At the beginning of the semester, I wrote about the importance of belonging, and here at the end of the semester, I encourage us to consider belonging once again. In my first teaching job (teaching high school immediately after I graduated from college), a senior colleague asked me to do a simple experiment. A week […]
In case you missed it, Molly Worthen’s opinion essay on oral exams in the New York Times offers a lot to consider. Worthen traces the history of these exams, listing the benefits and problems with this approach to student learning. Though time-consuming and anxiety-inducing, Worthen suggests that this type of exam more closely mirrors the […]
The busier we get, the harder it becomes to connect with purpose. Our students are very busy this week: registering for classes, preparing for final exams, and completing final projects. It is tempting to counsel our students to just get through. And there is real wisdom to this advice. When confronted with a too-big to-do […]
As fall turns to winter, it is hard not the think about languishing. For many students, and for many teachers, it has been tremendously hard to get out of neutral. Neither crushed nor flourishing, it can feel like we are moving more slowly and less intentionally than we would like to. Worse, it is unclear […]
Today I hosted a conversation in the CTL that I planned to be on joy as a high-impact practice. Given the composition of the group, we ended up taken the conversation in a completely different direction. What emerged from our discussion was a sense that the career that many of us thought we were signing […]
It was a pleasure to host Geoffrey Bateman as he introduced NetVue to our community, and facilitated some wonderful conversations about connecting with purpose and meaning in these tremendously challenging times. I believe our community welcomed the opportunity to reflect on meaning and purpose, and Geoffrey closed his public presentation with an important question: How […]
As I continue my work on a subcommittee tasked with thinking about student evaluations of teaching, I’ve become even more convinced that we need different types of feedback on teaching. Our end-of-term course evaluations can sometimes give us useful feedback, but I’ve often found that I can’t do a lot with them. While it is […]
Several colleagues emailed me the Inside Higher Ed essay, “Ratings and Gender Bias Over Time.” Though many of us already appreciate the ways gender bias operate in student opinions of teaching, what this article discusses is how women faculty members are harmed over time. Reflect on this: “Our findings show that women are rated significantly […]
I often find it challenging to plan the spring semester. We finalize our schedules and place book orders during the busiest times of the fall semester, often when we–and our students–are beginning to feel overwhelmed if not exhausted. Because of this, I’ve tried to very intentionally set aside some time in the fall where I […]
This weekend I attended and presented at the North American Association for Philosophy & Education conference outside of Chicago. As always, it was great catching up with colleagues, and I was grateful for the invitation to comment on Kevin Gary’s excellent book, Why Boredom Matters: Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life. A […]