college administration. For example, many departments
have created “vice chair” positions to relieve the chair
of some administrative tasks such as assigning teaching
responsibilities and scheduling classes. Ad hoc positions,
such as directing the development and implementation of
departmental curricular revision, also can serve as occasions
to enhance supervisory and organizational skills. Faculty
members should also consider officer positions and advisory
committees in professional societies as outstanding ways to
build both leadership capacity and professional visibility.
These are meaningful ways to address career advancement
ambitions.
Opportunities to foster connections. The exchange of ideas
through interactions with colleagues and with others with
varied career experiences can serve as a rich resource
for valuable career guidance and recommendations. Such
interactions are even more essential for those who experience
a sense of professional isolation, often the case for those at
geographically-isolated institutions or in disciplines with low
representation on a given campus. With women representing
only 16 percent of the full professors in the sciences at
predominantly undergraduate institutions, efforts to promote
occasions for female faculty to meet, interact, and develop
connections are essential to overcome gender isolation. One
way to accomplish this objective is for institutions to use
existing consortial arrangements to foster opportunities for
senior women faculty to meet.
Creative approaches that look beyond our institutions
to address the professional development needs of senior
faculty are also viable alternatives to on-campus programs.
With funding from the National Science Foundation
ADVANCE Partnerships for Adaptation, Implementation,
and Dissemination (PAID) program, I have been a part
of an enormously transformative initiative to investigate
the efficacy of using a “horizontal mentoring” strategy
involving the formation of five-member alliances of senior
women faculty members in chemistry or physics at different
institutions to address professional development issues. As a
culminating event of the project, 51 senior women professors
in chemistry and physics from 46 liberal arts colleges gathered
in Washington to tackle that challenge of identifying the
elements that make for a satisfying academic career. The two-
day working meeting considered the practices, infrastructure,
and campus climate needed to support and enhance the
professional careers, visibility, and leadership of senior
women science faculty on liberal arts campuses. This first-
ever summit meeting focused on the Advancement of Senior
Women Scientists at Liberal Arts Colleges generated a set of
recommendations for individuals, departments, institutions,
professional societies, and funding agencies to promote the
professional development of women STEM faculty at liberal
arts colleges. These recommendations for advancing women
in the professoriate will be disseminated in a final report to be
published later this summer.
Maintenance of faculty vitality in terms of professional
expertise, enthusiasm, and engagement is the primary
Published by: philosophyandrew
responsibility of the faculty member. As George Bernard
Shaw said, “If you do not take the time to get the career
you want, be prepared to take what you get.” By the same
token, an investment by an institution in the continuous
development of a faculty member’s career will have a broad
impact on the faculty member, his/her students, and on the
ability of the institution to attract and retain excellent faculty.
A faculty development program based on the synergetic
interrelationship between faculty and an institution might just
provide the career satisfaction that we seek.
Kerry K. Karukstis is professor of chemistry and chair of the
faculty at Harvey Mudd College and holds the Joseph B. Platt
Chair in Effective Teaching.
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faculty position in the area of ...
American University of Beirut Faculty of Agricultural and
Food Sciences Professor: Clinical Nutrition The Department
of Nutrition and Food Sciences ...
New Programs: Education
Leadership, Sports
Management, Early Childhood
Education
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/20/programs
August 20th, 2010
Saint Joseph's University (Penn.)
Assistant/Associate Professor of Management The
Department of Management in the Erivan K. Haub School of
Business at Saint Joseph's University is ...
Glen Oaks Community College
Glen Oaks Community College is searching for a full-time
Director of Business Services. This position is the College's
direct liaison to the ...
Catholic University of America
Assist faculty, staff and students to implement software
products that support the academic, administrative and
community mission of the university. ...
University of Maryland University College
The Instructional Support Specialist for the Center for Support
of Instruction will be responsible for providing a variety of
instructional ...
Central Michigan University
The Central Michigan University (CMU) College of Medicine
invites applications for multiple tenure track positions in the
cross disciplinary ...
6
August 20th, 2010
University of the Rockies
University of the Rockies was founded on the principle that
education improves lives. University of the Rockies employees
witness such change ...
Missed Opportunities
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/08/20/walsh
August 20th, 2010
William Buckley famously said he’d “rather be governed by the
first 2,000 names in the Boston phonebook than by the dons
of Harvard.” In my 14 years as president of a leading liberal
arts college, I grew weary of overworked jokes that likened
leading a faculty to herding cats or kangaroos. Looking back,
I recognize in them a bit of bravado masking an awkward
misalignment. Faculty are proudly autonomous, defiantly so,
independent thinkers who give each other as much trouble
as they give the administration when one or another of them
raises a head above the herd in a gesture of leadership. Faculty
are socialized as individuals, not as members of a group;
taking a broader view runs against the grain for many of them,
in the ways and for the reasons Hugh Heclo enumerates in
his insightful book, On Thinking Institutionally. And yet the
principle of “shared governance” requires a faculty capable
of effective self-governance in partnership with professional
administrators and a voluntary governing board.
The institution I was privileged to lead and others with which
I’ve been affiliated have wonderful faculty – exceptionally
engaged, responsible, and responsive in virtually every
respect. Yet from the day I arrived on campus as a new
president, I was schooled in a cultural norm that the better part
of valor was to tiptoe around the faculty. It was as though "the
faculty" as a whole was a hibernating bear no one dared disturb
for fear of being mauled. I could see all the ways in which
the faculty as a body – a "constituency" in academic parlance
– was being watched, coddled, and handled with enormous
investments of energy and studied restraint. Over time, as I
became adept at reading the emotional force fields on campus,
I realized that this strenuous effort was thinly masking an
undercurrent of fear. And this, I have come to learn, is true to
one degree or another through much of the academy.
The fear arises out of an intellectual culture that is awash in
competition and critique, in picking ideas apart and taking no
prisoners. Critical thinking and skepticism are the coins of the
realm. But skepticism can devolve to cynicism, and criticism
to contempt, an acrid brew of belligerence and disengagement
that can poison morale and yield a system of self-governance
far better suited to obstruction than construction. This is a pity
because it matters, both educationally and strategically.
