First, one of my favorite profs Bob Sutton has a take on the infamous tenure vote discussed in Inside Higher Ed. I've participated in some lively tenure votes, but nothing where branding was involved:
When Reader learned that Hodson planned to recommend against awarding tenure, he made the bizarre decision to expose scars on his arms where he had used a branding tool to burn the words “comfort” and “truth” into his flesh.Shudder. There's also something that must give people with nonacademic jobs a good chuckle:
To exact his revenge, faculty were told, Reader imagined one day being able to schedule them for teaching on Friday afternoons, the report states. Reader has denied saying he was "out to get" anyone, and he's disputed the claim that he hoped to someday create undesirable schedules for those who voted against him.Class on a Friday afternoon? Preposterous!! :)
A lighter topic: besides "Writing across the curriculum" a few colleges have tried mathematics across the curriculum. Dartmouth's website says
In the same way that all students should be able to write an essay in any subject they have studied, all students should be able to look at a problem or situation or experiment and ask suitable mathematical questions. They should then have some idea of how to seek the answers to their questions. This is inevitably tied to the reduction of a lot of anxiety about the use of mathematics among the students and, we cautiously point out, the faculty.Mount Holyoke's classes sound great.
Two things on NPR today reminded me of previous posts: "Humans were born to run barefoot" (remember I already talked about the Vibram FiveFingers shoes), and "California budget woes hurt university system".
Finally, y'all should be listening to Grammar Girl.
