Category Archives: Academics

Deal to Save Antioch College Hits Snags, as Some Donors Balk

Posted on November 8, 2007 by | Comments Off on Deal to Save Antioch College Hits Snags, as Some Donors Balk

The Chronicle: Deal to Save Antioch College Hits Snags, as Some Donors Balk

Some of the key players crucial to the plan to keep Antioch College from closing in June— alumni who have pledged millions to the cause— are balking at the deal that their association’s leaders reached with the college’s governing board late last week.

The donors say the agreement announced with great fanfare on Saturday does not give the historic liberal-arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, adequate independence within the overall structure of Antioch University, of which it is part. Such independence was a condition of their giving the money, they say. The college is the only residential campus within the university, whose five other campuses specialize in adult education.

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Posted in Academics, Governance

‘Fundamentally Inconsistent’ With University Values

Posted on November 7, 2007 by | Comments Off on ‘Fundamentally Inconsistent’ With University Values

Inside Higher Ed: ‘Fundamentally Inconsistent’ With University Values

Organizers of the Academy on Capitalism and Limited Government Fund hoped to turn their new program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign into a Hoover Institution of the Midwest, a model for getting more free market ideals and ideological diversity into major research universities.

But when a faculty committee was able to get all the details of the agreement that created the new center, it found provisions that were “fundamentally inconsistent” with university values that are designed to ensure a diversity of views. Specifically, the panel found that portions of the agreement would have restricted funds to research designed to reflect certain points of view, and that donors were given control over matters traditionally left to academics.

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Posted in Academics, Corporate University

Antioch College to Remain Open Under Deal Between Trustees and Alumni

Posted on November 5, 2007 by | Comments Off on Antioch College to Remain Open Under Deal Between Trustees and Alumni

The Chronicle: Antioch College to Remain Open Under Deal Between Trustees and Alumni

Antioch College won’t be shuttered next summer after all, and the college’s alumni board is confident that it can raise the tens of millions of dollars needed to halt the suspension of operations that the trustees had deemed unavoidable only five months ago.

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Posted in Academics, Administration

The Science Education Myth

Posted on November 4, 2007 by | Comments Off on The Science Education Myth

Business Week: The Science Education Myth

Forget the conventional wisdom. U.S. schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support

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Posted in Academics

Donovan aims to put students on higher plane

Posted on October 29, 2007 by | Comments Off on Donovan aims to put students on higher plane

The Guardian: Donovan aims to put students on higher plane

· Meditation to underpin university’s curriculum
· David Lynch backs singer’s proposal for institution

Many undergraduates already spend their days listening to psychedelic tunes, watching strange films and trying to reach a transcendental plane. But now, thanks to an unlikely alliance between folk singer Donovan and film director David Lynch, all of the above will be on the curriculum.

The Invincible Donovan University will provide the traditional university subjects, but students will also undergo training in transcendental meditation – the technique practised by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and popularised by the Beatles. Donovan, whose hits include Hurdy Gurdy Man and Mellow Yellow, said he would open the university in either Glasgow or Edinburgh, bringing the hippy dream of world peace to his home country of Scotland.

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Posted in Academics, International

Antioch Alumni Present a Plan to Keep the College Alive

Posted on October 26, 2007 by | Comments Off on Antioch Alumni Present a Plan to Keep the College Alive

The Chronicle News Blog: Antioch Alumni Present a Plan to Keep the College Alive

A college whose motto used to read “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity” now, for many, reads “Be ashamed to let it die!”

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Posted in Academics

Teacher-Education Accreditor Formally Drops Social-Justice Language

Posted on October 25, 2007 by | Comments Off on Teacher-Education Accreditor Formally Drops Social-Justice Language

The Chronicle News Blog: Teacher-Education Accreditor Formally Drops Social-Justice Language

The board of the nation’s largest organization accrediting teacher-education programs has formally voted to drop controversial language about social justice from its standards for evaluating teacher-education programs.

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Posted in Academics

Illinois: SIUE professor sounds the rebel yell

Posted on October 23, 2007 by | Comments Off on Illinois: SIUE professor sounds the rebel yell

The Southern: SIUE professor sounds the rebel yell

A Southern Illinois University Edwardsville professor who believes in the power of petitions signed by faculty members here will present his latest one – calling for separation of SIUE from SIUC -Thursday before the SIUE faculty senate committee.