Educationally, students pay close attention to how the "grown
ups" on campus behave. The academy remains arguably one of
the last major sectors in American society still making a good-
faith effort to both uphold and enact the view that in a healthy
democracy we have obligations to one another. This includes
the obligation to resolve differences by enabling the majority
to form its collective judgment through meaningful discourse
in which all relevant positions are fully aired. "A democracy
needs citizens who can think for themselves rather than simply
deferring to authority, who can reason together about their
Published by: philosophyandrew
choices rather than just trading claims and counterclaims,"
Martha Nussbaum wrote in Cultivating Humanity.
Strategically, faculty governance bodies have pressing work
to do in this era of shrinking resources and accelerating
global competition. If they once routinely fostered authentic
and serious public debate about real educational problems,
discussion too often deteriorates, now, into something even
less informative than a clash of competing claims, a spectacle
more akin to disconnected “serial oratory.” At my own
institution, and others I knew well, it was mystifying to see
faculty members we revered for their pedagogic virtuosity
– faculty who were creating in their private classrooms
exquisitely hospitable venues for courageous exploration of
controversial ideas – so stuck in old and unsatisfying habits
when trying to resolve conflicts in the academic calendar, or
come to terms with grade inflation, or revise the curriculum.
These discussions moved painfully slowly and unpredictably.
Often a lone, loud voice or a mobilized minority faction would
hijack the conversation in the eleventh hour. I couldn’t help
but wonder, at these times, whether this would be happening
if the faculty as a whole were more vividly experiencing itself
weighing evidence and making wise choices on matters of
curricular or educational consequence and then feeling bound
to one another by their collective decisions.
Many faculty are increasingly conscious of imbalances within
their own ranks, frustrations they discuss privately with deans
or presidents hoping for a simple solution from on high. Rarely
do they come together to explore their mutual accountabilities:
to one another, to their departments, to their disciplines, and
to students other than those they see directly in their own
classes, offices, studios or labs. Some carry a disproportionate
load for their institution as a whole, while others seem to ride
more or less free. Disparities of this kind seem to be widening.
When one or another faculty member would bring an injustice
or a dispute to the administration for adjudication, I often
felt tempted to weigh in with what looked like decisiveness. I
learned, though, that only the faculty had the power to resolve
differences among themselves. The impulse that flows from
perceived inequities is to tighten central controls. But that only
exacerbates the problem. People who feel under surveillance
resist authority, or withdraw, or both, feeding a vicious cycle:
more controls, less commitment. Rather than acquiesce in
the imposition of more central controls, faculty themselves
would do well to shore up their own systems of citizenship,
taking account of the increasing complexity of faculty work,
while recognizing that the institution’s continued success will
require ever greater interdependence.
In some schools, the economic downturn has brought faculty
into new relationships with the administration and the
trustees on budgetary decision-making, strengthening their
roles in shared governance, at least for a time; in others, the
reverse has occurred. As financial and competitive pressures
continue to bear down on all institutions of higher learning,
the incremental changes many have been making to ride
out the recession – draining reserve accounts, deferring
maintenance, making across-the-board budget reductions,
reducing staff, relying more on contingent faculty – are likely
to shift more work onto faculty shoulders and erode the quality
of their work lives. If budgets have to be trimmed further,
7
August 20th, 2010
it’s hard to imagine finding additional economies without
reconsidering the organization of the educational enterprise
itself and the assumptions behind it: how students learn, how
faculty teach, the nature of the curriculum, how everyone uses
time.
I worry that the professoriate may be standing at the threshold
of a shake-down as disruptive as was the restructuring of
medical work that began in the 1970s when health care costs
began to spiral out of control, the process that Paul Starr
analyzed with such foresight in The Social Transformation of
American Medicine. And I worry that colleges and universities
with strong faculty – brilliant scholars, devoted teachers,
radical individualists, and stubborn skeptics who treasure
autonomy, resist authority, distrust power, and who love their
institutions as they have known them – may find it especially
difficult to bring faculty together, bring departments together
and make timely, wise, informed and realistic choices about a
future worth having.
Over the next decade, colleges and universities are likely to
need greater flexibility, organizational resilience and openness
to new ideas, and, at the same time, stronger internal systems
of shared responsibility, accountability, collaboration and
communication. They will need to become more fluid learning
organizations, better positioned to capitalize on the forces of
change, and better able to make and defend potentially divisive
choices, while remaining true to the purposes that will ensure
continued success.
Faculty will need to be clearer about those purposes and
about the essential ingredients of the education they want
their students to expect and receive – an integrative education
that prepares new generations to take their places in a
world of mounting complexity, interdependency, inequality ...
urgency. They will need to do a better job of modeling the
serious engagement of their own differences that integrative
learning clearly implies and that enlightened organizational
stewardship absolutely necessitates.
The African-American Studies Program and the English
Department at Wesleyan University seek a specialist in
African-American literature and culture ...
The Department of Religion at Wesleyan University invites
applicants for a tenure-track appointment as Assistant
Professor in the social scientific ...
A Graphic Text
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/20/graphic
August 20th, 2010
Jeremy Short’s students read comic books in class. Then
they take exams, do well, and finish the semester with an
understanding of the fundamentals of business management.
In an effort to make dry content more interesting, Short co-
wrote a set of two graphic novels, the second of which was
released this summer.
“Textbooks are just plain boring,” said Short, who is a
professor of management at Texas Tech University. He said
that standard business textbooks use a lot of disconnected
examples and irrelevant stock photos, and he wanted to create
something that would be “more like a movie,” that would get
Published by: philosophyandrew
the necessary points across while keeping students engaged.
Atlas Black: Managing to Succeed was his first attempt at
a graphic-novel textbook; it covers, short Says, all the bases
of what his students need to learn, while telling a story in
panels about a college kid named Atlas and his friends. His
adventures continue in Atlas Black: Management Guru?
Atlas is a bit of a slacker, but eventually graduates from
college, learns to run a business, and becomes a fledgling
entrepreneur. The graphic novel introduces concepts from
principles of management, organizational behavior, strategic
management, and entrepreneurship while illustrating Atlas'
quest to make money, get over a breakup, and open the No
Cover Cafe, where college students can listen to free music and
buy moderately priced pizza.
To convey some of the important concepts, Atlas talks to his
girlfriend about how he is doing better in school and applying
a "balanced scorecard" (a strategic performance-management
tool) to his life, and later in the book explores the options
necessary for hiring employees and suppliers, and developing
the best business model for his restaurant. When Atlas's friend
has trouble understanding motivation, Atlas takes him to
his baseball coach, who uses straightforward examples from
running a baseball team to illustrate complex ideas about
motivation -- a key concept in business. Atlas plays chess with
his friend and they discuss the similarities: "In both chess and
business you have to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty. You
have to anticipate your opponents moves. You have to consider
a lot of potential options that aren't necessarily clear or perfect.
