I reckon it’s a good idea to blog your research. It’s a way to tell people what you’re doing and how things are going. You can drum up a bit of interest in your project. Maybe you’ll get some useful feedback, get pointers to literature and arguments you’re not yet onto. Perhaps you’ll find some […] … learn more→

Many of our institutions are paying consultants very large sums to improve their “branding.” My own institution, Wright State University, has budgeted $2.3 million for this purpose. And I believe that that funding has been designated simply for a “branding” plan and not for conducting a actual “branding” campaign. So who knows what the price […] … learn more→

Last year, as the summer heat broke, a congregation of climate scientists and communicators gathered at the headquarters of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a granite edifice erected in the heart of Washington, to wail over their collective futility. Year by year, the evidence for human-caused global warming has grown more robust. […] … learn more→

In the old school, a professor graded a student’s paper or essay test in what I call paper-space. That is, the student wrote and printed out an embodied object containing his work, complete (the professor hoped) with page numbers, staple, and a title page on which the student should have, at minimum, spelled the professor’s […] … learn more→

I very often hear in the news how tenure, the supposed “guaranteed job” is such a bad thing in higher education. Tenure supposedly granted protection against loss of job, which the tenured faculty can only lose through a due process, outlined in written policy. Tenured professors can be tough to fire, but they can be […] … learn more→

Academia doesn’t always do a good job of communicating its findings to the outside world. Far too often, interesting and important results never get farther than the pages of a scholarly journal, in all likelihood only noticed (let alone read and understood) by a few other academics. This is a shame, because many of us […] … learn more→