Archive : Tomorrow's Academic Careers
873. Professors Need to Lighten Up
May 20, 2008
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"I found that self-efficacy was directly and positively influenced by faculty approachability and negatively affected by faculty distance. Thus, a professor's interactions with students are crucial to student performance."
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Posted by markep on May 20, 2008
866. Help New Faculty Become Oriented
April 24, 2008
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"It is a full orientation session. It pays off. They don't remember= everything, but it gives them a chance to ask questions and raise issues= and to get a feel for the fact that they're going to be supported by their= colleagues, their chair, and other personnel."
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Posted by markep on April 24, 2008
863. Can Technology Keep an Old Academic in the Game?
April 10, 2008
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My physician's insistence that I am "normal," and do not have Alzheimers, provides only subdued comfort: the "senior moments" are real, they affect my productivity, and they bring me face-to-face with the chilling prospect that I may someday find myself unable to do the work that is my life's calling.
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Posted by markep on April 10, 2008
860. Post-Tenure Faculty Review and Renewal
April 02, 2008
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"Do not expect peers to be comfortable with this type of review or administrators to possess the necessary evaluation and development skills. The review process is only as effective as those given the responsibility to implement it. Comfort, commitment, and skill will vary. Results will vary. This is to be expected. Experience will enhance comfort and skill; commitment must always be reinforced."
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Posted by markep on April 2, 2008
837. Avoid Burnout
January 14, 2008
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The average amount of time from entering grad school until getting tenure is more than 18 years! Wow!
Remember this daunting figure when you tell yourself that you'll take time off as soon as you jump through the next hoop. Instead, seek to develop a rich and relatively balanced life while you're still a student or junior faculty member.
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Posted by markep on January 14, 2008
835 Why Introducing or Sustaining Peer Review of Teaching Is so Hard, and What You Can Do About It
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"Emotionally, it is important to address distrust of evaluation, violation of personal style and space, insecurities about performance, anxieties about time, and fear of bias."
Posted by markep on January 14, 2008
833. Overcome Procrastination
November 20, 2007
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"Although it is natural and understandable, procrastination is the greatest threat faced by most academics. Procrastination will poison your productivity and maim your chances for tenure. It is the virulent disease that annihilate academic success. Inoculate yourself now."
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Posted by markep on November 20, 2007
828. Setting Boundaries
November 08, 2007
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"However, in the classroom, the 80/20 ratio shifts to 90/10. In other words, when we are teaching, 90 percent of our headaches come from 10 percent of our students. Every semester there are a few needy, or defiant, or obnoxious, or pathetic, or complaining students who cause the vast majority of our problems.
Prepare yourself in advance for these difficult students by preparing in advance."
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Posted by markep on November 8, 2007
823. The American Faculty: The Restructuring of Academic Work and Careers (review)
October 18, 2007
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"Although Schuster and Finkelstein are quite conservative in their statements, they begin their work with "a bold and unqualified assertion: American higher education and the academic profession that serve it are on the edge of an unprecedented restructuring that is changing the face- indeed, even the very meaning-of higher learning" (p. 3)."
Posted by markep on October 18, 2007
822. Coping with the Passive-Aggressive Faculty Member
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"One of the justifications frequently made by passive-aggressive faculty members for their unsatisfactory performance is that they are asked to take on too many responsibilities, not assigned tasks that are truly worthy of their talent, or called upon to work in areas where they have relatively little training, experience, and interest. "
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Posted by markep on October 18, 2007
802. Maintaining Senior Faculty Productivity
May 29, 2007
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"Another point concerns the decision on how a faculty member chooses the work that defines himself or herself from a professional perspective and how that may vary depending on career stage. Each faculty member must make this decision regardless of whether the expectations for tenure and further advancement are based on teaching or research parameters."
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Posted by markep on May 29, 2007
798. Don't Waste Your Summer
May 15, 2007
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"When your summer deadline is only in your own mind, it is easy to shift your schedule and end up with a personal "incomplete" in August. Therefore, I tell the faculty and students I work with to "go public" to increase their sense of accountability."