In business and chess, you can take 'old moves' and put new
twists on them."
The graphic-novel genre appeals to a young audience, Short
said, and he wanted a medium that would be a more
interesting and effective way to communicate with students,
who live in an increasingly visually-oriented world. He’s used
the books in his undergraduate and M.B.A. classes, and has
received praise for the books from both types of students.
Paul Barowsky, an M.B.A. student at Texas Tech who took
a class with Short, said he liked the book and would prefer
graphic novels to traditional textbooks in most courses (with
the exception of numbers-intensive classes). “A story format
forces the author to ‘net out’ his/her ideas in a concise, easily
comprehensible dialogue compared to traditional textbooks,
which tend to be repetitive and long-winded,” he said in an e-
mail.
Formal evaluations showed that 86 percent of his students
that used the book said they agreed or strongly agreed that it
“compares favorably” to other management textbooks they’ve
had, Short said. He added that the most rewarding part of the
process teaching with Atlas Black is having students wonder
what happens in the story when the book ends. “The idea of
a student asking what comes next in a textbook is really just
unfathomable,” he said.
Though the idea of teaching from a graphic novel may
have its skeptics, the response to Short’s books has been
overwhelmingly positive.
“When I first told [my colleagues] that I was going to do
a graphic-novel textbook, a lot of them gave me a sideways
8
August 20th, 2010
glance,” Short said. “But I haven’t heard anyone ever say that
they look at the first chapter and say it’s a bad idea.”
Likewise, professors at the University of Vermont School
of Business "rolled their eyes" at the idea that E. Lauck
Parke, an associate professor there, was incorporating such a
nontraditional teaching tool into his course. Parke is nearing
retirement, and said that many professors of his age are used
to the straightforward black-and-white texts that they read in
college. "You were lucky if you got a Wall Street Journal black-
and-white sort of sketch or visual in a chapter," he said. "So
we're sitting here having been taught in one methodology, and
many of us haven't gotten used to all the new literature about
trying to understand the different ways in which a human
learns."
Parke said Atlas Black provided a good skeleton for the
concepts he taught in his course, and is considering using it
again.
“It’s not a typical graphic novel by any stretch of the
imagination,” said Thomas Moliterno, assistant professor
of management at the University of South Carolina. He
incorporated Atlas Black into an undergraduate class, and said
that he would use it again in future courses. “Textbooks tend
to be imposing to students and expensive, and I think it’s a real
challenge to find a textbook that students are willing to buy
and/or read,” he said.
In addition to telling a story with pictures and text bubbles
as a traditional comic book would, Short’s book also has
paragraphs of text on certain pages, which allows the author
to create a richer discussion of content than a normal comic
book would, Moliterno said. On the other hand, he noted that
it’s difficult to skip around in the textbook because it follows
a narrative arc, and confines the professor to framing a course
entirely around the book.
Dale Dunn, professor and chair of the pathology department
at the Texas Tech School of Medicine is currently also in
the M.B.A. program and took Short’s organizational behavior
class, in which he read Atlas Black. He said that the graphic
novel, as a genre, has yet to overcome a stigma of existing
just for entertainment purposes, and it may be a challenge to
get students to take it seriously. However, he said it certainly
has a niche in education, and he has even been discussing the
possibility with Short of creating a graphic-novel textbook for
health care risk-management courses.
“As you start reading it, you start thinking, ‘Can I take this
seriously?’ But as you get involved you realize there’s more
to it than just entertainment,” Dunn said. “There’s a lot
of didactic information, and from my vantage point it was
more memorable and unique because you could identify the
information with specific characters.”
This isn’t the first time comic books have been used to
communicate educational concepts. Professors at the Duke
Law School created a comic book to illustrate issues in
copyright law, and the Federal Reserve published a series
of comic books targeted at a younger audience to explain
financial and economic issues. But creating an entire textbook
is a unique project, Short said.
Published by: philosophyandrew
“This is the first that really covers all the concepts and
frameworks and that is age-appropriate,” he said. “I don’t
know of any other thing that’s like this.”
Big textbook publishers like McGraw-Hill do not have any
textbooks in the graphic novel format, said a spokesman
for the company. Atlas Black is published by Flat World
Knowledge, and it is the first book of its type for the open-
source textbook publisher, which Short chose because of its
affordability. Students can order the book for $14.95, but it is
expected to be free to read online by spring 2011.
Jeff Shelstad, CEO of Flat World Knowledge, said the Atlas
Black books are among the company’s more successful
products, though it might be “a slow build” for Short because
faculty are hesitant about change. Still, of the 1,300 faculty
members using any of Flat World’s products this fall, about 25
will be assigning Atlas Black, he said.
Short is currently at work on a third graphic novel -- about
franchising.
Vacancy # F_ 10_ 2191 Job Title: Business Administration
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More Hidden Camera Findings
on U. of Phoenix
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/20/qt/
more_hidden_camera_findings_on_u_of_phoenix
August 20th, 2010
The latest entity to send undercover investigators to the
University of Phoenix is ABC News, which on Thursday
reported the results. They include a recording of a recruiter
giving incorrect information about whether a program would
enable a graduate to become a teacher, and encouragement
to take out as large a student loan as possible -- even more
than the fake student needed. William Pepicello, president of
the University of Phoenix, appeared on camera to say that
"absolutely" the university could do better in terms of the way
it recruits but that the answer to whether Phoenix encourages
recruiting like that shown in the segment is "absolutely not."
4 Win Fields Medals
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/20/
qt/4_win_fields_medals
August 20th, 2010
Four scholars were named Thursday as winners of Fields
Medals, awarded every four years during meetings of the
9
August 20th, 2010
International Congress of Mathematicians to honor the best
work in mathematics by those under the age of 40. The winners
for 2010:
'Scoreboard, Baby'
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/20/scoreboard
August 20th, 2010
College football is so notorious a breeding ground for
controversy that it's difficult to say what even constitutes a
scandal anymore. But a series of articles digging into the story
behind the University of Washington's 2000 football season —
which culminated in a Rose Bowl victory — managed not only
to raise eyebrows, but to drop jaws, when they first ran in The
Seattle Times in 2008.
