Monthly Archives: January 2010

MLK day student video competition

Posted on January 11, 2010 by sitedad | Leave a comment

I saw this information in a couple places, and there’s this article in The Eastern Echo today about the MLK video contest. The contest is “in the spirit of the theme: ‘The Dream: [Insert Self Here].’” Check out the web site and finalist’s videos. The polling is open until January 15.

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Posted in EMU Events, In the media...

In teacher certification program news…

Posted on January 9, 2010 by sitedad | Leave a comment

Two things I meant to post here earlier, but that pesky day-job kept getting in the way:

First, from several different sources (including an alert EMUTalk.org reader and EMU media wonk) comes news that EMU and several other Michigan universities are participating in a program funded by the Kellogg foundation to encourage and attract math and science teachers. Here’s the Michigan Public Radio story; I heard a similar story on WEMU that included a snippet of an interview with Susan Martin, but I couldn’t find the link.

Second, there’s this story from NPR’s All Things Considered from about a week ago, “Michigan Teaching School Tries Something New.” The “teaching school” in question is the University of Michigan, and basically, the premise is that they are revisiting and revamping the requirements for their teaching certification program by talking with recent graduates and current students. I don’t know if this means they will end up with a program that looks more like EMU’s or not, but it does make a lot of sense to me to rethink programs like this based on feedback from students.

As someone who teaches students who are wanting to be English teachers or graduate students who already are in classrooms, I think these programs make some sense: we do need more science and math teachers and probably fewer Literature and Language Arts teachers, to be honest. Although to be really REALLY honest, I don’t think going into secondary or elementary education is necessarily the greatest career move nowadays. I know that’s probably blasphemy to say this at a “teachers college” like EMU, but there you have it.

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Posted in Academics, EMU Fund Raising, In the media..., University of Michigan

“Big Time Losers,” coming to PBS, I hope

Posted on January 6, 2010 by sitedad | Leave a comment

An alert EMUTalk.org reader sent me this link the other day: “Big Time Losers” is the web site about a film of the same name that will be on PBS– I assume at some point in the near future. Here’s a blurb from the site:

Big Time Losers examines the price colleges and athletes pay when sports become big business.

Told through the stories of six athletes, the film examines the impact of sports on academics at elite schools and at big-time state universities where football and basketball traditions run deep.

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Posted in Blogosphere, College Fun, Sports

EMU names Carl Powell CIO

Posted on January 5, 2010 by sitedad | 3 Comments

An alert EMUTalk.org reader and media person at EMU emailed to let me know that “Eastern Michigan University names Carl Powell chief information officer.” Good for him, I suppose, and welcome to EMU, Carl.

I don’t know if Powell is really ready or able to address any wish lists, but I for one would simply like to see the same level of support from ICT that I receive from the company that hosts this site, icdsoft.com I have the $6 a month plan and I couldn’t be happier with them.

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU Technology

“Are American Students Lazy?”

Posted on January 5, 2010 by sitedad | 2 Comments

Also from Inside Higher Ed, “Are American Students Lazy?” Here are the opening paragraphs:

Gather faculty members together and it’s not hard to get them talking about the ways students disappoint. They text in class, expect extensions for no good reason, and act surprised when they don’t earn A’s.

But when it comes to work ethic and manners, are there some students who — on average — don’t disappoint?

Kara Miller thinks so — and her comparison of American students (who continually disappoint) and foreign students (who don’t) has set off quite a discussion in Boston. Miller, an adjunct who teaches rhetoric and history at Babson College, published her views in The Boston Globe just before Christmas, and the debate has continued through the holiday period.

“My ‘C,’ ‘D,’ and ‘F’ students this semester are almost exclusively American, while my students from India, China, and Latin America have — despite language barriers — generally written solid papers, excelled on exams, and become valuable class participants,” Miller wrote. She noted that many of her foreign students have difficulty with English, but make up for that with hard work. Her American students, meanwhile, appear challenged by work.

“Too many 18-year-old Americans, meanwhile, text one another under their desks (certain they are sly enough to go unnoticed), check e-mail, decline to take notes, and appear tired and disengaged,” she wrote. Given that many American students arrive at college without basic skills, she wrote, “we’ve got a knowledge gap, spurred by a work-ethic gap.”