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Posted by markep on May 15, 2007
793. Understanding Senior Faculty Needs
April 30, 2007
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"We found that senior faculty members are motivated and satisfied through opportunities for intellectual inquiry, membership in a meaningful academic community, opportunities to have institutional impact, and recognition for their work. "
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Posted by markep on April 30, 2007
792. Collegiality: The Tenure Track's Pandora's Box
April 24, 2007
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"The rules of collegiality are similar to the rules of dating. A conversation has gone well when the other person has done most of the talking."
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Posted by markep on April 24, 2007
787. Supporting and Retaining Early-Career Faculty
April 11, 2007
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"I review some of the research on expectations and concerns of early-career faculty, highlighting particularly the difficulties young faculty members have identified in (1) understanding and achieving expectations for tenure and promotion, (2) becoming socialized in their institutions and departments and finding colleagues with whom to collaborate, and (3) balancing the multiple demands of jobs and personal and family responsibilities."
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Posted by markep on April 11, 2007
783. Seven Tips for Dealing with Email Addiction
March 12, 2007
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"Checking and replying to our electronically-delivered messages seems like a necessary, innocuous occupation, but it is also a major >form of procrastination."
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Posted by markep on March 12, 2007
775. "Code O:" How to recover from Overwhelm
February 13, 2007
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"The key is to couple slow motion with attention to the moment. The effect is to block out everything and focus entirely on what you are doing in this moment. Perhaps this works because you are not "wasting" any time thinking about the past or future - so only 1/3 of the usual "stuff" is in your head."
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Posted by markep on February 13, 2007
770. The Challenges and Opportunities of Technology in Higher Education
January 19, 2007
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"Most organizations in today's rapidly transforming global environment find it difficult to obtain the necessary resources to maintain the constant innovation and change required to survive and thrive. Higher education is in an even more difficult environment, with shrinking appropriations for public institutions and rising costs and tuition for private entities. In this environment, successful and efficient administrative financial planning, implementation, and decision provide faculty/staff incentives to encourage faculty involvement in technologically transforming courses and programs."
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Posted by markep on January 19, 2007
764. How Post-Tenure Review Can Support the Teaching Development of Senior Faculty
January 04, 2007
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"Given dramatic changes in the teaching and learning landscape, what does research tell us about teaching vitality among experienced faculty? While studies support the presence of some unhappiness and malaise, overall they conclude that senior faculty devote considerable energy to teaching and student concerns. Studies further suggest that the effectiveness of tenured faculty as teachers is less related to time spent on teaching than to an enlargement of teaching styles and relationships with students."
Posted by markep on January 4, 2007
761. Integrating Work and Life: A Vision for a Changing Academy
November 17, 2006
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"The crystal ball seems awfully cloudy to us; the one thing that seems certain is that the life of a faculty member joining a department tomorrow will be quite different from the life lived by a faculty member retiring today."
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Posted by markep on November 17, 2006
744. Tenure and Promotion: The Next Iteration
September 27, 2006
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"Although faculty from different disciplines cannot agree on terminology, in large measure, they do agree, on those characteristics that combine to make an activity scholarly. Therefore, once you have a campus consensus that your faculty reward system requires major revision, if you focus your efforts on identifying those common characteristics and processes that that are needed for any activity to be considered scholarship, you can effectively eliminate or reduce many of the problems that you would encounter if you focused elsewhere. Where the scholarship takes place or the nature of the work itself is no longer an issue, it could be in the laboratory, the classroom, the community, or elsewhere. The focus is now on quality, significance and process."
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Posted by markep on September 27, 2006
739. Co-Teaching - Training Professionals To Teach
September 06, 2006
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"Teaching with more than one instructor in the classroom goes by many names-team teaching, co-teaching, teaching assistant, collaborative teaching, and inter-disciplinary teaching. At Central Michigan University, we piloted a model we call "co-teaching." The model arose from the desire of graduate students in professional programs-who are often attending graduate school in addition to working full time-to gain teaching experience."