The articles' authors, investigative reporter Ken Armstrong
and staff reporter Nick Perry, found that football players
on Washington's team for the 2000 season were under
investigation in connection with a variety of crimes, including
domestic violence, rape, robbery, and shooting a drug dealer.
But the wheels of justice turned slowly — where they turned
at all — and none of the accused were prevented from playing
football, nor prosecuted until well after the season's end.
In their new book, Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College
Football, Crime, and Complicity, Armstrong and Perry update
and expand the tale first brought to light in their 2008 articles.
Scoreboard, Baby looks at how the actions of players, coaches,
Washington administrators (and even faculty), the media,
fans and donors, judges, police, and prosecutors all led to
the Huskies' ability to pursue glory on the football field —
regardless of what they were doing off it.
One contextual note: The University of Washington's current
president, Mark Emmert — who will be taking a new job
as president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association
this November — has been at Washington since 2004; he
was not there during the bulk of the events described in
Scoreboard, Baby (Richard McCormick, now president of
Rutgers University, led Washington from 1995 to 2002).
However, the book is sharply critical of the university's
treatment of football under Emmert's tenure, and particularly
of the salaries paid to the head and assistant football coaches
— at a time when Western Washington University was
eliminating its football program for financial reasons, and the
president of Washington State University took a voluntary pay
cut of $100,000.
The book also notes that, "At the UW the financial situation
became so dire that the school shut its doors to new students
wanting to start classes in the spring. But the university made
an exception for athletes."
Inside Higher Ed interviewed Armstrong and Perry by e-mail
to find out more about the book and what its story means for
college football, at Washington and nationally.
Q: For those readers who might be unfamiliar with what
happened, can you give a very brief outline of the book's
contents?
KA: For the University of Washington, the 2000 season was
the stuff of storybooks — a young, charismatic coach leading
Published by: philosophyandrew
a team of overachievers to one stirring comeback victory after
another. But a different story unfolded off the field.
One player was accused of rape. Another was under
investigation for robbing and shooting a drug dealer. (Police
had a wealth of evidence against him before the season even
began, but since charges were slow in coming, he suited up and
played.) Another player had an extensive history of beating
his wife. Another, an extraordinarily gifted defensive back,
struggled with mental illness.
Scoreboard, Baby follows these and other players through the
season, showing readers the kinds of classes some student-
athletes took to remain academically eligible (Sexuality in
Scandinavia, Paper Science, Dinosaurs), the justifications
provided for not pulling certain players’ scholarships (the UW
believed one player’s domestic violence was cured by virtue of
his wife moving away), and the failure of various institutions
(prosecutors, police, judges, the media, the university) to hold
players to account.
Q: What is the meaning of the book's title?
NP: Coach Rick Neuheisel once used the phrase "Scoreboard,
baby" to rebut criticism of his team (Neuheisel was coaching
Colorado at the time and would later coach the Huskies). What
he was saying, in essence, was that you can talk all you want,
but what really matters in the end are the number of points
the team scores. We thought it spoke to a major theme of the
book — the attitude that winning is what really matters, that
winning trumps all other considerations.
Q: The articles that led to this book were published a number
of years after the 2000 football season. How did you come to
write them, and why?
KA: In 2007 I saw a newspaper column that mentioned a
lawsuit against the UW and Jerramy Stevens, a former football
player at the school who had been accused by a fellow student
of rape. [Stevens denied the accusation, and the county
prosecutor ultimately decided that there was not sufficient
evidence to press criminal charges.The alleged victim later
filed her own lawsuit against the university, the fraternity that
held the party where the alleged rape occurred, and Stevens
himself. The case led to a settlement in which the university
was dismissed from the case, while the alleged victim received
$300,000 from Stevens and the fraternity; Stevens did not,
however, admit any guilt.]
The records about the Stevens case turned up all kinds of
troubling elements (the UW’s scorched-earth litigation tactics,
the tension between police and prosecutors over the way the
criminal investigation had been handled), and the story built
from there. Nick, the newspaper’s higher education reporter,
joined the project; together we researched the backgrounds
of Stevens and his UW teammates, focusing on the year that
Stevens was accused of rape. (That season also happened to be
the last year the UW had gone to the Rose Bowl.) As we dug
deeper, we discovered that this was less a story about athletes
finding trouble than about our community and all the ways we
had looked away.
10
August 20th, 2010
NP: The series — and Scoreboard, Baby for that matter —
could only be written well after the 2000 season, because
some of the incidents we detail didn't play out in the courts
until years later. It was only in retrospect that we could fully
account for the damage done through the actions of some
of the players, and, more importantly, the blind eye turned
by the community. That said, the book also details some of
the shortcomings of regular sports coverage — which tends
to focus on the game and season at hand, oftentimes at
the expense of the bigger picture of sports culture and the
sacrifices people are willing to make to win.
Q: When did you decide to turn the articles into a book, and
why?
NP: At the time of writing the newspaper series, we knew we
were leaving important material on the cutting room floor.
Newspapers have strict limitations on space. There are also
limitations on style — we always thought this story could
benefit from a true narrative approach, in which scenes and
background help build context for readers.
For me, one of the most rewarding parts of working on the
book was discovering all sorts of new information through
additional reporting. The woman who had accused Stevens of
rape — Marie — did not agree to an interview before the series
ran. But after the series ran, she felt more comfortable sitting
down and talking. In fact, she wanted to be interviewed in the
hopes that her story might act as a warning for other young
women starting college. We were also able to interview Marie's
close friends and family. Those stories and others help give
Scoreboard, Baby an emotional resonance and account for the
damage done.
I also spent some very enjoyable days in the special section
of the University of Washington library. By sifting through
original letters and documents, we were able to show how
history has a way of repeating itself. One hundred years ago,
the same debate over winning versus integrity was playing
out. Back then, fans wouldn't send flaming e-mails to the
university. But they would do the equivalent — writing formal
letters in beautiful cursive that were scathing, nonetheless.
Q: When it comes to players behaving badly, you write,
"Washington isn't an aberration. It is an example." In what
ways did UW's 2000 football team epitomize college football?
NP: I approach the subject of college football as an outsider.
A native of New Zealand, I grew up with cricket and rugby.
