Craig Smith at Free Exchange on Campus just tagged me. I'm it--yay! Uh oh--now I have to live up to Dr. Crazy's inspiring example. With two girls still on antibiotics and an office move happening tomorrow, it's going to be a little while before my CitizenSE Teaching Manifesto is ready for action. Let's see if I can finish it before my taggees do:
A White Bear [Update 1/16/08: damn!]
Rob MacDougall
Marc Bousquet
Jennifer [Update 1/25/08: sweet!]
The Hobgoblin
[Update 1/22/08: Did it! Or at least started it.]
[Update 1/30/08: My tags have no power on men! Maybe a look at the list of contributors will inspire you all!]
Monday, January 14, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
On the Road Again: Constructivist Family Poetry
The Full Metal Archivist started a neat little game that can eat up a half an hour on a car ride if it goes well: family poetry. Each person in the car contributes a line of poetry based on what they see outside until the poem is done. Here are two examples. Try to guess which lines are mine, the FMA's, and onechan's!
I-90 to Erie, 1/4/08
Bald trees
No leaves left
Grass-stubbled snow
Yellow with pee
Clouds with water
Weight my tears
Twinkle twinkle little star
I am the yellow one
18-wheeled dinosaurs
And 4-wheeled rabbits
Pass the sign
Of Westfield-Mayville
A V-shaped patch of blue sky
And Phantom Fireworks
Overlook empty vineyards
And old Christmas lights
I-90 to Buffalo, 1/12/08
Zombie grass lurks
The cars are golden
Two red eyes
In the Lion's Den
Skeleton towers
The trees are red
Imoto is crying
I-90 to Erie, 1/4/08
Bald trees
No leaves left
Grass-stubbled snow
Yellow with pee
Clouds with water
Weight my tears
Twinkle twinkle little star
I am the yellow one
18-wheeled dinosaurs
And 4-wheeled rabbits
Pass the sign
Of Westfield-Mayville
A V-shaped patch of blue sky
And Phantom Fireworks
Overlook empty vineyards
And old Christmas lights
I-90 to Buffalo, 1/12/08
Zombie grass lurks
The cars are golden
Two red eyes
In the Lion's Den
Skeleton towers
The trees are red
Imoto is crying
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Hawthorne Society CFP and Announcements
Got this over the transom from Leland Person and thought I'd do my part to spread the word.
***
1) The 2008 Hawthorne Society summer meeting at Bowdoin College is scheduled for June 12-15, 2008.
2) We have extended the deadline for submitting paper and other proposals for the Bowdoin conference until January 30th. Here’s the “Call”:
Nathaniel Hawthorne: Starting Over
The Hawthorne Conference organizers offer this wide-ranging rubric to include such topics as: Hawthorne's new start at Bowdoin, his beginnings as a tale writer; his "new" career as a novelist; his new (and constantly renewed) reputation; his interest in the beginnings of things (biblical, historical, personal); his new friends; his sense of the "new" vs. the "old" world; his definition of the "new" woman--and new man ("New Adam and Eve"); Hawthorne and the New Romanticism; Hawthorne and the New Classroom; Hawthorne and the (new) State of Maine; Hawthorne and the (new) structure of allegory; and Hawthorne in the new (21st) Century.
Please send paper topics by January 30, 2008,to Sam Coale, 39 Pratt Street, Providence, RI 02906 or samcoale@cox.net
3) We announce topics for ALA 2008 and MLA 2008:
ALA
Teaching Hawthorne
Hawthorne and the Performing Arts
MLA
Hawthorne as Story-Teller
Hawthorne and Emerson
***
Pass it on!
***
1) The 2008 Hawthorne Society summer meeting at Bowdoin College is scheduled for June 12-15, 2008.
2) We have extended the deadline for submitting paper and other proposals for the Bowdoin conference until January 30th. Here’s the “Call”:
Nathaniel Hawthorne: Starting Over
The Hawthorne Conference organizers offer this wide-ranging rubric to include such topics as: Hawthorne's new start at Bowdoin, his beginnings as a tale writer; his "new" career as a novelist; his new (and constantly renewed) reputation; his interest in the beginnings of things (biblical, historical, personal); his new friends; his sense of the "new" vs. the "old" world; his definition of the "new" woman--and new man ("New Adam and Eve"); Hawthorne and the New Romanticism; Hawthorne and the New Classroom; Hawthorne and the (new) State of Maine; Hawthorne and the (new) structure of allegory; and Hawthorne in the new (21st) Century.
