A dear friend, a retired professor, recently told me that he always was challenged with teaching until he read Nilson’s Teaching at its Best. This had me intrigued. My friend’s teaching evaluations were solid, he was well-regarded by his colleagues, and I had heard from more than a few students that he was strong in…
Category: Deanspeak
Posts about the wide realm of higher education from a deanly perspective
Han and Action
What moves people to engage in public life? It is a vitally important question, perhaps never more so than now when the very tenets of democracy are at risk. It is the primary question driving the research, scholarship and influence of Hahrie Han, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. Han is the…
Enabling the ADA
American politics teaches anyone who pays attention an essential political lesson: rights are not given away. Rights have to be secured – through the ballot box, through legislation, in the courts, the media, and in people’s minds. As much as we all may hope for a fair and just society, fairness and justice do not…
Women and Yale: A Study of Change and Resistance
Anne Gardiner Perkins, Yale alumna, is an historian of higher education who came to research after an academic administrative career. Her first book, based on her doctoral thesis, is an accessible, important and extremely timely account of the movement to coeducation at at her alma mater. Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls…
A Little Social Infrastructure Goes a Long Way
Ever been tested for new glasses at an optometrist’s office.? With your eyes pressed against some large and complicated viewer, one is asked to read ever smaller lines of letters, usually shuttering between two settings: “Which is sharper, the first or the second?” When the prescription is right, when the optometrist is satisfied, all the…
Community Colleges & the Democratic Promise
In today’s highly polarized times, I increasingly find community in institutions of higher education. I see it in our community colleges, in particular, especially as students return to campuses. Open to all who seek an opportunity and serving all ages, community colleges offer credit courses, programs for transfer, programs for jobs, ESL, high school equivalency,…
On Coaching – With Wit & Humor
Business books are usually serious, grounded in wisdom, data, and an unshakeable faith that reading to learn will facilitate improvement. We don’t read business books for pleasure; we read them for action. As a literary form, they are inherently earnest. It’s the outlier that often defines the norm. The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More…