In many ways, this served as an advantage when it came
to working on Scoreboard, Baby because I was able to
approach the subject of college football with fresh eyes. Yet
even to an outsider, the headlines are impossible to ignore —
whether they are coming from Oregon or USC or elsewhere
in the country. Coaches and colleges are often quick to blame
an individual or two while absolving themselves and the
community from blame.
We made a deliberate decision to tell the story of one team
over one season rather than try to account for all the misdeeds
in U.S. college football. But I believe there are many towns
and universities throughout the country where similar deep
research would unearth similar problems and societal themes.
As we write in the book, "Football is religion, and religion
roams."
Published by: philosophyandrew
KA: As loose as things were at the UW, the UW still did
not have a class in which student-athletes were asked, on
their final exam, how many halves there are in a basketball
game and how many points a three-point field goal is worth.
That happened at the University of Georgia. Similar examples
abound elsewhere. I have no doubt that if our approach —
background the entire roster and follow each investigation
through the system to see what happens — was applied to other
Division I programs, the result would a succession of deeply
disturbing stories on the scale of Scoreboard, Baby.
Q: When Inside Higher Ed requested comment on your
book, Norman Arkans, UW's associate vice president for
media relations and communications, said that the university
"...take[s] a different view these days: our expectations for
civility are higher and our tolerance for misbehavior is much
lower." Would you say that that seems to be the case?
KA: There’s anecdotal evidence to argue either way. But part
of me is optimistic, and here’s why. When our newspaper
series was published, the university, to its credit, did not react
with a bunker mentality. From UW President Mark Emmert
on down, university officials acknowledged that this was an
important story worth telling and that there were lessons to
be learned. The first step to addressing a problem is accepting
there is one. Some people at the university have taken that first
step. But that isn’t universal.
NP: After the Neuheisel era ended in shambles, the University
of Washington did pay more attention to ethics. It hired both
an athletic director and a coach who were noted for their
emphasis on ethical behavior. Players faced more consistent
discipline for misdeeds. The problem? The team wasn't
winning games. So the UW replaced both. Only time will
tell what happens under the current athletic director, Scott
Woodward, and coach Steve Sarkisian.
In researching the book, we did notice a pattern both at the UW
and in other programs. It goes like this: Ethics and discipline
fall by the wayside in the desire to win. Shortcuts taken cause
the program to fall apart. A new emphasis is placed on cleaning
up the program. Boosters and fans get restless, demanding
more wins. The pattern repeats.
The University of Washington's full statement about the
book, sent by e-mail: “We all learned from the events of
a decade ago that there was a collective failure, and no
one — not the coaches, administrators, prosecutors, or
the university — held those young men accountable for
their actions. We take a different view these days: our
expectations for civility are higher and our tolerance for
misbehavior is much lower.”
Q: And what about issues unrelated to the "civility" or
"misbehavior" of the football team — for example, academic
standards, budget priorities, the health of student football
players (which your book depicts as being of little or
no concern to coaches and administrators), etc.? Has the
University of Washington shown any improvement on these
fronts?
KA: Budget priorities have become a sore point. The state of
Washington’s finances have been in freefall — with too little
money for education and social services – but that didn’t keep
11
August 20th, 2010
the UW from going to the state legislature and asking for
$150 million in taxpayer money to renovate Husky Stadium.
(The lawmakers said no.) And the UW continues to participate
in the absurd arms race over coaching salaries, which now
encompasses assistants’ salaries as well as the head coach’s.
The university is under enormous pressure to field a winning
team. To help illustrate this, Nick and I obtained about a
thousand e-mails from fans and boosters during one losing
season. One wealthy booster offered $200,000 in scholarship
funds if the university fired the coach and athletic director.
Another booster wrote: “You have me mutinying against this
crap, and I am your money. I don’t think I will be next year.”
Some of the other emails have to be read to be believed. For
the UW and other universities, these kinds of pressures are a
constant.
Q: What are some of the biggest problems with college football
today? How should they be addressed?
NP: The problems today in many ways reflect the problems
of 100 years ago. It's the problem of marrying two seemingly
unrelated pursuits — academic excellence and sporting
prowess. It's the problem of trying to balance a community's
insatiable desire for wins against considerations such as ethics
and discipline and morality. It's a problem of deciding how
to treat and compensate athletes who can act as economic
engines for university sports programs. For many, change is
not desirable so long as they are fielding a winning team. The
system is working just fine the way it is when the community
colludes and there are few challenges to the status quo.
Q: What are your thoughts on Mark Emmert being named
head of the NCAA?
KA: Mark Emmert did an awful lot of good at the UW. He was
widely respected on campus and in the community. ... After
our newspaper series was published, Emmert talked of how
disturbed he was by the stories. He said: “You can win, and
you can win properly. … You do not have to give up your values
to be competitive in sports.” If he can convince universities at
large to take those words to heart, he could be a good fit for
the NCAA.
NP: Again, it's going to be a question of wait and see. Emmert
was widely admired during his tenure at Washington. He led a
very successful fundraising campaign and was a consummate
diplomat when it came to talking to various constituencies —
whether it was lawmakers, donors or students. He did come
under fire for his large salary and for joining two corporate
boards, which further boosted his income. He does appear to
have the respect of his peer presidents at other universities.
Change in college football, however, doesn't come easily.
Job Description: Academic success is the highest priority
for students at Colgate. The Coordinator will provide direct
assistance to individual ...
Directs and administers athletics program and budgets;
ensures compliance with all NCAA rules,regulations and
policies of the Board of Regents and the ...
Published by: philosophyandrew
Job Duties: The assistant softball coach directs all aspects of a
NCAA Division II softball team as assigned by the Head Coach,
including recruiting ...
Responding to ‘A question
(about universities,
global challenges, and
an organizational-ethical
dilemma)'
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/globalhighered/
responding_to_a_question_about_universities_global_challenges_and_an_organiz
August 20th, 2010
By Lucia Rodriguez August 19, 2010 10:19 pm
Editors' note: today's guest entry has been kindly developed
by Dr. Lucia Rodriguez, director of the Global Master’s
in Development PracticeSecretariat, Columbia University.
For the past 20 years Dr. Rodriguez has been involved in
the field of education, including at Teachers College and
the Department of Bilingual/Bicultural Education (Columbia
University), and the United Nations Association of the USA
(UNA-USA). A native of Cuba, Dr. Rodriguez completed her
undergraduate work at Georgetown University’s School of
Foreign Service and received her Doctorate in Education from
Teachers College, Columbia University.