Please send paper topics by January 30, 2008,to Sam Coale, 39 Pratt Street, Providence, RI 02906 or samcoale@cox.net
3) We announce topics for ALA 2008 and MLA 2008:
ALA
Teaching Hawthorne
Hawthorne and the Performing Arts
MLA
Hawthorne as Story-Teller
Hawthorne and Emerson
***
Pass it on!
Monday, January 07, 2008
On Funding Public Higher Education, Part II: Harvard's Endowment
A belated Happy New Year to Blogoramaville! Time for Part II in this CitizenSE series.
Check out this Dec. 31st op-ed by Steven Roy Goodman in The Boston Globe on Harvard's endowment. Taken together with Herbert Allen's Dec. 21st op-ed in The New York Times, which also makes Harvard the poster child for endowment disparities in the U.S., Goodman's piece helps turn up the heat on the wealthiest colleges and universities in the country. In it, he asks why universities are exempt from the federal law that non-profit organizations must spend 5% of their endowments each year or lose their tax-exempt status. And he raises other tough questions:
Although Goodman and Allen disagree on how much Harvard's endowment grew in the past year (by $5.7B or $7B?!), they agree that there's a problem when so much capital is tied up in so few institutions of higher learning--a perspective obviously not shared by the Harvard, Princeton, and Yale administrations, as reported by their universities' student newspapers back in October '07. Yet even people at relatively well-off institutions--like Bard College President Leon Botstein--think the problem is real.
Is there a problem when the 62 colleges and universities in the Billion Dollar Endowment Club (according to NACUBO's most recent study; figures for 2007 should be out in a couple of weeks) are on average a thousand times greater than the endowment at my home university, which recently rose to $17.41M? It's a question I'll come back to in a couple of weeks, so let's say for the sake of argument that there is. How should it be solved?
Allen and Goodman help steer discussion of solutions away from reducing tuition and increasing financial aid at those institutions in the Billion Dollar Endowment Club and toward the funding of higher education more generally. Allen's proposed revenue-sharing solution--to tax the capital gains of institutions with endowments greater than $500K/student and distribute the proceeds pro rata to the institutions with the lowest per-student endowments--is more carefully thought-out than Goodman's rather vague closing line: "it might be time for our elected officials to rein in financial benefits for those institutions that can't manage to spend 5 percent of their tax-exempt wealth." I have a few ideas that Harvard and other private institutions in the BDEC could do with their endowments right now that don't require any Congressional action.
1) Support your graduate students better--at least give them a real apprenticeship experience if you won't recognize their unions.
2) Hire more full-time, tenure-track faculty members, not enough just to do most of the teaching the graduate students are now doing, but enough to reduce class sizes significantly.
3) Put aside 1% of your capital gains each year to be gifted to the endowments of universities your institution thinks deserve the funding. That's right: invest in U.S. higher education.
So what do you think, Blogoramaville? Any other suggestions?
[Update 1/8/08: College affordability is, of course, an important issue, but the point of my #3 is that targeted investments by the BDEC in capital-starved U.S. higher ed institutions can have an immediate effect on the quality and cost of education for more students, rather than simply a symbolic or trend-setting one.]
Check out this Dec. 31st op-ed by Steven Roy Goodman in The Boston Globe on Harvard's endowment. Taken together with Herbert Allen's Dec. 21st op-ed in The New York Times, which also makes Harvard the poster child for endowment disparities in the U.S., Goodman's piece helps turn up the heat on the wealthiest colleges and universities in the country. In it, he asks why universities are exempt from the federal law that non-profit organizations must spend 5% of their endowments each year or lose their tax-exempt status. And he raises other tough questions:
Why does an institution of higher learning have $35 billion in its back pocket anyway? Why has it become customary for universities to spend only a small fraction of their interest income--and not even the endowment funds themselves--for daily operations? Why do American taxpayers continue to subsidize schools that increasingly operate like for-profit companies--and less like tax-exempt educational foundations that are charged with educating the next generation?
Although Goodman and Allen disagree on how much Harvard's endowment grew in the past year (by $5.7B or $7B?!), they agree that there's a problem when so much capital is tied up in so few institutions of higher learning--a perspective obviously not shared by the Harvard, Princeton, and Yale administrations, as reported by their universities' student newspapers back in October '07. Yet even people at relatively well-off institutions--like Bard College President Leon Botstein--think the problem is real.
