Blogs

The film world was busy this week mourning the loss of two “mountains”—documentary filmmaker Les Blank and film critic Roger Ebert. They will both be remembered for highlighting work about women, blacks, Cajuns, “crackers,” Mexicans, Yugoslavs—subjects and filmmakers who are too often ignored and forgotten by mainstream media. Both men have inspired me in my own filmmaking and teaching.

I have some thoughts on automated grading of student writing. Most of them are unkind.

An examination of France's wild and crazy chief rabbi....

I spent the last few days on my first accreditation site visit. I’ve been on the receiving end of three of the big ten-year versions -- lucky timing -- so it seemed like time to try being on the other side.

A few weeks ago I stumbled across this essay by Amy Boesky in The Kenyon Review that reflected on her time ghostwriting for the Sweet Valley High series. What caught my attention was the fact that she wrote for the series throughout her time as a doctoral student (okay, I admit it--I actually started reading because I spent countless hours in my formative years with the Wakefield twins). Boesky's description of her work made me think about the ways what we do outside of our grad school work can be a real benefit to the development of our grad school selves.

Several incidents recently drew me into the core of my University’s business: students. One was a failed suicide attempt. Last semester, we had one who was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. Less tragic were two students known to me who have similarly dropped out of school: one who was a recipient of a food subsidy program I had been supporting and another a Political Science junior whose health could no longer cope with the travel from her remote mountain village to our campus in Miagao. Being chair of a Division that runs two undergraduate programs with 420 odd students, having 4 students fall into the cracks as it were may be statistically insignificant. But being a teacher, any addition to the score of (near) dropouts is heartbreaking.

When have you worked with your university lawyer?

An important trend is worth mentioning as part of the context to last week’s post. One of the factors contributing to the record high number of applications and record low acceptance rates is that more prospective students are applying to more schools.