Dr. Rodriguez's entry focuses on an innovative global
educational initiative that has much potential to generate
substantive, organizational, pedagogical and technological
lessons. The Global Master’s in Development Practice
(MDP) is a two-year graduate degree program involving the
participation of 22 universities around the world. Further
information about the MDP is available below, and also in
'Some Important Lessons for Global Academic Innovation'
by John W. McArthur (Huffington Post, 17 May 2010) and
'Needed: a New Generation of Problem Solvers' by John W.
McArthur and Jeffrey Sachs (Chronicle of Higher Education,
18 June 2009). Our sincere thanks to Dr. Rodriquez, and John
W. McArthur and Vibhuti Jain (both of Millennium Promise),
for enabling the development of this entry.
This entry is the sixth response to Nigel Thrift’s ‘A question
(about universities, global challenges, and an organizational,
ethical dilemma)‘. The first five entries were provided by the
people below and can be linked to via their names:
• Peter N. Stearns (Provost, George Mason University)
• Gregor McLennan (Professor of Sociology and Director
of the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of
Bristol)
• David J. Skorton (President, Cornell University)
• Daniel I. Linzer (Provost, Northwestern University)
• Allan E. Goodman (President & CEO, Institute of
International Education)
Finally, please note that we will continue to welcome proposals
for responses to Nigel Thrift's 'A question' through to the end
of 2010.
12
August 20th, 2010
Kris Olds & Susan Robertson
~~~~~~~~~~~
Nigel Thrift’s recent post asked the question: Are the world’s
universities doing all they can to prepare their students
for the complex challenges facing this interconnected and
interdependent global community? Speaking as the director
of the Global Master’s in Development Practice Secretariat, I
believe that, although progress has occurred, much more is
needed.
We are, indeed, in an urgent situation where the role
of universities needs to be clarified if they are to tackle
successfully the task of preparing global citizens, workers and
leaders. This urgency to innovate, to think “outside of the box,”
to do things differently is the thing for which thousands of the
world’s suffering people are clamoring.
Extreme Poverty and Urgent Need
Nihima, a fictitious name that represents many of the world’s
most vulnerable children, epitomizes the challenges of the
many voiceless people around the world in need of extreme
intervention. Like many poor people, Nihima spends her days
sprawled on a mud floor with dried leaves for a roof. She is a
13-year-old girl who recounts, through tears of despair, her life
as the oldest sister, and now main caregiver, of four brothers
and sisters. Her father left the family long ago. Her mother
followed shortly after. Both of them were swallowed by the big
city with the promise of returning for the family after earning
some money. Four years later, nothing has been heard from
either parent.
I met Nihima several years ago, abandoned and tired. She
shared the difficulties of being a sister-parent of four at the
tender age of 13. She does not go to school because she does
not have shoes. She spends most of the day begging for kernels
of millet or dried cassava or whatever she can find to feed her
brothers and sisters. What little energy she has left she spends
thinking of how to help her younger sister, a weak and sickly
child.
Help did not come soon enough to Nihima’s hut. All the help
funneled into this rural village was well-intentioned, but not
comprehensive enough. Many of the people on the ground,
the experts in education, health and agriculture deployed to
economically depressed areas, could not go beyond offering
solutions that were singularly focused and limiting, failing to
address the broad challenges of sustainable development.
In her day-to-day struggles, Nihima is like many of the
developing world’s destitute. She joins more than half of the
world’s population who live on less than $2 day. She, too,
is one of the millions of people who cannot read a book or
sign their names. And, if her socio-economic situation does
not change soon, her brothers and sisters may join the many
vulnerable children who make up the 8 million preventable
disease fatalities that occur worldwide each year.
The Global Master’s in Development Practice Program
Universities have a role in training and developing the
problem-solvers of the world. In particular, we believe that
practitioners, the people at the forefront of all of these global
problems, need to be prepared to confront the multifaceted
challenges of sustainable development.
Published by: philosophyandrew
The most disenfranchised people—the poor subsistence
farmer, the urban slum dweller, the ailing HIV father and
mother and their vulnerable children—need our help now.
For their survival, people like Nihima often depend on the
professional knowledge, skills and attributes of development
practitioners. These professionals are often the only hope
for poor, suffering people. Although most practitioners
have completed the most rigorous training in sustainable
development, few are prepared for the complex challenges
they will encounter in the field. They realize that their
knowledge or specialization in a particular area is not enough.
Once in the field, they understand that the interwoven
challenges of sustainable development can be solved only by
connecting insights from a range of disciplines.
It was this realization that more is needed and the urgency
to bolster the leadership and training of development
practitioners that brought eminent practitioners and
academics across a range of development fields together.
Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo; global health
leaders Helene Gayle, Jim Kim, and Jeffrey Koplan; former
UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman; Nobel Laureate
RK Pachauri; ground-breaking ecologist Virgilio Viana;
prominent agronomists Freddie Kwesiga and Alice Pell;
and African academic leaders Goolam Mohamedbhai and
Livingstone Luboobi are some of those who collaborated. As
members of the International Commission on Education for
Sustainable Development Practice, a John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation-supported initiative, the Commission
provided the insights and recommendations that led to the
development of the global Master’s in Development Practice
(MDP) programs.
The Global Master’s in Development Practice is a two-year
graduate degree program providing students with the skills
and knowledge required to better identify and address the
global challenges of sustainable development, such as poverty,
population, health, conservation, and climate change. The
MDP students take core courses in health sciences, natural
sciences and engineering, social sciences and management.
In addition, MDP students take the Global Classroom:
Integrated Approaches to Sustainable Development Practice
courseThis is an information technology-based, interactive
course that fosters cross-border and cross-disciplinary
collaboration and allows students and professors to
participate in collective assignments and learning experiences.
For instance, the first “pilot” global classroom addressed
a range of core issues from health, economics, policy,
and agriculture, to ethics and education. It involved the
participation of 16 universities around the world. All course
materials, including the syllabus, readings, videos, and
assignments, were uploaded to a common course website.
Commission members served as guest experts and provided
taped lectures for each of the weekly sessions. Students from
around the world viewed the taped lectures in advance and
then joined their classmates and professors for weekly, live
sessions. The weekly sessions were conducted through web-
based conferencing software that enables partner universities
to log-on free of charge. Each participating classroom is then
able to activate their camera. The “global classroom” screen
becomes filled with live videos of all of the partner universities.
