Blogs

One of the online communities where I lurk and occasionally shove in my oar is a listserv for writing program administrators (which, lucky for me, is inviting even to those who are no such thing). It’s a virtual water cooler where people who teach writing talk about all manner of things. One comment by Doug Downs, who teaches rhetoric and composition at Montana State University, really struck me as containing a key to many of the frustrations that bubble up in libraries.

I've been thinking about the library, and the librarian, as a campus hub. The role of the library in connecting academic disciplines and functional staff areas (computing, admissions, student affairs etc.) together seems to grow in proportion to the degree that these areas become more and more specialized. The library, and the librarians connected to the library space, seem to have some key advantages as connectors.

I finally could offer my course “Science, Technology and International Relations” this past semester. The course had been on the elective courses list for the last three Spring semesters, but enough students did not register before this year. My guess was that the course topic was the deterrent: it obviously required being interested in science and technology, not a general characteristic of the average social sciences student. However, somehow the tides have turned this year and I found myself with nine students in the classroom.

About two years ago my then nine-year-old son discovered that the public radio station I regularly played in the car...

For most of us, the days of long and leisurely summer vacations are likely over. But after a long spring semester, how are we supposed to rest up for our work during the summer and fall? The summer months offer a great opportunity to reflect on the past academic year and reenergize for the year ahead. Here are a few things you can do to recharge your mind, body, and spirit, whether you have a day, a week, or the entire summer.

When you teach a course for which the prerequisite is “permission of instructor,” on what do you base the decision to grant or withhold permission?

When I saw Scott Jaschik’s piece today about unhappy associate professors, my first thought was, haven’t we already discussed this? Well, yes, we have! Apparently associate professors have been “standing still” for quite some time—at least since the MLA released its report on the rank in 2009, and probably longer.

Yes, I'm late to the party, but my first day at DHSI has taught me that, yes, encoding a document in TEI is an act of critical scholarship.