The response was immediate and intense. Hundreds of people posted comments.

My own view is that Miller is wrong. Her conclusions are based on the logical fallacy of a hasty generalization– my American students at this one college are more lazy than my foreign students (never mind that defining “lazy” is a little fuzzy here). This isn’t to say that foreign students are “more lazy;” it’s just that the premise of the claim– “X” group is more lazy than “Y”– seems simplistic at best. Teach enough students over enough years and you start to realize that making any assumption about who is lazier than whom is kinda silly.

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Posted in Faculty Life, In the media..., Student Life

“Making Teaching a Profession” (or, maybe NCATE will change the rules again)

Posted on January 5, 2010 by sitedad | 1 Comment

This from today’s Inside Higher Ed: “Making Teaching a Profession.”

WASHINGTON — After spending much of the fall calling for major reforms to the nation’s teacher preparation programs, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s pleas appear to have begun to encourage action, as a major accreditor begins an effort this week aimed at bringing major changes to colleges of education and school districts alike.

More than two dozen teacher educators and education policy leaders will converge here Wednesday and Thursday for the first meeting of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education’s (NCATE) Panel on Clinical Preparation, Partnerships and Improved Student Learning, charged with recommending scalable ways to improve in-the-classroom training and strengthen relationships between school districts and the colleges and universities that prepare their teachers. The recommendations, in turn, would probably form the basis for revisions to the council’s accreditation standards.

NCATE — which accredits more than 600 colleges and programs nationally that graduate two-thirds of new teachers — has initiated what James Cibulka, its president, called a “redesign and transformation” aimed at making teaching a more respected profession with heightened preparation standards throughout.

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Posted in Academics, Administrator Life, Faculty Life, In the media...

While I was away…

Posted on January 4, 2010 by sitedad | Leave a comment

… I came across many things I thought about posting about here. I don’t have the time nor the desire to make these all individual posts, but here’s just some of what I thought was pretty interesting EMUTalk-wise during the holiday break (in no particular order):

Judge Mathis spoke at EMU graduation. Based on the AnnArbor.com story, it sounds like Greg Mathis had quite the risky youth….
From Inside Higher Ed, “Second Opinion.” This article about auditing the books at the University of Main, sent to me by a loyal EMUTalk.org reader, has an interesting EMU connection, as this paragraph makes clear:

Administrators say we’re broke? That’s not what our accountant tells us. Such is the sentiment at the University of Maine, where a recently completed audit challenges the notion that the university is in dire straits and will have to cut positions. Drawing primarily upon audited financial statements, an Eastern Michigan University accounting professor issued a student- and faculty-commissioned report last week that found the Maine system’s unrestricted net assets grew to $84 million in 2009, up from about $50 million in 2005. The findings contradict administrators’ gloomy public statements about the fiscal situation at the system, according to Howard Bunsis, who wrote the report. The University of Southern Maine campus, which was given its own analysis in Bunsis’s audit, sustained a $2.7 million budget reduction last year, prompting controversial plans to cut German studies, among other measures.

“Engaging Students with Engaging Tools” from EDCAUSE Quarterly is about using social media to teach– maybe more something I’m interested than EMU as a whole, but I’m trying to spread the word a bit….
Alas, Mittenfest has come and gone.
I’ve come across a new news/publishing outlet in the area, The Bohemian.
Also from Inside Higher Ed and maybe something I’m more interested in than the EMU community is interested in: “Hybrid Education 2.0,” which begins with the provocative sentence “What if you could teach a college course without a classroom or a professor, and lose nothing?”
Go figure– Ypsilanti has a film office!

Okay, you’re all caught up. Almost.

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Posted in EMUtalk.org News

The Michigan State Normal School Gymnasium, 1894

Posted on January 3, 2010 by sitedad | 1 Comment

According to this entry at “The Oldtime Strongman Blog,” this gym used to be right across the street from the tower– maybe where there’s an administrator parking lot now? Unfortunately, it was torn down in the mid 1960s.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Buildings and Grounds

What’s up with EMU email?

Posted on January 2, 2010 by sitedad | 4 Comments

As far as I can tell, it’s been down since some time late this afternoon. It’d sure be nice to see it working again some time before the term started….

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Posted in EMU Technology