Is there a problem when the 62 colleges and universities in the Billion Dollar Endowment Club (according to NACUBO's most recent study; figures for 2007 should be out in a couple of weeks) are on average a thousand times greater than the endowment at my home university, which recently rose to $17.41M? It's a question I'll come back to in a couple of weeks, so let's say for the sake of argument that there is. How should it be solved?
Allen and Goodman help steer discussion of solutions away from reducing tuition and increasing financial aid at those institutions in the Billion Dollar Endowment Club and toward the funding of higher education more generally. Allen's proposed revenue-sharing solution--to tax the capital gains of institutions with endowments greater than $500K/student and distribute the proceeds pro rata to the institutions with the lowest per-student endowments--is more carefully thought-out than Goodman's rather vague closing line: "it might be time for our elected officials to rein in financial benefits for those institutions that can't manage to spend 5 percent of their tax-exempt wealth." I have a few ideas that Harvard and other private institutions in the BDEC could do with their endowments right now that don't require any Congressional action.
1) Support your graduate students better--at least give them a real apprenticeship experience if you won't recognize their unions.
2) Hire more full-time, tenure-track faculty members, not enough just to do most of the teaching the graduate students are now doing, but enough to reduce class sizes significantly.
3) Put aside 1% of your capital gains each year to be gifted to the endowments of universities your institution thinks deserve the funding. That's right: invest in U.S. higher education.
So what do you think, Blogoramaville? Any other suggestions?
[Update 1/8/08: College affordability is, of course, an important issue, but the point of my #3 is that targeted investments by the BDEC in capital-starved U.S. higher ed institutions can have an immediate effect on the quality and cost of education for more students, rather than simply a symbolic or trend-setting one.]
Monday, December 31, 2007
Onechan Plays with Time (Imoto: "Me, Too!")
Sometime over the past two weeks, onechan and her 3-to-4-year-old friends have begun playing with time--or perhaps they have been for awhile, and I've only just noticed it. What I mean is, they'll put time in their role-playing games in fast forward, so they can extend their game over many play "days," with many nap times, sleep times, and going to school times in a single play session. So let's say we're playing PowerPuff Girls, and I'm the Professor, Imoto's Buttercup, Onechan's Bubbles, and one of their friends is Blossom, and it's night time, so we all have to go to sleep on the toy box, the little table, and the piano stool, but then her friend announces it's morning--time to go to school--and soon later, onechan chimes in that it's nap time, and pretty soon it's time to go to sleep again. The idea that they don't have to play in real time is an exciting one to them.
Imoto plays right along. When it's time to lie down, she lies down; when it's time to get up, she gets up. She seems to be entering a new phase in her relation with onechan, where she's much more aware of what her sister is doing and wants to do it herself. This extends, as well, to what onechan has. So if onechan gets seconds at dinner, imoto wants more food, too, even if she hasn't finished what's on her plate. And of course she wants whatever onechan is drinking. She's very observant: just the other day, onechan was having a big stuffed animal hang onto the handle of her toy stroller so that it was "helping" her push it, so within 10 minutes (after onechan had gone on to another toy/activity), there was imoto, doing the same thing with a smaller stuffed animal.
The changes should be coming fast and furious in 2008; it's been fun documenting some of them here and at Mostly Harmless over the past year.
Imoto plays right along. When it's time to lie down, she lies down; when it's time to get up, she gets up. She seems to be entering a new phase in her relation with onechan, where she's much more aware of what her sister is doing and wants to do it herself. This extends, as well, to what onechan has. So if onechan gets seconds at dinner, imoto wants more food, too, even if she hasn't finished what's on her plate. And of course she wants whatever onechan is drinking. She's very observant: just the other day, onechan was having a big stuffed animal hang onto the handle of her toy stroller so that it was "helping" her push it, so within 10 minutes (after onechan had gone on to another toy/activity), there was imoto, doing the same thing with a smaller stuffed animal.
The changes should be coming fast and furious in 2008; it's been fun documenting some of them here and at Mostly Harmless over the past year.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
On Funding Public Higher Education, Part I: Webquest
It's no secret that I work at a public regional university in New York state, so I've seen up close and personal what the chronic underfunding of SUNY means to students, faculty, and western NY. Over the course of 2008, I plan to do an ongoing series on funding public higher education, a particularly relevant topic now that Governor Eliot Spitzer's NY State Commission on Higher Education has released its preliminary report. This post sets the scene for my series, webquest style.