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Posted by markep on September 6, 2006
737. Preparing Future Faculty and Multiple Forms of
June 29, 2006
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"Will institutions support and reward multiple forms of scholarship if the new faculty come with such expectations and capacities? This, I fear, is the crux of the matter, and the jury is still deliberating. My impression is that there are crosscurrents but no clear trends. For example, I know of several research universities that point proudly to faculty members who gained tenure based not on their research but on their teaching or technological prowess, but those individuals are still few in number. On the other hand, some liberal arts colleges have raised the bar for research in order to get tenure. And leaders at a comprehensive university I visited that had recently done a great deal of new hiring were enthusiastic about their ability to recruit researchers from top-rated departments, but when they launched a review of their undergraduate general education program, they realized that the new faculty were neither prepared to help nor interested."
Posted by jbink on June 29, 2006
733. Personal Philosophies of Teaching: A False Promise?
June 15, 2006
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"While many institutions use the requirement of a personal philosophy of teaching statement to good and fair purpose, there are some (my own included) that offer more of a false promise than fair purpose in requiring such a statement as part of the periodic review process. The purpose of this article is to examine those false promises and disentangle the assumptions that lie behind them."
Posted by markep on June 15, 2006
724. Reflections on More Than Half a Century of Teaching
May 16, 2006
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"I've cited this background because it bears directly on how my philosophy of student-centered teaching has emerged, evolving out of my experiences as a Spanish-speaker in the United States, acquiring a universe of knowledge in a second language. More importantly, though, my regard for the students in my classes is born out of my regard for the diversity of human life and languages on the planet. I've witnessed and experienced the result of disregarding that diversity in schools and in public."
Posted by markep on May 16, 2006
686. FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR FACULTY DEVELOPMENT
January 04, 2006
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"The most striking theme to emerge from the open-ended responses was the desire for more connection between where participants wished to see faculty development move and where they saw it moving, with or without their control. Respondents were deeply concerned about what they saw as an over-reliance on technology as the teaching and learning "fix" that everyone must use, and their role as technology consultants to faculty subsuming all other roles and issues they see as important to address. They also worried about increasing pressure on the field to be part of the assessment movement and various evaluation processes such as accreditation reviews and post-tenure review."
Posted by on January 4, 2006
672. ASSESSING MANAGEMENT SKILLS OF JOB CANDIDATES: A PRIVATE SECTOR APPROACH
October 19, 2005
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"The Assessment Center did provide a brief written introduction. The first day included "in-basket" exercises, a meeting with the Vice-Chancellor (the President in the USA), a competency based interview, and a written exercise. The second day entailed a policy discussion, a performance management problem, a presentation, and a debriefing. At some point there would be a "surprise element." The Center's hand-out stated our performance would be judged by two "trained" assessors whose judgments had proved "four times more accurate" in "predicting future performance" than the "standard interview"."
Posted by markep on October 19, 2005
671. BUILDING THE ADMINISTRATIVE PORTFOLIO
October 13, 2005
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" In addition to the basic portfolio information (introduction, summary of responsibilities, and description of administrative philosophy), the administrator will want to select other items that illustrate his or her administrative style (behaviors) and offer evidence of administrative effectiveness (outcomes). "
Posted by markep on October 13, 2005
669. FACULTY AS MENTOR
October 06, 2005
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" In effect, through interactions with their students, mentors try to model the very kind of learning they hope their students will continue to pursue. That is, in a quite powerful and palpable way, the ideal of lifelong learning, usually reserved for students, equally pertains to the faculty mentor. "
Posted by markep on October 6, 2005
666. PREPARING DOCTORAL STUDENTS FOR FACULTY CAREERS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE PUBLIC GOOD - HIGHLIGHTS OF RECENT STUDIES
September 27, 2005
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"With many retirements occurring now and in the near future, graduate students who are preparing for the faculty and new faculty members beginning their careers will be those who are working with students, leading higher education institutions, and taking up responsibilities for the public good in the coming decades."
