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It wasn't supposed to happen this way. I was supposed to breeze through graduate school without any changes: start in my hometown, comp in my hometown, defend in my hometown, and finish in my hometown. After that, I could move away, find the right girl, get married, get a job, and so forth. Here's what wasn't supposed to happen: I wasn't supposed to start grad school, find the right girl, comp, move to another state, get married, and then defend and finish somewhere else. I certainly wasn't supposed to have one committee member move to Texas. I definitely wasn't anticipating another one getting a research fellowship in England. I understood that my dissertation was going to be a solitary struggle in some ways, but not like this. Not me, in Virginia, with the closest committee member being my advisor, in Michigan. But, life, both mine and those of the people I'm working with, "gets in the way": our circumstances change, and we have to figure out how to adjust.

The blogosphere has been atwitter (can I say that?) about the latest study showing the economic damage to students of leaving underperforming teachers in place.

Last week, two things were peppering my Twitter stream – posts about digital humanities from scholars attending the Modern Language Association and American Historical Association annual conferences mingled with expressions of concern and outrage over the introduction of the Research Works Act, a bill supported by the publishing association to which both associations belong. It just dawned on me (duh) that these two issues are a perfect demonstration of the collision course we’re on.

This morning, as I prepared to walk from my car to my office, I noticed that I'd parked beside a Honda Civic with a label on its left rear side window. The label bore the word "econ" and a greenish symbol that reminded me of the EPA's official seal. When I looked at it closer, though, there was no explicit EPA tie-in, just the suggestion of one.

A look at some of the responses to my post on Tuesday about requiring all college students, not just CS students, learn to code. It's a good reminder of the ways in which we (or at least I) often fail to "make the case" for education technology issues when talking to non-educators and non-technologists.

It was announced this week that ACPA had appointed a Student Affairs "Credentialing Implementation Team." Included in the announcement was news that "the ACPA Governing Board unanimously approved the creation of a professional credentialing program, to consist of a Student Affairs Register and Specialized Skill Certification."

In Economics, we say that the prevailing price is the one that allows the amount of a good that is willingly provided to be equal to the amount of that good that is demanded at that price. This means that, in an economy such as ours, prices are determined by market forces and not by some centralized planner. I recalled this lesson from the first days of any class in a Principles of Microeconomics as I checked out of a grocery store the other day.

In response to my last post, I received a thoughtful email from a colleague (an administrator) reflecting on the difference between managing and leading. This has been a theme for a lot of our on-campus professional development directed at faculty moving into administrative roles.