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Posted in Academics

Plagiarism Scandal Spurs Renewed Call on Southern Illinois U. Campus to Secede

Posted on October 23, 2007 by | Comments Off on Plagiarism Scandal Spurs Renewed Call on Southern Illinois U. Campus to Secede

The Chronicle News Blog: Plagiarism Scandal Spurs Renewed Call on Southern Illinois U. Campus to Secede

More than 30 faculty members at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville have signed a petition asking that the institution be made officially separate from the system’s Carbondale campus. The petition, which was addressed to the state’s governor, follows revelations that Glenn Poshard, president of the Southern Illinois system, copied numerous portions of his master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation without properly citing the sources.

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Posted in Academics, Administration, Faculty

Are IRB’s Needed for War Zones?

Posted on October 22, 2007 by | Comments Off on Are IRB’s Needed for War Zones?

Inside Higher Ed: Are IRB’s Needed for War Zones?

A common complaint among social scientists in recent years is that institutional review boards — which are supposed to protect the interests of human subjects in research — are too involved in work they don’t understand. Good social science is getting held up, the social scientists say.

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Posted in Academics, Ethics

Former Graduate Student at SUNY-Binghamton Says Professor Stole His Work

Posted on October 22, 2007 by | Comments Off on Former Graduate Student at SUNY-Binghamton Says Professor Stole His Work

Press & Sun-Bulletin: Ph.D. student suing BU, says prof stole his work

Contending that his work was stolen and that he was forced out of a doctoral program, a former graduate student has filed a $202 million lawsuit against Binghamton University and four of its current and former staff members.

Charles O. Ogindo filed the civil lawsuit in state Supreme Court in May seeking $200 million in compensatory damages and $2 million in punitive damages and attorney’s fees. For the case to continue, he will have to re-file it in the state’s Court of Claims after a Friday pre-trial hearing before Judge Ferris D. Lebous determined the state Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over the matter.

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Posted in Academics, Ethics, Legal issues

“Dead” studies

Posted on October 20, 2007 by | Comments Off on “Dead” studies

The Boston Globe: A ‘Mindbender’ class

UMass teaching history through the prism of the Grateful Dead

Students shuffle into the morning history class to a dreamlike drone, a fog of fuzzy guitars, and sleepy harmonies. It’s a wistful, faraway sound, a lingering echo from a distant time.

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Posted in Academics

SIU Edwardsville faculty group urges Poshard to step down

Posted on October 19, 2007 by | Comments Off on SIU Edwardsville faculty group urges Poshard to step down

Chicago Tribune: SIU Edwardsville faculty group urges Poshard to step down

The faculty leadership group at Southern Illinois University’s Edwardsville campus called Thursday for embattled university President Glenn Poshard to resign.

The 45-5 vote by the Faculty Senate comes a week after a separate faculty committee at the university’s sister campus in Carbondale concluded that Poshard, who was found to have committed “inadvertent plagiarism” in portions of his master’s and doctoral theses, should fix his work but remain as president.

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Posted in Academics, Administration

Mississippi State in the Silicon Valley

Posted on October 19, 2007 by | Comments Off on Mississippi State in the Silicon Valley

Inside Higher Ed: Mississippi State in the Silicon Valley

San Jose State University has a major engineering program, enrolling several thousand undergrads a year and about 2,000 master’s level students. Many of those students would like a Ph.D. in engineering, and have jobs in Silicon Valley, but consider the top ranked programs in the area (those at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley) to be a bit of out of reach economically or academically. At many universities such a circumstance would lead to a proposal to create a Ph.D. program. But San Jose — part of the California State University System — isn’t supposed to create Ph.D. programs under the much-heralded state “master plan,” which leaves virtually all doctoral education to the University of California.

What to do? This week San Jose State announced a program in which its master’s graduates will be able to take Ph.D. courses at San Jose State, use the labs and library, meet their dissertation committee members and probably even conduct their defenses for a Ph.D. When they display their doctorates though, the seal will be from Mississippi State University, even though the students may never have stepped foot in Mississippi.

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Posted in Academics, Corporate University

Test Optional List Soares Past 750, Nears “Critical Mass”

Posted on October 17, 2007 by | Comments Off on Test Optional List Soares Past 750, Nears “Critical Mass”

FairTest: Test Optional List Soares Past 750, Nears “Critical Mass”

As the college admissions season gets underway for the high school class of 2008, a new FairTest tally finds that more than 755 accredited, bachelor-degree granting institutions do not require all or most of their applicants to submit scores from either the SAT or the ACT (http://www.fairtest.org/optinit.htm).