Posted by markep on September 27, 2005
658. INTERESTING A PUBLISHER IN YOUR MANUSCRIPT
August 30, 2005
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"Because your book is one of dozens or even hundreds presented by editorial teams to the publisher and ultimately to the sales force, its story should be stated briefly. The brief statement is like an abstract containing a working title and the key words that define and sell the book idea. The prospectus should start with this story abstract and then go on to elaborate."
Posted by markep on August 30, 2005
656. SELF-PUBLISHING - POTENTIAL BENEFITS AND RISKS
August 23, 2005
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"There are a number of ways that you can gain or lose by self-publishing a textbook or instructional material. Ways that are among the most relevant for college instructors are indicated in this chapter along with factors to weigh when considering options-i.e., determining the benefit/risk ratio for a particular project. This information should help you when deciding whether to self-publish a particular project."
Posted by markep on August 23, 2005
655. RECONCEPTUALIZING THE FACULTY ROLE; ALTERNATIVE MODELS
August 18, 2005
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"Perhaps like all more democratic experiments, the experience of faculty as mentor is a rather precarious one. Traditional faculty authority has been based on bodies of knowledge and academic structures that reinforce them. To enter a world of mentoring is to practice with the expectation that through serious and honest discourse and negotiation (and a community of other mentors who can provide support, encouragement, and critical scrutiny), plans for individual studies and curricula can be built that are academically rich and that flow from the lives of our students as parents, workers, scholars, members of a community, and citizens. To gain experience in such a faculty role that emphasizes not separation but connection, dialog, and a reweaving of relationships of authority is, in itself, a new kind of privilege."
Posted by markep on August 18, 2005
651. JUNIOR FACULTY - HOW TO FIND GOOD MENTORS
August 04, 2005
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"Probably the best strategy for finding a primary or secondary mentor is to chat with many possible candidates and pursue conversations with people with whom you feel comfortable. Take advantage of any connections you might have, for example local friends of your PhD supervisor or other professors you know and like. It is best to look for someone who is tenured, because learning about the tenure process early can make it far less scary."
Posted by markep on August 4, 2005
648. NEW FACULTY GUIDE FOR ACADEMIC BEGINNERS
July 26, 2005
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"New faculty members need to understand the unspoken and spoken "norms" needed to achieve in order to be successful not only in one's department but in the university as a "whole," the authors write."
Posted by markep on July 26, 2005
648. NEW FACULTY GUIDE FOR ACADEMIC BEGINNERS
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"New faculty members need to understand the unspoken and spoken "norms" needed to achieve in order to be successful not only in one's department but in the university as a "whole," the authors write."
Posted by markep on July 26, 2005
613. WOMEN PROFESSORS WITH CHILDREN
March 31, 2005
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"The details of the stories varied widely, but common themes included the necessity for choices and giving up on some things, the benefits of shared responsibilities, the importance of private time for self and spouse, and for developing strategies that work. Specific strategies included setting priorities consistent with family, limiting travel, delegating responsibility, and advance planning and anticipating."
Posted by markep on March 31, 2005
602. POST-TENURE FACULTY REVIEW PRACTICES: CONTEXT AND FRAMEWORK
March 30, 2005
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"Despite the fact that post-tenure review policies are now firmly in place across American higher education, there really has been no concerted discussion about how the results of these reviews might best be tracked and reported. "
Posted by markep on March 30, 2005
599. PREPARING FOR PROMOTION, TENURE AND ANNUAL REVIEW - PLANNING AHEAD
February 15, 2005
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"If preparatory information is not provided to you, ask for it. Your institution or department may not have addressed some of these questions or issues. If that is the case, it will be up to you to prepare for the committee a file of materials that makes the best case for the quality of your work. "
Posted by markep on February 15, 2005