Category Archives: Faculty Life

“Julea Ward, Christian Counseling Student Expelled For Gay And Lesbian Views, To Argue Discrimination Case In Court”

Posted on January 29, 2012 by | 3 Comments

From HuffPo (of all places!) come “Julea Ward, Christian Counseling Student Expelled For Gay And Lesbian Views, To Argue Discrimination Case In Court.” In typical fashion, HuffPo is really drawing from other media; in this case, “Expelled EMU counseling student wins OK to sue after refusal to advise gays, lesbians” from the Detroit Free Press. To quote the freep:

An Eastern Michigan University student who was expelled from a counseling program because she refused to counsel gays and lesbians about their lifestyles won a key victory today in the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

A three-member panel of the court said Julea Ward can argue her religious discrimination suit against the university before a federal court jury in Detroit.

“Ward’s free speech claim deserves to go to a jury,” Judge Jeffrey Sutton said in an opinion joined by Julia Gibbons and John Adams. Adams is a federal district judge from northern Ohio who was sitting by designation on the appeals court.

“Although the university submits it dismissed Ward from the program because her request for a referral violated the ACA (American Counseling Association) code of ethics, a reasonable jury could find otherwise — that the code of ethics contains no such bar and that the university deployed it as a pretext for punishing Ward’s religious views and speech.”

The HuffPo site is worth visiting because it includes a YouTube video from Ward sponsored by her conservative Christian defense team, the Alliance Defense Fund, and in the nutshell, Ward is claiming discrimination because she’s a Christian.

I have to say given the level of discrimination that happens in this country against people who are Jewish, Muslim, atheist, and whatever else but Christian, I personally have a hard time with that argument.  And I have to wonder how far a professional organization is supposed to take an individual professional’s own beliefs into account here.  I mean, suppose Ward had not wanted to counsel a mixed race couple or a Muslim couple because it violated her “Christian” values:  would this have made it into the courts at all?

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

“Dear Student…” (solid advice every grade-hungry student should read)

Posted on January 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Via the Facebooks comes “Dear Student:  I don’t Lie Awake At Night Thinking of Ways to Ruin Your Life,” a piece published on Forbes.com.  It’s thoughtful and even-keeled advice for students who think that grades are something more than they are, an evaluation of how well someone does (or doesn’t) do in a class.  For example, there’s this:

I’m here to be a mentor and instructor. This means that our relationship differs from the relationships that you have with your friends and family. Please don’t infer from this that I don’t care about you, because I do. A lot. I want to see you make good choices. I want to see you understand basic economics because I hope it will rock your world as it continues to rock mine and because the human consequences of lousy economic policy are enormous. That said, you should never take grades personally. I don’t think you’re stupid because you tank an exam, an assignment, or even an entire course.Economics is hard. A D or an F on an economics exam does not diminish your value in God’s eyes (or in mine) or indicate that economics just isn’t for you. It probably means you need to work smarter, and I’m here to help you with that.

 

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

“The Fall of the Faculty”

Posted on January 9, 2012 by | Leave a comment

It’s been a pretty busy start to the semester for me around here at EMUTalk.org central because of my pesky day job.  But I’m back (sort of), and I wanted to kick off the term with an article an alert reader suggested I post from Inside Higher Ed, “The Fall of the Faculty.”  It’s an interview with Benjamin Ginsberg, David Bernstein Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, author of  The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters.  Ginsberg is a pretty cranky guy about administrators and he gets much of it wrong, it seems to me.  But he does have a couple of zingers that seem right.  For example, there’s this:

In my 40 years in academics, the number of truly silly courses is very small. But when I look at administrators, I’d argue that the bulk of activities is quite silly, such as the war zones task force which met and concluded that students should be discouraged from entering war zones. More generally, I look at strategic planning that takes enormous energy for no reason. Many of these could just be copied; the end result would be the same. The process of putting these plans together is designed rather like elections in the Soviet Union: the process is designed to give people the impression that people care what they think. I also looked at the minutes and agendas of administrative meetings. When administrators and staff get together, they mostly talk about prior meetings and plans for future meetings.

And there’s this exchange that seems pretty spot-on too:

Q: You recite a litany of administrators who lined their pockets or burnished their own images at the expense of their institutions. Why do you see these examples as reflective of a systemic problem rather than a case of a few bad actors?

A: There are very few controls in place to prevent it. Virtually no university has systems in place to monitor and check the behavior of senior administrators. If some poor student is accused of plagiarism, that’s a federal case. There are all sorts of systems in place. If a faculty or staff member is accused of sexual harassment, there are normal systems in place. If an administrator cheats and steals or presents phony credentials, there’s nothing in place to stop it.

