Welcome, everyone. I want to say a few things, in no particular order, as I don’t see hierarchy. Let me put my glasses on: 1. You belong here.2. This is a safe space. 3. No one is an expert; we are here to learn as we go. Before we get started, I’d like to ask you to fill out a privilege check. . . . . Continue Reading »
Part 3, SERVICE. When you join a committee, you either make your colleagues' workdays easier or make them harder. If the latter, they will remember the fact and it may very well come up at tenure time. Continue Reading »
Part 2: TEACHING. Sage-on-the-stage, the flipped classroom? No need for that. Just avoid a few crucial missteps. Plus: How to raise your students’ grades without inflating them. Continue Reading »
Tenure recommendations for humanities professors have three parts: research, teaching, service. If you are an untenured humanities who is also a religious or social conservative, the bar is set higher for you. I will be offering advice for each category. First, RESEARCH. Continue Reading »
The ordeal is over; my niece has chosen Tulane. A buddy in Wisconsin has a daughter, and she’s headed to Washington University. Another friend lives in Chicago, but he’s in Boston this week accompanying a daughter on campus tours. For him, the application season has just begun. I see people like . . . . Continue Reading »
W orking in my Marquette office one afternoon in the spring of 2010, I heard unusual sounds coming from the normally quiet lawns outside my window. I was surprised to see a modest assembly of students and professors preparing to march in protest. Against what? Minutes later, an email arrived . . . . Continue Reading »
Wyoming Catholic College, of which I serve as president, recently determined that it has a duty to abstain from federal student-loan and grant programs. As a new college that received the accreditation necessary for federal funding only this year, Wyoming Catholic faced a stark choice for or . . . . Continue Reading »
In his recent article responding to Carl Trueman, Provost of Union University C. Ben Mitchell makes the point again—joining his President—that Union’s reason for disunion with the CCCU was theological fidelity in the face of Goshen and Eastern Mennonite's theological unfaithfulness. . . . . Continue Reading »
On Catholic campuses that aspire to Top Ten or Top Twenty status in publicity sweepstakes like the U.S. News and World Report college rankings, one sometimes hears the phrase “preferred peers.” Translated into plain English from faux-sociologese, that means the schools to which we’d like to be compared (and be ranked with). At a major Catholic institution like the University of Notre Dame, for example, administrators use the term “preferred peers” to refer to universities like Duke, Stanford, and Princeton, suggesting that these are the benchmarks by which Notre Dame measures its own aspirations to excellence. Continue Reading »
In what is being hailed as a revolutionary solution to the overpopulation problem of adjuncts in higher education, the Bench Foundation has announced a multi-year program called Aid-for-Adjuncts. The program is the result of a ten-year study of the rapid proliferation of part-time instructors in college, university, and seminary classrooms. For the first time, administrative centers will be established across America, helping school officials formulate proper guidelines for the use and abuse of adjuncts. Continue Reading »