The Independent: How does architecture affect academic study?
Can architecture promote intellectual excellence? On a cramped site in Oxford, in the university’s new biochemistry building designed by Hawkins\Brown, even eminent boffins can’t resist putting a new spin on Le Corbusier’s modernist declaration that buildings should be “machines for living in”. The head of biochemistry, Professor Kim Nasmyth, says: “Actually, this building is an interaction machine.”
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Posted in Working conditions
Tagged Academics, architecture
Inside Higher Ed: Sabbaticals on Leave
It is perhaps no surprise that something that sounds as good as a sabbatical is now viewed in some quarters as a luxury these troubled times cannot abide. Several college leaders have announced in recent months that they will curtail or suspend sabbaticals altogether next year, opening a debate about whether granting research-intensive leave and professional development time is practical when colleges are laying off faculty or freezing hiring.
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Tagged Budgets & Funding, sabbaticals
The Chronicle News Blog: Lab Affiliated With MIT Tops Ranking of Best Places to Work for Postdocs
The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, an independent lab affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, topped The Scientist’s latest list of the best American job destinations for postdoctoral researchers in the life sciences.
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Tagged postdocs, Working conditions
Inside Higher Ed: One Too Many
February 24, 2009
At a moment when the University of Florida is slashing its budget and laying off faculty and staff, administrators thought it was reasonable to ask Florence Babb to increase her teaching load to three courses a year. She doesn’t agree.
Babb, an endowed professor and graduate coordinator of UF’s Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, has entered into arbitration proceedings to challenge the increased teaching load. Babb was given an appointment letter in 2004 that said her teaching load would be limited to one course each semester, and now says the university isn’t upholding its written agreement.
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Tagged Faculty, Working conditions
Inside Higher Ed: When Are Cancer Cases More Than Coincidence?
Since 2000, eight professors and staff members have been diagnosed with breast cancer in the literature building at the University of California at San Diego, and two of the women have died. About 130 women worked in the building during the time period when the diagnoses started. A UCSD medical report last year found odds of 1 in 333 that chance alone could explain the incidence of breast cancer in the building.
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Tagged Health, Working conditions
USA Today: Coaches aren’t exempt from furlough programs
The economic downturn is becoming a leveling force between some NCAA Division I athletics departments and their universities at-large. Arizona State, Clemson, Maryland and Utah State are in the middle of mandatory furlough programs that apply to all school personnel, including coaches.
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Tagged Layoffs, Salary/Economic Benefits
Philippine Daily Inquirer: Professors to take drug tests, too—CHEd
MANILA, Philippines—College and university faculty members will undergo random drug testing starting February to help eradicate the problem of illegal drugs in schools, according to Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) chair Emmanuel Angeles.
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Posted in Government, Working conditions
The Chronicle: A Bad Reputation
Why are more and more graduate students turning away from careers at research universities?
“I don’t want to live your life.” Faculty members who train graduate students hear that remark a lot these days. In a major new study of doctoral students’ career goals, our research team received candid responses from more than 8,000 Ph.D. students in all disciplines at the University of California system. The news was not good.
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Posted in Students, Working conditions
Academe: Why Graduate Students Reject the Fast Track
A study of thousands of doctoral students shows that they want balanced lives.
I could not have come in to graduate school more motivated to be a research-oriented professor. Now I feel that can only be a career possibility if I am willing to sacrifice having children.
—Female Respondent, University of California Doctoral Student Career and Life Survey
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The Chronicle: Grad Students Think Twice About Jobs in Academe
When Joanna Doran thinks of what her life would be like as a tenure-track professor at a top research university, the images that come to mind give her pause.
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SUNY Canton Moves to Four-Day Academic Schedule
December 22, 2008
Courses offered Monday through Thursday next semester
SUNY Canton will be switching to a four-day academic schedule beginning in Spring 2009 in an effort to cut operating costs and increase sustainability across campus.
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The Charleston Gazette: Third woman alleges sexual harassment at community college
A third woman has come forward with allegations of sexual harassment against the vice president of student services at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A third woman has come forward with allegations of sexual harassment against the vice president of student services at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College.
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Des Moines Register: Regents OK new sexual misconduct policies
The Iowa Board of Regents unanimously approved this morning new student-to-student sexual misconduct policies for Iowa’s public universities and special schools.
The regents requested the revisions after an investigation of how the University of Iowa handled a high-profile sexual assault case found their policies confusing.
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Inside Higher Ed: Racial Gaps in Faculty Job Satisfaction
Surveys by COACHE — the acronym for the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education — have played a key role in recent years in drawing attention to the frustrations and hopes of young faculty members. The studies have been influential in campus discussions about the need for more clarity about tenure expectations or the importance of family-friendly policies.
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Posted in Diversity, Faculty, Tenure & Promotion, Working conditions
Inside Higher Ed: Christmas Wins Another Round
There may be a war against Christmas, but the holiday is holding its own at public universities. On Wednesday, facing widespread criticism, the president of Florida Gulf Coast University reversed a ban on religious holiday decorations on the campus. This is the second year in a row that a public university has initially called off Christmas decorations but then abruptly changed course following criticism. Last year, Missouri State University restored a Christmas tree to a prominent place on the campus.
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Daily News Egypt: Police officers banned on Cairo University campus
CAIRO: The Cairo Administrative Court Tuesday issued a ruling that bans the presence of police officers on Cairo University’s campus.
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Inside Higher Ed: Nicholls State Faulted on Treatment of Long-Term Adjunct
After 12 years of work, you are entitled to more than one day of notice that you no longer have a job, even without tenure. That is among the conclusions of a report by an investigative committee of the American Association of University Professors
The AAUP found that Nicholls State University, in Louisiana, violated the due process rights and academic freedom of Maureen Watson when it terminated her in that way last year. Watson had been working as a non-tenure-track lecturer in mathematics, earning exemplary reviews until her dismissal.
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Posted in Contingent labor, Employment rights, Working conditions
Houston Chronicle: UTMB to lay off 3,800 people
AUSTIN — The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, still reeling from Hurricane Ike, is laying off some 3,800 people.
In a news release, the UT Board of Regents said it was forced to make the job cuts because the teaching hospital was running out of money.
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Posted in Budgets & Funding, Faculty, Working conditions
Inside Higher Ed: Vigilante Justice on Plagiarism
At Texas A&M International, an instructor told students he would fail and publicly humiliate them if they engaged in academic dishonesty. They did and he did — so the university fired him.
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Posted in Ethics, Faculty, Students, Working conditions
Inside Higher Ed: 6-6 Course Loads and No Benefits
In the last year, there have been some notable successes for part-time faculty members pushing for better wages and benefits. Through unions, legislative hearings and political activism, the issue of part timers’ treatment has started to capture the attention not just of faculty activists, but of university administrators, too.
But what about states where adjuncts are plentiful but not unionized, where they must rely on good will more than political clout to win improvements in their wages and benefits? The situation at these campuses rarely makes headlines or even the agendas of board meetings.
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Posted in Contingent labor, Salary/Economic Benefits, Working conditions
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