Monthly Archives: May 2009

Monorail! Monorail!

From the front page of today’s AANews: “Whitmore Lake company’s Mag-Lev train concept: Mass transit solution or idea that won’t get off the ground?” Here’s a quote:

Picture a rail service in southeastern Michigan that runs along a track suspended above the freeway, traveling at speeds up to 200 mph.

Imagine getting from Ann Arbor to Detroit in 10 minutes – and taking your car with you on the rail.

And envision that service with on-demand cross-country travel that has personal suites with kitchens, as well as the ability to rent onboard space for commercial offices and private parties. Such a service also could have the ability to dispatch medical equipment and full teams to the scene of a car accident by rail.

Those are the visions of a Whitmore Lake company pushing a proposal to build a rail system using magnetic levitation – or maglev. The technology would be faster, more environmentally friendly and cheaper than most other forms of transportation available in the U.S. today.

Jeesh.

I got an idea: why don’t we see if we can actually get the light rail connections between here and Detroit to work? Or maybe we should throw money at this guy?

EMU student in the running for “cutest vegetarian”

From the AANews comes this: “Student parlays illness into publicity.”

Barry Sheppard, a 21-year-old EMU student, said some meat he ate on campus made him sick, so he decided to become a vegetarian in the fall of 2006. He eventually parlayed it into becoming a semifinalist in PETA’s Cutest Vegetarian Alive contest.

Sheppard is competing against Jess Bourke, 18, of Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., in the semifinals.

Voting continues until Monday. The champion will be announced June 8.

Kinda goofy of course, but if you want to vote for Barry (and of course, why wouldn’t you?), go to the PETA Cutest Vegetarian Alive, click on Male contestants, and vote away!

The “Nark” online professor?

An alert EMUTalk.org reader and colleague sent me a link to this article in the online and free version of The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Online Professors Pose as Students to Encourage Real Learning.” Here’s a long quote from the beginning of the article:

Jane Malan and Bill Reed are cousins in deception. They infiltrate online courses and secretly collect information about students by blending in with them.

She comes off as a clever thirty-something, with a photo that shows strong features. He poses as a silent twenty-something with some skill at fishing — his photo depicts him holding what appears to be a large rockfish.

A classmate once asked the goateed fisherman to get together, a doomed romance for one reason: He does not exist.

Both Mr. Reed and Ms. Malan are the alter egos of real professors. They belong to a small group of “ghost students” that academics in Indiana, Connecticut, and South Africa have injected into online courses to kick-start discussions among students, keep them from dropping out, and spy on their communications.

The deceit has provoked questions about faculty ethics. Two of the professors admit that their unreal students teeter on an ethical precipice, because the technique could be abused. Others in the distance-education community accuse them of falling over the cliff. The critics worry such behavior could scar the image of an education sector many still regard with skepticism.

On the one hand, I have some sympathy with the professors here because it would be nice sometimes to be on the student-side of things. I think being in on some of those conversations would help me be a better teacher. On the other hand, it is pretty much being a nar(c)k.

This also reminds me a bit of a book that came out in 2005 called My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student by Rebeckah Nathan. Nathan, an anthropology professor, concealed her identity and enrolled at the university where she taught as a new freshman. She lived in the dorms, went to classes, and did all she could to blend in (although being a 50-something freshman meant she could only blend in so much).

I thought it was a pretty good book, albeit based on a potentially problematic research method. I guess the difference is Nathan didn’t hold the position of power of disguising herself as a student in her own class, and there is something to the difference between online and face to face concealment.

Anyway, interesting stuff. Are there teachers out there who are (or who would like to) pose as a student in their own online class? Are there any online students out there who have a problem with this potential posing?

“Colleges Consider 3-Year Degrees to Save Undergrads Time, Money”

I saw this article on the front page of the soon to be defunct AANews from yesterday, an article that ran in the Washington Post: “Colleges Consider 3-Year Degrees to Save Undergrads Time, Money.” I don’t know who these colleges that are supposedly considering this are, but I would rate the chances of this actually happening as “not bloody likely.” As pointed out in the article:

The four-year bachelor’s degree has been the model in the United States since the first universities began operating before the American Revolution. Four-year degrees were designed in large part to provide a broad-based education that teaches young people to analyze and think critically, considered vital preparation to participate in the civic life of American democracy.

And when higher ed basically agrees to something for 250 years in this country, it’s not likely to change anytime soon.

Besides, the issue is not really how long it takes to complete a degree. If someone really wanted to complete their degree in three years or even less, I’m sure they could by taking overloads and spring/summer classes without a break. The more common story– especially at places like EMU– is it takes more like five or six or more years to finish the degree because of finances and because of students changing majors.