Since a “new” SAT was introduced in March 2005 and the ACT exam added an optional “writing” section, more than thirty schools have eliminated admissions exam requirements. This summer and early fall, four more schools – Goucher, Merrimack, Christopher Newport, and Wittenberg, joined the list. In addition, more academic experts, including some unexpected allies, have endorsed test-optional admissions.

The failure of recent SAT and ACT revisions to address the tests’ historic problems has accelerated the pace. Admissions officers know from their own studies that test results still reflect race, gender, language and income biases. Research shows they are weak predictors of college academic performance. They also remain highly susceptible to coaching. Relying on test scores to evaluate applicants undermines both equity and educational quality (see FairTest report Test Scores Do Not Equal Merit .

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Posted in Academics

Canada: Schools adapt to a secular world

Posted on October 17, 2007 by | Comments Off on Canada: Schools adapt to a secular world

National Post: Schools adapt to a secular world

In 1972, there were just three provincially chartered Evangelical universities in Canada: Trinity Western University in British Columbia, the oldest in the country; Concordia University College in Edmonton; and Camrose, just outside of Edmonton, which is now part of the University of Alberta.

Today there are 12 schools, ranging from St. Stephen’s University in New Brunswick, with just 100 students, to Trinity Western, which now has 4,000 students, up from 17 when it first opened its doors. They cover the liberal arts and sciences and some have accredited teaching programs.

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Posted in Academics

U of Phoenix to gets approval for doc programs

Posted on October 17, 2007 by | Comments Off on U of Phoenix to gets approval for doc programs

Inside Higher Ed: The University of Phoenix has won approval from the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools to begin its first Ph.D. programs: one in higher education administration and one in industrial/organizational psychology.

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Posted in Academics, Corporate University

Southern Illinois President Cleared of Plagiarism

Posted on October 12, 2007 by | Comments Off on Southern Illinois President Cleared of Plagiarism

Inside Higher Ed: Southern Illinois President Cleared of Plagiarism

He made citation “errors” and “mistakes” that require immediate correction. But Glenn Poshard, president of Southern Illinois University, did not intentionally plagiarize a doctoral dissertation he completed as a graduate student there more than 20 years ago, according to a faculty panel formed by the institution’s chancellor to look into the charges of academic dishonesty.

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Posted in Academics, Administration

Panel Finds ‘Errors,’ Not Plagiarism, in Dissertation by Southern Illinois U. President

Posted on October 12, 2007 by | Comments Off on Panel Finds ‘Errors,’ Not Plagiarism, in Dissertation by Southern Illinois U. President

The Chronicle: Panel Finds ‘Errors,’ Not Plagiarism, in Dissertation by Southern Illinois U. President

A faculty committee has issued its verdict on whether Glenn Poshard, president of Southern Illinois University, plagiarized numerous portions of his dissertation, which he completed at the university in 1984. In short, he’s off the hook.

That’s not to say he didn’t plagiarize. The report, a copy of which was given to The Chronicle, finds “many instances” in Mr. Poshard’s dissertation in which “the words of others are present in a continuous flow with student Poshard’s own words, so that readers cannot distinguish between those sources.”

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Posted in Academics, Administration

Plagiarism Report Says Southern Illinois President Made Only ‘Errors and Mistakes’

Posted on October 11, 2007 by | Comments Off on Plagiarism Report Says Southern Illinois President Made Only ‘Errors and Mistakes’

The Chronicle News Blog: Plagiarism Report Says Southern Illinois President Made Only ‘Errors and Mistakes’

A faculty committee has issued its verdict on whether Glenn Poshard, president of Southern Illinois University, plagiarized numerous portions of his dissertation, which he completed at the university in 1984. In short, he’s off the hook.

That’s not to say he didn’t plagiarize. The report, a copy of which was given to The Chronicle earlier today, finds “many instances” in Mr. Poshard’s dissertation in which “the words of others are present in a continuous flow with student Poshard’s own words, so that readers cannot distinguish between those sources.” Remarkably, the report does not deem those instances to be plagiarism. They are, instead, “errors and mistakes.”

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Posted in Academics, Administration