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

The year that was 2011

Posted on January 1, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Happy New Year, everybody!  I’ve made it back from undisclosed locations and the new year in one piece.  I have a whole series of chores and resolutions to attend to, but I thought I’d start my day looking over the most commented on pieces here at EMUTalk in 2011.  In brief, last year was the year of budget cuts and layoffs.

From February, “Snyder to EMU (and other state supported universities): Drop Dead.”

From April, “Did the Provost quit? Was he fired? What?”

Also from April, “Meanwhile in budget news: think scenarios and not cuts,” which actually turned into a “discussion” about the Bowen parking lot and the expense of sabbaticals and the like.

Then the end of May was pretty busy/popular, with three heavily commented posts right in a row: “Perhaps we can chant “Education First!” at the games…,” Administration asking for unions to give money back during a “fluid” situation,” and “Martin’s budget update, “givebacks,” tuition, and athletics.”

At the end of June there was “Thoughts as the dust settles on lay-offs.” That turned out to be the most commented on post of the year, by the way.

“Glad Ron English is having “fun” with the increased budget,” back in July. It seems to me that the Emus break-even season will save English for another few seasons, though I still don’t think the “fun” he had with the increased budget was worth it.

“EMU planning 9/11 memorial after receiving steel column from World Trade Center” back in early August.

“Pray-Harrold open–sort of,” which wasn’t necessarily the most commented on post of the year but it sure seemed like a big event for me.

“‘Which Core Matters More?’ (featuring Mark Higbee), an October debate on general education.

“Emus beat horses, 14-10″ in November, which kind of turned into a “discussion” about attendance at games.

“Kwame Kilpatrick is coming to EMU, causing controversy already” back in November, though it was pretty much a non-story in the end.

And then sadly (now), there was this post,“Greg O’Dell returns to Eastern Michigan University as executive director of public safety and chief of police.”

Okay, enough with last year and into this year– even though it doesn’t really feel like the new year to me because it’s really just the beginning of the next semester… you get the idea.

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Posted in Administrator Life, Blogosphere, Budgets, EMU Events, EMUtalk.org News, Faculty Life, In the media..., Staff Life, Student Life

See you next year, folks

Posted on December 20, 2011 by | Leave a comment

The university closes for the holiday at the end of the day Thursday, but I’m going to (more or less) close up EMUTalk a few days earlier.  I’ll be spending the Festivus season at an undisclosed and in-law related locale with family and sketchy internet access, so don’t expect much to be happening here for a while.

In the meantime, I thought I’d point you to a blog post on stevendkrause.com,”Bloom, Iowa, and academic locales: a few thoughts.” I was going to write this here, but it seemed a little too Iowa-centric for EMU, though it does also bend back to the academic life and the common phenomenon of faculty never really identifying with the community where they teach.  Give it a read if you’re interested.

And merry/happy whatever!

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Posted in Academics, Blogosphere, EMUtalk.org News, Faculty Life

Two bits of extra credit reading

Posted on December 16, 2011 by | 1 Comment

I’m not procrastinating from finishing up my fall term– honestly, I’m not!  Well, maybe a little.  In any event, I thought I’d pass along two links to things that I thought would be of interest here.

First, there’s  ”Bowling for Chumps,” by Pete Kotz in The Village Voice.  Alert EMUTalk reader Dick Schwarze posted this in the comments and I thought it deserved a promotion to the main part of the site.  Kind of a long piece, but an extremely detailed account of the highly dubious world of college bowl games.  Makes me glad that the Emus didn’t quite get there this year.

Second, there’s “What is College For?” a column in the “opinionator” part of the New York Times by Gary Gutting.  It simply puts out there an answer to the question at hand that is a useful reminder that college is about more than job training and that both faculty and students have an obligation to remember that.  I found it an inspiring way to get to that pile of grading.

Speaking of which….

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Posted in Academics, Blogosphere, Faculty Life, In the media..., Sports, Student Life

“EMU union says several lecturers went without pay for more than a month”

Posted on December 15, 2011 by | 11 Comments

This from annarbor.com.  Here’s a quote:

Sonya Alvarado and Lisa Laverty, president and grievance officer respectively of the EMU Federation of Teachers, the school’s union for part- and full-time non-tenure tract faculty, said that dozens of adjunct lecturers did not get paid on time.

“It varied,” Laverty said of the late payments. “Some people only missed a paycheck or two, other people weren’t paid until the end of October or early November and at that point they’d taught almost until the end of the semester already.”

According to EMU’s Office of Academic Human Resources, paychecks have been late in previous years as well. In a statement, the office said the number of late paychecks “in fall 2011 was less than any year in recent history.”

The office did not say how late paychecks from previous years were.