No hot coal kicking, please

I wonder if there is something in the Ypsilanti water and/or air that prompts some to attack others with unusual objects?  Last June, there was attacks with a chicken. This summer opens with a kicking hot coal attack, according to this short article in the AANews.

EMU brings audience “Into the Woods”

From the AANews: “EMU brings audience ‘Into the Woods.’”

If a production of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s fairy tale mash-up musical “Into the Woods” isn’t enough, by itself, to bring you to Eastern Michigan University, would a robotic cow seal the deal?

“We have a (student) robotics team here, and they have been working away, designing a robot for us,” said director Ken Stevens. “Besides moving, it’s supposed to move its head, and open and close its eyes, and eat things and die.”

When I think of musical theater, I think of robots.

Anyway, it’s too late for this weekend’s shows, but it’s on Sunday May 31 and Thursday-Saturday, June 4-6.

Black Jake & The Carnies Headline Detroit Wig Out

Normally, I wouldn’t post something like this here. But it’s kind of the slow spring/summer season, and one of the “carnies” is a grad student in my program in the English department. Here’s the info:

Ypsilanti’s Black Jake & the Carnies will headline the first-ever Detroit Wig Out Saturday, June 6 at the Magic Stick. Revelers will wear wigs, let their (fake) hair down, and enjoy live entertainment in the spirit of eccentric coiffure. Proceeds from the event will benefit Gilda?s Club Metro Detroit. Doors open at
8:00 p.m. The event will feature Southeast Michigan entertainment, with an eclectic line-up of music, sounds and visual entertainment that includes:

Black Jake & the Carnies
Dale Veaver & Bootsey X
Silverghost
Spag Burlesque
& DJ Adam Stanfel

For more info, check out:

myspace.com/blackjakeandthecarnies
blackjakeandthecarnies.com

Commercialization in College Sports May Have ‘Crossed the Line,’ Congressional Report Says

I’m shocked, shocked I say!

From Chronicle of Higher Education, “Commercialization in College Sports May Have ‘Crossed the Line,’ Congressional Report Says.” Here’s the opening paragraphs:

Big-time college sports programs derive 60 to 80 percent of their revenue from commercial sources, suggesting that intercollegiate athletics—at least at the elite levels—may have “crossed the line” from an educational to a commercial endeavor.

That finding comes from a report, “Tax Preferences for Collegiate Sports,” released Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office. The office, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress, questioned whether the rise in such commercial ventures should lead big athletics programs to lose their tax-exempt status.

Welcome to my world

Well, no, not completely; I am not feeling that demoralized. Still, I think the opening paragraphs of this recent Inside Higher Ed article, “Next Budget Victim? Joy” kind of rings true:

Step away from that copy machine, and don’t even think about serving lunch at that next faculty meeting. Oh, and that class you love with 20 students? Double it. On second thought, couldn’t you just triple it?

Welcome to the world of higher education in the thick of an economic recession. While tenured faculty may feel more secure in their jobs than employees in more beleaguered industries, there’s little question that the quality of life many professors have come to expect is deteriorating at many institutions. Workloads are increasing while pay is stagnant or falling, and the threat of layoffs has brought an edginess to the Ivory Tower that some professors say hasn’t existed in decades.

All sorts of pressures– upping teaching loads, administrative creep, a general falling off of other benefits of being a professor– do make someone like me question if it’s worth it. Of course, in this economy, what else would I do? But it is true that it is less fun when these sorts of economic times to be a professor. Though most other jobs are probably less fun too.

Pray-Harrold meetings, milestones, schedules, and entropy

Just today, I received an email about the Pray-Harrold Advisory Committee about a meeting I can’t go to tomorrow and also about some “milestones and schedules” in the project. According to this document, the Pray-Harrold project is but one Legislative approval step away for construction, and that should be resolved very soon. According to this same document, construction will commence on November 15, 2009, and the project will be complete on December 21, 2012.

(Note to the few folks who entered the PH renovation pool: “beginning construction” for the purposes of the pool means actual construction, not the likely ribbon cutting ceremony that will be in mid-November 2009. And we might just have to change this pool into the more unpredictable “ending of construction” on Pray-Harrold pool).

As but an alternate representative to the committee (and one whose attendance at these meetings has been intermittent to say the least), my assessment of the process has been kind of mixed. At one point, I described it here as a train-wreck. I don’t think that’s true anymore, but there is something oddly unsatisfying and yet inevitable about this project.

Let me give you a couple of examples:
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