For representative arguments that public higher education should be free, check out Marc Bousquet (How the University Works) and Adolph Reed and Preston Smith (Labor Party). For a representative faculty union campaign, check out the American Federation of Teachers' Faculty and College Excellence campaign. For an attempt to get a discussion of endowment disparities started, see Bill Benzon (The Valve). For my spring 2006 debate with a privatization advocate, go to Objectivist v. Constructivist v. Theist. For further background and resources, check out Workplace, the Workplace blog, and The Rouge Forum.
For initial reactions to the NYSCHE's preliminary report, check out the statement by the Professional Staff Caucus (CUNY), the press release from United University Professions (SUNY), Craig Smith and Barbara McKenna at FACE Talk, CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, and Stanley Fish in The New York Times.
More coming!
[Update 1/10/08: Here's the relevant summary of Gov. Spitzer's State of the State address.]
For representative arguments that public higher education should be free, check out Marc Bousquet (How the University Works) and Adolph Reed and Preston Smith (Labor Party). For a representative faculty union campaign, check out the American Federation of Teachers' Faculty and College Excellence campaign. For an attempt to get a discussion of endowment disparities started, see Bill Benzon (The Valve). For my spring 2006 debate with a privatization advocate, go to Objectivist v. Constructivist v. Theist. For further background and resources, check out Workplace, the Workplace blog, and The Rouge Forum.
For initial reactions to the NYSCHE's preliminary report, check out the statement by the Professional Staff Caucus (CUNY), the press release from United University Professions (SUNY), Craig Smith and Barbara McKenna at FACE Talk, CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, and Stanley Fish in The New York Times.
More coming!
[Update 1/10/08: Here's the relevant summary of Gov. Spitzer's State of the State address.]
Thursday, December 27, 2007
On Toddler Performance Art
I'm in the home stress stretch of my first fall back from Japan--less than 24 hours to turn in my grades! And I do mean home--I've done the vast majority of my grading from home this week, mostly by choice but also thanks to bad weather, illness, and a low-level migraine that hit the Full Metal Archivist yesterday. So in between papers I've gotten the chance to witness a wide range of performance art from onechan (who just turned 4) and imoto (who's 20 months old today). Here are some highlights:
Onechan: Branching out into drama, particularly stage direction and set design. At her girls' birthday party this past Sunday (7 girls under 5, 2 dads, and 1 mom for almost 3 hours!) and at the impromptu Christmas get-together at a friend's place, she enjoyed assigning roles to her friends, from the fantastic ("I'll be the princess, you be the prince, you be the good witch, and you be the bad witch!") to the everyday ("I'll be the mom, you be the dad, and you be the baby!"), and then setting up various kinds of improvs (from fighting a dragon to having a baby to being sick and having to stay home from work or school or see a doctor). At home with imoto, she's enjoyed rearranging the desks, chairs, and toy boxes in the play room to form little rooms, houses, or tents in one or another area of it. She's also enjoyed naming the various baby dolls strewn about the house after the various characters in our fictional pantheon and play-acting her favorite scenarios.
Imoto: Pushing the boundaries of bodily fluid expulsion. Moved from snot to diarrhea to vomit this week. Specializes in coughing so violently in the middle of the night she almost spits up the breast milk she's just extorted from the Full Metal Archivist. For the first time in her long and changing illness(es), she's running a fever, so adding sweat to her repertoire.
Onechan: Continues to explore musical performance. She treated us to a concert after dinner yesterday, complete with stage (one of her little chairs on top of her wood toy box), a playlist (her new Dora checkers board), original songs (one in her version of Spanish, even!) and old classics (the alphabet song, among them, which features "ello mello pee" and "double you, ess, why, and zee"!), and of course instrumentals. We're not just talking the mean air guitar she already plays, but violin (consisting of a little coat hanger from one of the presents her grandmother got her and a plastic golf club) and flute (consisting of the same plastic golf club with the head unscrewed), as well.
Imoto: Also into music. Likes to cradle one of her musical dolls and sway to the beat (kind of) or jump around to Buzz Buzz or The PowerPuff Girls CD with her big sister. Often tries to sing along with onechan, say on the Japanese version of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," but due to her limited vocabulary mostly just substitutes her sister's name in the opening "Kila, kila, hikaru" line.