And, as Alvarado pointed out, a lot of folks who are teaching part-time need that money to do stuff like, you know, buy food and pay rent.  So obviously, this is a problem.

I’ve actually experienced some payroll problems firsthand this school year– minor inconveniences compared to what’s going on with these folks, but still problems.  I don’t know if it is the staff who cut the checks, the suits along the way who have to process the forms, or some combination of both, but it is definitely a part of the bureaucracy around here that could use some improvement.

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

“At Forum on the Future, Leaders Dissect What Ails Higher Education Today”

Posted on December 12, 2011 by | Leave a comment

One of the things that I notice about the end of the fall semester is that everyone seems pretty tense and often a little depressed, I suppose because of the stress and pressures of ending the term well combined with stress and pressures of the holidaze, too. So in that sense, it doesn’t surprise me that a bunch of education wonks are dwelling on the negative, according to this CHE piece,  ”At Forum on the Future, Leaders Dissect What Ails Higher Education Today.”

There are two (related, I suppose) issues that came up here that I do think that many of us faculty-types are not of aware of as we should be:  the cost of tuition and the general “economic crisis” that is going on in the world.  Higher Ed needs to respond.  And (to quote):

And James J. Duderstadt, a former president of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, suggested that many in academe may not see a need to do things differently. In a time of cultural and economic turmoil, universities may be “out to sea as a tsunami of change comes through, destroying everything on land.”

The upheaval is felt on campus, he said, as merely “a few ripples.”

I see Duderstadt’s point.  Frankly, I have colleagues who lament a work schedule that requires them (because of meetings and such) to be on campus four days a week, and at the same time, I just heard a story on “Morning Edition” just now about the ridiculously high percentage of Americans who can’t find anything but part-time work.  There’s a disconnect there, right?

But like I said, everyone is a little stressed out….

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Posted in Administrator Life, Faculty Life, In the media..., Student Life, The Market Crash of 2008

“How Not to Measure Faculty Productivity”

Posted on December 8, 2011 by | Leave a comment

It’s that crazy “grade grade grade” time of year right now, so perhaps the last thing most teaching-types want to hear is criticism about faculty not being “productive” enough.  So maybe that’s why I want to recommend Gary Olson’s very reasonable “How Not to Measure Faculty Productivity” in The Chronicle of Higher Education (and not behind a firewall).

For the most part, it’s a response to Mark Bauerlein’s critiques of the cost of literary research– Bauerlein has a column about that here.  Olson’s focus is on the way things work in English departments, and what he says rings true from my experience, and I suspect it’s similar in other departments, especially in the humanities.  Here’s one paragraph I like a lot:

The bottom line is that an efficient department is able to manage its curricular obligations while providing sufficient time for scholars to conduct their research and creative activities. Now Bauerlein might reply, “Yes, but if faculty were only teaching, then you could manage the entire enterprise for less money; you would no longer need to employ the lecturers and instructors.” True. However, the assumption underlying that response and several of the recent discussions of faculty productivity is that the job of university professor is equivalent to the job of teacher, but that is simply not the case at a university.

Exactly.  Even at a place like EMU– we’re not a “research 1″ institution and we put a lot of emphasis on teaching– there’s still an assumption that faculty do research.  And besides that, it seems to me that there is not a firm line between “research” and “teaching” anyway.

By the way, a fun fact:  I was on a panel with Olson several years ago at MLA, though I doubt he actually remembers me.  Small world, academia.

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

“Researches Rate RateMyProfessors, and Find It Useful if Not Chili-Pepper Hot”

Posted on November 18, 2011 by | 1 Comment

This is behind the paypal at The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Researches Rate RateMyProfessors, and Find It Useful if Not Chili-Pepper Hot.” Basically, it is about a study which suggests that the ratings on RateMyProfessors for teachers that have at least 10 entries are just as accurate as other student evaluation measures.

Of course, that is part of the problem:  the evaluations that students fill out at the end of classes are only “kinda useful,” at least in my experience.  In my evaluations, I see a major correlation between the level of the class and the average grades students earn:  that is, my evaluations for freshmen-level classes where lots of students are getting Cs are worse than they are for senior-level classes where lots of students are getting Bs and As.

Plus RateMyProfessors has lots of “outliers” since relatively few students post there, and often enough, the comments that are posted are wildly inaccurate. Just yesterday, I was talking with a colleague of mine about RateMyProfessors and what to do about a comment that was posted about him that was demonstrably not accurate.  I told him I’ve complained before to RateMyProfessors about some of those kinds of comments and they’ve been removed, but really, there isn’t much you can do.

And yes, every faculty person I know looks at RateMyProfessors once in a while.

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