Courier: Part-Time Instructors Will Be Affected Most by Class Cuts
The reduction of this year’s summer intersession due to budget cuts is not only affecting students, but faculty as well. Many PCC part-time professors will see their hours decrease dramatically, with some even being out of jobs completely.
“Some part-time faculty will be losing their jobs,” said Roger Marheine, president of the Faculty Association. “Others will have the amount of classes they teach cut in half.”
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Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged adjuncts, Contingent labor, Job cuts
Richmond Times Dispatch: At Tech, an ideological dispute over diversity
A letter from Virginia Tech’s president reaffirming the university’s commitment to diversity has reignited an ideological dispute over political correctness on campus.
Tech officials last month backed away from a proposed policy that critics said tied promotion and tenure to participation in diversity initiatives. An array of mostly conservative organizations had lobbied against the guidelines, calling them an affront to academic freedom and a political litmus test for promotion.
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Posted in Diversity
Tagged Diversity, Virginia Tech
BBC: Strikes cripple French universities
Student protest in Bordeaux (2 April 2009)
France’s public universities are overcrowded and under-funded
Staff and students at almost a quarter of France’s state-run universities remain on strike over government plans to overhaul the higher education system.
The protests are now in their 14th week and may mean that some pupils, who have missed out on months of teaching, will have to miss their exams and repeat an entire academic year, the BBC’s Emma Jane Kirby in Paris says.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged France, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Time Higher Education: Red-light work a grey area for universities
Stance on staff or student links to sex trade centres on reputation, not welfare, writes Rebecca Attwood
UK universities do not have policies prohibiting staff or student involvement in the sex industry, but many hold “unwritten assumptions” that could be used to penalise “legal but stigmatised” sexual behaviour, according to new research.
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Posted in Legal issues
Tagged prostitution, Research, sex trade
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Zinkhan’s body found in grave he dug
Police searched two days near elementary school
Fugitive murder suspect George Martin Zinkhan III dug his own grave and covered himself with debris before firing a single bullet into his head, investigators said Saturday.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigations’ state crime lab confirmed early Saturday evening that the body discovered earlier that day in the woods outside Athens was Zinkhan.
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Posted in Faculty
Tagged murder, University of Georgia
Kenosha News: UW-P chancellor candidates offer a variety of styles
Five will head to Madison for sit-down interviews May 19
Now that the tribe — or at least the faculty, staff and students of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside — has spoken, the five finalists for the school’s top job have one more challenge before being named sole survivor in the search for a new chancellor.
The UW System is taking extra precautions with the search after last year’s pick of Robert Felner from the University of Louisville crashed before he started.
Felner was a favorite from the search committee leader and was touted as the perfect fit, but resigned after coming under investigation for stealing millions in grant money. He has since been indicted. A “no confidence vote” in Louisville also came to light after his selection. Although some members of the search committee were aware of that, the information wasn’t shared with the UW System president.
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Posted in Administration
The New York Times: The New School’s Kerrey Is to Step Down in 2011
Bob Kerrey, whose eight years as president of the New School have been marked by rising enrollment and faculty expansion but also by criticism and recent student protests, announced on Thursday that he would step down when his contract expires on July 1, 2011. Mr. Kerrey, 65, revealed his decision Wednesday evening to the university’s board of trustees at their final meeting of the academic year. The board unanimously passed a resolution reaffirming its support for Mr. Kerrey and committing itself to a smooth transition.
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Posted in Administration
Tagged Bob Kerry, Governance, New School, Protests, University presidents
Washington Post: Months-Long Strikes Close French Colleges, But Motive Is Unclear
MONTPELLIER, France — During months of campus protests here, the only serious violence erupted one evening when student activists got in a fight over which movie to show during the all-night occupation of a large classroom.
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Posted in Strikes & Labor Disputes
Tagged France, Strikes & Labor Disputes
Cleveland Plain Dealer: Case Western Reserve University and Second Life building a private virtual world for college
Students in Carolina Perera’s Spanish language class don’t need an airplane to visit Mexico, Spain or Colombia.
They go virtually.
Perera, a lecturer at Case Western Reserve University, assigns her students to use Second Life, an online 3-D virtual world, to visit other countries and interact with native Spanish speakers.
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Posted in Academics
Tagged Case Western Reserve U, Online, Second Life, virtual education
Inside Higher Ed: Bob Kerrey Will Leave New School Presidency — in 2011
Bob Kerrey announced Thursday that he will leave the presidency of the New School in June 2011, when his contract expires. He said in a statement that his intent has long been to leave at that time, but he also acknowledged the controversies at the New School, whose student and faculty groups have become increasingly critical of his management. “To understate the case this has been a challenging semester for the university and my family,” he said. “There have been moments when I reached the limit of my willingness to continue serving as your president. There have been moments when my tendency to fight and to directly engage in confrontation, argument and disputes have been counterproductive.” A Web site maintained by students who have clashed with Kerrey offered its own analysis of Kerrey’s plans and record, ending its commentary by saying “onward in struggle.”
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Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Bob Kerry, Governance, New School, Protests, University presidents
Inside Higher Ed: More Mystery Gifts
As the latest mystery donation to a university with a female president was announced this week, it appears that some gifts from a year ago were part of this unusual philanthropic campaign.
