Blogs

Some thoughts on the recent Gawker article "outing" the identity of "the biggest troll on the Web." Should we name names of the trolls in academia? To what end?

Your Statement of Purpose document can seem hugely intimidating, particularly if you are an undergraduate writing one for the first time. And frankly, it should feel important. This document is the first point of contact between you and the admissions committee, and it remains the only document within your application package where you are able to speak frankly and directly about who you are and why you want to go to graduate school. It is a navel gazing kind of document, where you think hard about who you are and what you want. It should be at least a little intimidating, and you should definitely not leave it until the last minute. A statement of purpose is your chance to stand out among the crowd, and become more than just grades and test scores.

In typical Latin American fashion, university leaders in this part of the world shoot the messenger, suspect global conspiracy, and seek refuge in an idiosyncratic parallel universe: a group met in Mexico in May, backed by UNESCO, to denounce the global rankings as invalid measurements of quality, decry the “Anglo Saxon” bias in them, and proclaim that given than universities in this part of the world are different, rankings should be designed that reflect the “social” mission of universities in Latin America, an elusive concept to name what universities supposedly do in here that is not research, or teaching, or transfer of research results, or indeed any of the functions associated with the university as an institution elsewhere in the world.

I've been trying, more or less successfully, to complain less, work smarter rather than harder, and take some time for myself, this semester. In other words, I've been trying to avoid becoming one of the miserable professoriate described in William Panapacker's recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. I really don't think it's my duty to be miserable--and, most of the time, I'm really not miserable. I have a great job with colleagues I like and respect, my time is usually pretty self-scheduled, and it would be worse than churlish to complain about committee work or excess grading when I am lucky enough to be employed, let alone tenured.

In the hubbub of graduate school program searching and applications, there’s one thing that should happen during your (early) considerations: dropping the big F-Bomb- Finances.

My college offers a January intersession. The idea is that students take a single class in a compressed timeframe. For the last few years, it has worked remarkably well for students who are already here. They can either make up for a slip in the Fall or start making headway on the Spring. Course completion rates have floated around the 90 percent range, since such a short timeframe doesn’t give much opportunity for life to get in the way. And anecdotal feedback from the faculty who have taught it has been glowing; they report that there’s an intensity that comes from “owning” the student entirely for a short time that lends itself well to certain types of classes.

I have a colleague who does not have an office. He is an an edtech leadership role in higher education, with over 20 years of experience managing a large and complex organization. During the time in which I have known this edtech leader he has had a couple of different offices throughout his campus, as his responsibilities are distributed across a number of units.

December is just around the corner. I think I might be in trouble.