13
August 20th, 2010
Furthermore, all MDP students participate in two hands-on
field training and internship experiences. Only by broadening
the MDP students’ educational and practical training will these
students be able to more effectively understand and address
the root causes of extreme poverty and confront the challenges
of sustainable development. For more information on the
MDP curriculum, please go to www.globalmdp.org.
The Global Network of Master’s in Development Practice
Programs
Two years after the launch of the International Commission
on Education for Sustainable Development Practice report and
its recommendations, the global network of MDP programs
comprises 22 universities in 15 countries and five continents.
Many other academic institutions are soliciting membership
into the network. These universities are not only thinking
about the question of how to address the various worldwide
disparities, but are working together to address this problem.
The creation of the Master’s in Development Practice
program acknowledges that addressing extreme poverty
and sustainable development throughout the world requires
a concerted effort by experts using a cross-disciplinary
approach. The first 22 universities in the network are:
1. BRAC Development Institute, BRAC University (Dhaka,
Bangladesh)
2. CATIE (Turrialba, Costa Rica)
3. Columbia University (New York City, New York)
4. Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia)
5. James Cook University (Cairns and Townsville,
Australia)
6. Sciences Po (Paris, France)
7. TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) University
(New Delhi, India)
8. Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin
(Dublin, Ireland)
9. Tsinghua University (Beijing, China)
10. Universidad de Los Andes (Bogota, Colombia)
11. Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil)
12. University of Botswana (Gaborone, Botswana)
13. University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, California)
14. University of California, Davis (Davis, California)
15. University of Cheikh Anta Diop, UCAD (Dakar, Senegal)
16. University of Denver (Denver, Colorado)
17. University of Florida (Gainesville, Florida)
18. University of Ibadan (Ibadan, Nigeria)
19. University of Peradeniya (Peradeniya, Sri Lanka)
20. University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
21. University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Ontario)
22. University of Winnipeg (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
Published by: philosophyandrew
Columbia University accepted its first cohort of students
in 2009. Twelve other universities will do the same this
September and the remaining in 2011. Although the core MDP
curriculum integrates the four pillars of health, natural, social
and management sciences, each university approaches the
MDP through a highly diverse set of curricular emphasis. The
University of Winnipeg, for example, focuses on indigenous
populations and the University of Botswana offers an
executive education-type program for full-time professionals
who wish to complete the MDP degree while still working. To
learn more about each MDP program’s curricular focus, please
go to www.globalmdp.org.
We anticipate that the several hundred MDP students trained
each year will not only have a broader understanding of the
challenges of development, but as leaders will be able to draw
on their interdisciplinary training for both policy and practice
insights. They will be the “specialists” of interdisciplinary
studies in the field of sustainable development who can speak
and understand the language of the various development
experts often found in the field working in isolation from one
another.
These MDP graduates will go on to professional trajectories
within government ministries, bi-lateral and multi-
lateral donor organizations, non-governmental organizations,
private sector companies, foundations, or UN agencies. As
practitioners, they will be able to propose solutions to the
challenges of poverty that are informed by multidisciplinary
and multisectoral perspectives.
Benefits of the Global Network
Imagine a student at Sciences Po participating in the MDP field
experience organized by Universidade Federal Rural do Rio
de Janeiro or a faculty member from the University of Ibadan
teaching a course at Tsinghua University’s MDP program.
Through the global network of MDP programs, this and more
will be possible. MDP students and professors will be able
to reap the benefits of a global network by participating in
exchanges and field experiences offered by the various MDP
programs. In addition, it is expected that, all MDP programs
will develop their own Global Classroom course on topics as
varied as public health and agricultural systems, which will
be offered to students at the 22 MDP programs in the global
network.
Furthermore, in order to take advantage of the global
resources these 22 universities offer and to ensure that
all MDP students receive a rigorous and comprehensive
education, the global network of MDP programs will also
benefit from the development of an open-source online
resource center. Once developed, this resource center will
welcome global contributions from the MDP programs
and provide academic institutions with a comprehensive
repository of MDP-related educational resources and tools,
including case studies, lectures, and e-journals on sustainable
development practice.
The benefits of participating in the global network are
numerous. The above-mentioned are just a few. No longer
can conservationist, water specialist, agronomist, and public
health specialist working to alleviate poverty depend on
14
August 20th, 2010
narrow expertise alone. Cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral
knowledge and rigorous, hands-on, field experiences are
needed. Nigel Thrift can be certain that universities in
the global network of MDP programs are doing all they
can and more to prepare their students for the complex
challenges facing this interconnected and interdependent
global community.
So What Are You Going To Be
When You Grow Up?
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university_of_venus/
so_what_are_you_going_to_be_when_you_grow_up
August 20th, 2010
By Deanna England August 19, 2010 9:45 pm
“So what can you do with a degree in Cultural Studies?” I
felt the deer-caught-in-headlights look come over my face as
I realized that I couldn’t easily answer the question in the ten
words or less the situation required.
I was alone at a theatre – a friend was performing in a
musical that no one wanted to attend with me. I was happy
to have the twenty minutes before curtain to get started
on my reading the first assignment in my newly minted-
graduate program (Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” if
you’re interested). Unfortunately, the woman next to me was
chatty and mistakenly thought I was bored and in need of
entertainment.
She asked me about what I was reading (and was surprised
to discover that I wasn’t a high school student!), and what my
program involved and furrowed her brow as she tried to wrap
her head around the concept of taking a degree just for the sake
of taking it. I wasn’t trying to become a “Cultural Studyologist.”
I just thought that the program sounded interesting. I did
recognize that in some hazy, distant day in the future, it would
probably serve me well to have a graduate degree if I were
to continue my career in a post-secondary setting. But most
importantly, I liked the kind of abstract thinking that taking
these courses gave me. It’s an exercise in critical thought that
doesn’t occur very often in everyday life – outside of Academia
that is.
So often we tend to get caught up in the idea that to engage
in a Master’s degree automatically means that the next step is
seeking out a PhD program followed by a life in the Academy.
When surrounded by academics in this kind of environment,
we forget that the vast majority of students do not in fact
become professors and researchers and published authors.
And that’s OK.