Onechan: Beginning to tell stories, some from real life (a little anecdote from her hoikuen that something that's just happened reminds her of), some from her drawings (telling me what's happening), and some from our pantheon of imaginary characters. I'm having fun at bed time asking her what happens next in the stories I'm making up for her, or having her edit them when I go off track ("no, no, daddy, tell it this way!"), but I can't yet get her to tell me a bedtime story.
Imoto: Into cosplay, particularly when it comes to footwear and, less often, hats. Still mostly other people's shoes and slippers but lately has enjoyed slipping her feet into the fuzzy boots her grandma just got her and stomping around the house on the hardwood floors. That, and slamming upstairs doors. And running away, giggling, when it's time to change her diaper or throw her in the tub. And rolling around on the big bed after her bath to avoid getting her pajamas on. And kicking me with both feet when I've finally pinned her. And laughing uproariously when I pretend the kicks have knocked me backwards or off the bed--just like her sister did when I played that game with her a few years ago!
Yup, we've been lucky that the girls have mostly kept their energy and good spirits, despite being sick most of the past month. Now it's time to make that final grading push!
Onechan: Branching out into drama, particularly stage direction and set design. At her girls' birthday party this past Sunday (7 girls under 5, 2 dads, and 1 mom for almost 3 hours!) and at the impromptu Christmas get-together at a friend's place, she enjoyed assigning roles to her friends, from the fantastic ("I'll be the princess, you be the prince, you be the good witch, and you be the bad witch!") to the everyday ("I'll be the mom, you be the dad, and you be the baby!"), and then setting up various kinds of improvs (from fighting a dragon to having a baby to being sick and having to stay home from work or school or see a doctor). At home with imoto, she's enjoyed rearranging the desks, chairs, and toy boxes in the play room to form little rooms, houses, or tents in one or another area of it. She's also enjoyed naming the various baby dolls strewn about the house after the various characters in our fictional pantheon and play-acting her favorite scenarios.
Imoto: Pushing the boundaries of bodily fluid expulsion. Moved from snot to diarrhea to vomit this week. Specializes in coughing so violently in the middle of the night she almost spits up the breast milk she's just extorted from the Full Metal Archivist. For the first time in her long and changing illness(es), she's running a fever, so adding sweat to her repertoire.
Onechan: Continues to explore musical performance. She treated us to a concert after dinner yesterday, complete with stage (one of her little chairs on top of her wood toy box), a playlist (her new Dora checkers board), original songs (one in her version of Spanish, even!) and old classics (the alphabet song, among them, which features "ello mello pee" and "double you, ess, why, and zee"!), and of course instrumentals. We're not just talking the mean air guitar she already plays, but violin (consisting of a little coat hanger from one of the presents her grandmother got her and a plastic golf club) and flute (consisting of the same plastic golf club with the head unscrewed), as well.
Imoto: Also into music. Likes to cradle one of her musical dolls and sway to the beat (kind of) or jump around to Buzz Buzz or The PowerPuff Girls CD with her big sister. Often tries to sing along with onechan, say on the Japanese version of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," but due to her limited vocabulary mostly just substitutes her sister's name in the opening "Kila, kila, hikaru" line.
Onechan: Beginning to tell stories, some from real life (a little anecdote from her hoikuen that something that's just happened reminds her of), some from her drawings (telling me what's happening), and some from our pantheon of imaginary characters. I'm having fun at bed time asking her what happens next in the stories I'm making up for her, or having her edit them when I go off track ("no, no, daddy, tell it this way!"), but I can't yet get her to tell me a bedtime story.
Imoto: Into cosplay, particularly when it comes to footwear and, less often, hats. Still mostly other people's shoes and slippers but lately has enjoyed slipping her feet into the fuzzy boots her grandma just got her and stomping around the house on the hardwood floors. That, and slamming upstairs doors. And running away, giggling, when it's time to change her diaper or throw her in the tub. And rolling around on the big bed after her bath to avoid getting her pajamas on. And kicking me with both feet when I've finally pinned her. And laughing uproariously when I pretend the kicks have knocked me backwards or off the bed--just like her sister did when I played that game with her a few years ago!
Yup, we've been lucky that the girls have mostly kept their energy and good spirits, despite being sick most of the past month. Now it's time to make that final grading push!
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