Mama PhD

This week presented two stories of special interest to those of us who track rape culture on campus.

Economics is sometimes called "the Dismal Science," and I admit that I try to counteract this by bringing entertaining topics to my Economics as well as to my Math classes. My hope is that these topics will leave the student with a "hook" that will help them remember what was said.

Last week I attended a workshop on “backwards” course design: planning courses by identifying the big ideas or main concepts that we want students to master, and then creating assignments by which students can demonstrate that they have mastered these concepts. As basic as this might sound, it’s a radical departure from the default method of syllabus construction in which we cram the books we’ve already ordered into the available weeks of the semester. None of this is new to me, but I need to be reminded every semester.

We just had our annual “Four Families” holiday dinner. My husband says this name makes us sound like a crime syndicate or something, but it’s the affectionate way in which we refer to four families who met when our oldest children were in kindergarten together.

This is the season of Advent, the beginning of the Christian year. In the Episcopal tradition in which I grew up, and whose rhythms still influence my own, Advent is a season of lights — the Advent wreath, with its four candles (one for each week of the season), is its primary symbol. It is also a season of anticipation, of waiting, and of hope.

As noted here, I have been deeply disturbed by recent sports-related scandals on college campuses, but I don’t feel equipped to comment with any authority because I somehow was not issued the competitive-sports microchip. For this reason, I asked Dr. Beth Adubato to help me understand these phenomena and put them in perspective. Beth is a criminologist whose specialty is crime and sports.

I often begin classes in Economics with a discussion of how values of things are determined. I point out that the price of some things may or may not accurately reflect their importance in our lives. For example, water and air are vitally important in our lives, but often very inexpensive. Alternatively, diamonds are very expensive, but do little to sustain or improve our lives. The reason for this apparent paradox is found in the fact that prices are determined by the interaction of both supply and demand, allowing rare things that are not vital to our lives to become expensive, and important things that are readily available to become relatively inexpensive. I thought of this lately as I looked around at the current bustle and remembered a sign I saw in a store many years ago. Trying to encourage seasonal buying, it said "We make Christmas Cheaper."

While the “Occupy” movements seem to be quieting down this week, higher education received some attention from the White House. President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan met with a select group of college presidents and provosts on Monday to discuss how to make higher education more affordable. With his usual rhetorical grace, Obama referenced this issue again in Kansas on Tuesday.