Blogs

Twice a week for the last month or so I have driven to an anonymous looking glass and brick building. Automatic doors slide open to admit me and I mount the stairs to a large open space filled with machines, tables, and various exercise implements. It’s not a regular gym; I’m here for physical therapy. After some months of mysterious, on-again, off-again (mostly on-again) pain in my left arm and shoulder, I received a diagnosis of “frozen shoulder” and a prescription for a course of physical therapy, so I now join athletes, post-operative patients, and a number of other folks who look a lot like me as we go through our various paces, trying to rehabilitate shoulders, knees, and ankles.

Canisius College in Buffalo, New York invited me to speak on the subject of academic integrity last Friday. Below is my speech in blog-length installments. It is not the first time I have written about academic integrity -- hence the "redux," -- but it is a topic that current developments, MOOCs not least, and upon which the future of higher education rests. I hope these thoughts contribute to a conversation that puts the dynamics of academic integrity front and center of our collective efforts going forward.

Life happens when it happens, but I picked a hell of a week to take a blogging break. The University of Phoenix has been informed that it’s likely to be put on probation by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association, its regional accreditor.

Most universities use student evaluation forms as a means of measuring student satisfaction and teaching effectiveness of the instructors. What many do not know is that most instructors have a like and dislike relationship with the official student evaluations. For contingent faculty, the evaluations are crucial to keeping their jobs.

In grad school, wellness, defined here as the deliberate choice to harmonize the physical, emotional, social, and mental aspects of ourselves, can seem like a Rubiks cube. Luckily, there are many hacks such as apps, to help grads put it together by becoming more aware of these facets of themselves.

What does public restroom design, airport screening procedures, subway safety planning, Ground Zero rebuilding, and New Orleans flood control all have in common?

My 4-year-old son is obsessed with Star Wars Angry Birds. I mostly decide that that's a good thing.

Up to age 18, I had never been on a plane and the furthest I traveled was to a camp in Pennsylvania. My kids, who are not yet 18, have already flown hundreds of thousands of miles by plane and have flown across both the Atlantic and the Pacific. But the differences are even more profound. Staying in touch with friends when I traveled, either with my parents or to camp, consisted of a once a week phone call and more frequent postcards. I always looked carefully to find the right postcards, those that would give a friend or family member at least some sense of what I was seeing or experiencing. Now my younger daughter stays in touch with her friends by facetimeing them and if she borrows my wife’s iPAD, she is even facetimeing multiple friends at the same time.