Often I think that students can get immersed in the concept
of what they’re supposed to do. What they should take to
get further in life. But occasionally there’s simply the idea of
education as a joyful experience - one that can enrich you as
a person, and broaden your view on the world. There doesn’t
Published by: philosophyandrew
necessarily have to be an end goal in view – one can simply
appreciate a beautifully crafted program for the simple fact of
its existence.
I attempted to explain this to the woman beside me, but
I have to confess, I was grateful when then lights began
to dim before our conversation was over. I didn’t want to
have to justify myself to anyone. I was still reeling from the
simple fact of being a graduate student, and having strangers
question the validity of my life choices didn’t offer great peace
of mind, as innocent as their confusion may be. Having the
option to participate in post-secondary education is a beautiful
privilege, and one of my wishes would be for the entire world
to recognize its value, beyond simply that of finding a higher-
paying job.
Towards Answers
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/
confessions_of_a_community_college_dean/towards_answers
August 20th, 2010
An unknown error occured formatting this story.
Math Geek Mom: The Deep
End
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/mama_phd/
math_geek_mom_the_deep_end
August 20th, 2010
By Rosemarie Emanuele August 19, 2010 9:19 pm
Last week, I watched my daughter giggle as she made her way
down the water slide at our public pool. She was floating on a
mat that was pushed along by a stream of water until she was
dropped, amidst laughter and delight, into the deep end of the
pool. Ever the geek, I could not help but think of the concepts
of “stocks” and “flows” in economics. Stocks are compared to
the amount of water in the pool at any one time, while flows are
the rate of change of that water, how much water is pumped
into the pool minus the amount of water leaving the pool.
In economics, these concepts are most often used to describe
levels and changes in levels in the money supply, which of
course did not matter to my daughter as she went down the
slide over and over.
My daughter discovered the water slide in the middle of
August. I was surprised it took her so long to start sliding,
since she is quite the “sensory seeker”. I sometimes think
that children like her were the reason they invented the pay
one price admissions policies at some amusement parks and
carnivals, as she will ride a ride only to get off and stand back
in line to ride it again. I think it was the idea of going into the
deep end of the pool scared her for a while, but that fear was
definitely overcome this summer when she decided to start
using the water slide. Since the water slide is in the deep end of
the pool, that meant that I spent most of my time in the deep
end, too. I trust that the time I spent treading water there will
15
August 20th, 2010
help offset the effect of the many ice cream cones that I also
ate this summer.
Once she found the water slide, it was only a small step
to decide to use the diving board. The first few attempts at
the (rather substantial) low diving board were met with her
turning around and climbing back down. However, in less than
a week, she overcame her fear and was jumping off the board,
often in an attempt to land in the water at the same time
as other jumpers who jumped from a higher board. Once, I
watched as she, too, attempted to jump off the high board, only
to, once again, turn around and climb back down. The lump
in my throat was small compared to those that I know will
be there when she someday decides to drive and date, both
milestones that I know will come and which will bring even
more situations where I know my ability to protect her will
again be limited.
As the summer ends, I realize that this was a very special
collection of weeks as I watched her grow at least a few inches
and gain confidence and self-control. This was the summer
that she joined the bike parade in our neighborhood with
a decorated bike that was driven down the middle of the
street with escorts from a police car and a fire truck. This
was a summer of transition as she moved from one school to
another, only to join friends from her pre-school days who will
be in her new homeroom. This was the summer that friends
who had moved away moved back, as they spent late evenings
running around catching lightning bugs, delighting in each
other’s re-found company. And the growing bellies of several
friends and relatives convinced me this summer that I soon
need to give her a more detailed explanation of where babies
really come from.
This was a summer that I had entered with great plans. I
wanted to read the “Little House” series with her, chapter by
chapter. Instead, she found some books that friends had given
us. While certainly not classics, at least they encourage her
to read and to work on comprehension from one chapter to
another. I had wanted to teach her to multiply better, but
instead was content with watching my very shy daughter learn
to stand in line at the snack bar and choose how to spend her
Tooth Fairy money without my assistance.
When I look back on this summer, I will remember a season in
which my daughter grew by leaps and bounds, both physically
and socially. I will remember magical days at the pool, a
heat wave that would not end and barbecues almost every
weekend. I hope that everyone had similarly satisfying times
this summer, and that we all look forward to a new and
productive semester. In the end, I hope that everyone got
a taste these past few months of not just enjoying the deep
waters of a pool, but also the deep waters of life.
Technology projects for the
new academic year
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/
blogs/student_affairs_and_technology/
technology_projects_for_the_new_academic_year
August 20th, 2010
By Eric Stoller August 19, 2010 9:15 pm
Published by: philosophyandrew
As semester schools begin their academic year, and quarter
schools brace for the start of the fall term, what types of new
technologies/technology projects are going to be implemented
within your student affairs division, department or area?
Academic affairs does a really good job of bragging about
technology innovations. It's time for student affairs folks to
share their stories, their best practices, and their "new" tech
ideas.
I'm often asked how I define "technology." For the purposes
of this post, technology can be new hardware, software,
and/or web-based services. Technology could be a new blog
that you are using to promote campus activities, a new
card swipe system for your campus dining service, or a
new student information system to track campus conduct
violations. Technology in student affairs can be an extremely
broad area to write about, but it needs to happen in the
broadest sense possible. Practitioners who share their stories
help push student affairs towards a higher level of technology
competency.
Today's network of student affairs practitioners spans the
globe. Connected and experienced professionals can share
their technology projects, implementations, and ideas with
others long before a print-based publication. For example, I
regularly use Twitter to poll my student affairs network on
a variety of topics. Tweeting, commenting, and posting. This
is how student affairs practitioners in 2010 get the word out
about their innovative uses of technology.
Please feel free to share how your student affairs area is
innovatively using technology this fall to serve your students.
Do you tweet? Let's connect on Twitter.
Habitability check
Source: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/getting_to_green/
habitability_check
August 20th, 2010
By G. Rendell August 19, 2010 5:00 pm
A while back, I was excoriated for stating that a four degree
centigrade rise in average temperature could render much of
North America uninhabitable.
Part of that reaction, I suspect, has to do with the nuclear-
devastation image that the word "uninhabitable" brings to
many minds, perhaps combined with the idea that things
would be just as they are except a bit warmer. That's not
the way the climate system deals with massive energy inputs
(global warming, by a different name).
What I was envisioning was more like what's already
happening in parts of Australia. Or Pakistan. Or Iowa.
Who knows, maybe four degrees centigrade is an overestimate.
16