The latest lucky donation recipient, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, announced its $5 million gift Wednesday. And while some colleges with female presidents cross their fingers in hopes of being the next to receive a donation from the mystery giver, others think they might already have received theirs.
San Francisco Chronicle: Raid seeks to prove City College misused funds
A copy of a search warrant served on the college shows that investigators are scrutinizing the actions of former Chancellor Philip Day, who left the college last year to work for an education lobbying firm in Washington, D.C.
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Posted in Legal issues
Tagged City College of San Francisco, Legal issues, search warrant, University presidents
Inside Higher Ed: MLA Urges Chairs to Focus on Adjunct Issues
The Modern Language Association is sending a letter to all English and foreign language department chairs urging them to organize discussions and activism to draw attention to the treatment of adjuncts. The letter follows on both reports and policy positions issued by the MLA, and urges discussions with department members and administrators, publicizing “best practices” on the use of non-tenure-track faculty members (including minimum per course payments), urging the conversion of part-time positions to full-time and so forth. The letter also urges chairs to raise these issues when they sit on external review panels on other campuses. “Especially in these difficult economic times, we must vigorously make the case for the relevance of an excellent humanities education,” the letter says. “Students need to be multiply literate, flexible, keen in their interpretive capacities, and prepared to change career direction several times over the course of their working lives. They deserve well-trained and adequately paid faculty members who, working under good conditions, are committed to teaching and learning, have time to prepare classes and provide adequate feedback to students, and have opportunities and support for professional development and advancement. Those students are our future. And those who stand before them in the classroom are our future as well.”
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Posted in Contingent labor
Tagged adjuncts, Contingent labor, MLA
The Herald: GCC student suspended for off-campus participation in online gay porn
To Grove City College, John Gechter was a bright young student majoring in molecular biology. But to his online audience, he was Vincent DeSalvo, a baby-faced rising star in the gay pornography industry.
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Posted in Students
Tagged porn, Students, suspensions
The Chronicle News Blog: Louisiana State U. Press Might Get the Ax
Louisiana State University Press, one of the South’s top scholarly publishers, could fall victim to its state’s budget hemorrhage, and supporters are rallying to keep it alive. The Louisiana Legislature wants to slash funds for higher education, and that includes a proposed $40-million cut for the press’s home institution, LSU at Baton Rouge, said Bob Mann, a professor of mass communication there. He also edits a series for the press.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding
Tagged Bud, LSU, University presses
howtheuniversityworks.com: We Work
This essay is drawn from the final issue of minnesota review to be edited by Jeffrey Williams, featuring a series of statements of professional commitment or belief–credos–by representative scholars. It’s a very special series of essays, and a worthy capstone to Williams’ extraordinary run as editor.
I’ll follow up with more about Williams’ accomplishments, and the future of the journal, which received several bids from institutions willing to step in where Carnegie Mellon stumbled. A letter of intent has been signed, and an orderly transfer to a great new editorial board is underway.
The issue also brings nearly to a close Williams’ spectacular series of in-depth interviews. Often twenty pages in print, these leisurely portrait-of-an-era conversations have been typically longer than the articles in the same issue. Despite Williams’ normally unerring judgment, the issue includes a talk with me, Higher Exploitation.
My credo: We Work
for the minnesota review, winter/spring 2009
I once shocked a colleague by responding to one of those newspaper stories about a prof “caught” mowing his lawn on a Wednesday afternoon by saying that many tenured faculty were morally entitled to think of their salaries after tenure as something similar to a pension.
The Chronicle: A University in Detroit Pins New Hopes on Old Buildings
In the old industrial core of this struggling city, a boarded-up factory at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Burroughs Street tells the story of a long economic decline. Several letters have long since vanished from its rooftop sign, and trees grow out the top like the unkempt locks of a gritty giant well past its prime.
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Posted in Working conditions
Tagged Detroit, urban renewal, Wayne State U
The Chronicle: Is Tenure Denial a Fair-Pay Issue? Federal Judge Says Yes
When President Obama signed a new law in January that expanded workers’ rights to sue for discriminatory pay inequities, some higher-education legal experts predicted the measure would have little effect on colleges.
But a recent ruling by a federal judge in Mississippi could change that drastically by widening the areas covered by the law, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, to include decisions on tenure.
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Posted in Salary/Economic Benefits, Tenure & Promotion
Tagged Legal issues, Salary/Economic Benefits, tenure
Canadian Press: Quarantined Montreal students last to know they’re free to leave Chinese hotel
MONTREAL — A group of Universite de Montreal students quarantined in China over flu fears were likely the last to know the restrictions on travel had been lifted.
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Posted in Safety & Security
Toronto Star: Canadian innovators told to heed the circus
Ottawa’s big thinkers say Cirque de Soleil a role model for others
OTTAWA – To lead the way on science and innovation, Canada should be looking under the Big Top.
A federal advisory panel yesterday offered up Quebec’s famed Cirque du Soleil as a role model for blending innovation, talent and technology to become a world leader.
Canada needs more of that, members of the Science, Technology and Innovation Council said as they unveiled a mixed report card on the country’s innovation record and a warning that it must improve.
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Posted in Academics
Tagged Canada, innovation, Research
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