As I struggle to move my three courses and 400 students from face-to-face instruction to distance learning I have been thinking a lot about how to go about it and what the implications are for different approaches. I am wrestling with issues like a desire to maintain academic integrity of my courses while being mindful […]
Here’s an episode from the “No Jargon” podcast that discusses the difficulty many students are having paying for their college education and how this impacts them and their families. It also grapples with the prospects of realizing the American Dream when the surest path to upward mobility is prohibitively expensive. The guest on this episode […]
A while back I was listening to the Ted Radio Hour. The guest was Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert, an expert on happiness. He wrote a widely-read book, Stumbling On Happiness, and was describing a common experience he has when people find out about his research: they want to know the secret to happiness. Listen to […]
Here is a statement lifted from the Harvard University website which beautifully captures the larger goal of a college education — and not just for those lucky enough to go to Harvard. It has since been removed from the site but it remains a forceful and articulate defense of the liberal arts and a vision […]
Here is an article from the New York Times that discusses some of the cultural challenges students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds confront when they go to college…
The following post was written in 2014 during a controversy on our campus involving the resignation of a recently-hired University president, Timothy Flanagan. In just seven months in the position Flanagan had engaged in a series of unprofessional and abusive behaviors. The Board of Trustees paid him $480,000 to leave quietly and provided virtually no […]
Here is a link to a guest column I wrote for our campus newspaper. It deals with, among other things, the way that powerful actors are able to insulate themselves from accountability. In this case the Illinois State University Board of Trustees paid a half-million dollars to its 18th president following his resignation after only […]
I’m currently writing a book that examines the disconnect between popular beliefs about what a four-year college education is all about and what it actually means. My goal is to help close this “college knowledge gap” so that students can get the most from their education.