‘Koyaanisqatsi’ in China
May 15, 2013, 12:00 pm
The Chronicle of Higher Education
About halfway through my first semester teaching American culture and society at Tsinghua University, cradle of Chinese leadership, a student asked me if we could watch a movie—something about “American culture.” It was in this way that I stumbled upon a most intractable dilemma…
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How Counselors Can Shape the College Plans of First-Generation Students
May 16, 2013, 4:55 am
The Chronicle of Higher Education
High-school counselors can influence whether ninth-graders whose parents do not have bachelor’s degrees plan to attend college, suggests a report released on Thursday by the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
The report, “Preparing Students for College: What High Schools Are Doing and How Their Actions Influence Ninth Graders’ College Attitudes, Aspirations, and Plans,” is based on an analysis of new, nationally representative data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009….
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New Rutgers AD Is One of Only 5 Women to Head Major Program
May 16, 2013, 4:57 am
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Shortly after Rutgers University named Julie Hermann as its next athletics director on Wednesday, I got a note from my colleague Libby Sander. She reminded me of a candid conversation she had with Ms. Hermann two years ago for her analysis of the scarcity of female athletic directors in the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision….
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The War Between Academic Me and Mom Me
May 15, 2013 – 8:12pm
Inside Higher Education
Last night I went to see my son’s performing arts program. After an hour watching the band demonstrate their instruments, the staff dealing with a cranky sound system (they had to resort to the whole microphone-next-to-the-boom-box trick), and then the kids getting up to perform their dance routines while my four year old whined for more snacks from my bag (does she think I keep a hot dog stand in there?), I had pretty much traveled to my mental happy place to get through to the end.
When the third graders took the stage, my academic alarm bells went off. The boys’ set included “Walk Like a Man,” and the girls danced to “Dancing Queen” and “Big Girls Don’t Cry.” While the audience around me reveled in all the cuteness, I couldn’t help but think how the school seemed to find the most gendered songs for the students to perform. Why can’t girls cry? Why not boys? Walk like a Man? What does that even mean? It brought me to one of those moments that I find increasingly challenging in my own personal world: the war between my academic self vs. mom self. All my mom self wanted to do was applaud and beat the crush of parents to the front to congratulate my son. However, my academic self wanted to distribute some Judith Butler readings to the crowd and hold an emergency teach-in about gender-neutral programming…
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/mama-phd/war-between-academic-me-and-mom-me
To Professors of Asian-American Studies
Inside Higher Education
May 16, 2013 – 3:00am
Dear Colleagues:
As you know, on April 20, on the last day of its annual meeting, the Association for Asian American Studies, passed a resolution to “honor the call of Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions” and to encourage “research and public speaking… in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.”…
Academic Minute: Higher Education Gender Gap
May 16, 2013 – 3:00am
Inside Higher Education
In today’s Academic Minute, Claudia Buchmann of Ohio State University explains the growing gender gap that exists on college campuses. Learn more about the Academic Minute here.
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/05/16/academic-minute-higher-education-gender-gap
U.S. Fines Yale $165,000 for Misreporting Sexual Offenses
Inside Higher Education
May 16, 2013 – 4:12am
The U.S. Education Department has notified Yale University that it intends to fine the institution $165,000 for failing to report several sex offenses nearly a decade ago, the New Haven Register reported. In a letter to Yale President Richard Levin, a department official said that it planned to impose the maximum fine of $27,500 for each of the forcible sex offenses that Yale failed to report in 2001 and 2002, as well as additional fines for several other omissions of information from its reports under the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act. Yale had admitted the violations over nearly a decade of investigation by the government, but university officials balked at the fine….
Senate Leaders Introduce Student Loan Interest Rate Bill
Inside Higher Education
May 16, 2013 – 3:00am
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats introduced a bill Wednesday that would keep the interest rate on subsidized student loans at 3.4 percent for another two years at a cost to the government of $8.6 billion — a measure that underscored the distance between Congressional Democrats and the White House on interest rates. The interest rate for subsidized Stafford loans, need-based loans that don’t accumulate interest while students are enrolled in college, will double to 6.8 percent on July 1 if Congress does not act. …
The Chronicle of Higher Education
UC-Irvine’s Chancellor Vows Action Over Racist Note Slipped in Student’s Bag
Michael V. Drake, chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, on Tuesday pledged to take action against the person who reportedly slipped a racist note into the backpack of a black female student last week. The note read, “Go back 2 Africa slave,” according to the campus police department. “We have clear and unwavering policies forbidding such hateful actions, and we take the security and well-being of everyone on campus most seriously,” Mr. Drake said in a written statement. “We do not, and will not, tolerate this kind of behavior.” The incident came to light weeks after an Irvine fraternity drew fire for releasing a video featuring a member in blackface, an incident for which the fraternity apologized and suspended itself….
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Reducing Stereotype Threat in the Classroom
Prepared by Bettina J. Casad for the Iowa Science and Mathematics Teacher Educators Summit, August 14, 2009. All content was extracted from Stroessner & Good (2009) www.reducingstereotypethreat.org. See the Site for original research citations.
Stereotype threat refers to being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one’s group (Steele & Aronson, 1995). This threat can cause poor academic performance among stereotyped groups (females, ethnic minorities). Educators can help eliminate stereotype threat by altering the academic environment to be safe for all students….
http://www.stemequitypipeline.org/_documents/Reducing%20Stereotype%20Threat.pdf
