The assistant professor was shocked. For six years on the tenure track, all the assessments of his work had been positive--or at least not negative. His annual evaluations rated him consistently good or better on teaching, service, and research. The sparse written comments from his chair were in the vein of "you are doing what you need to do." The…

High on any Top 10 list of the most frequent advice offered to young faculty members is this: No good deed goes unpunished. The aphorism at first seems cynical, pessimistic, dysfunctional. Doing good, as members of a higher-education community, is their job. What if everyone just looked out for No. 1? The entire promotion-and-tenure system--which…

The author's experiences and those of the students he encounters at elite campuses no longer resemble the common experience of many college students today. What people used to call "nontraditional" students--older, working, married, and maybe still living at home--now constitute a large and growing percentage of those attending college in the…

For years college administrators have warned students to watch their step in online social realms, noting that sharing too much could hurt them later on if future employees saw their drunken party pictures or boorish writings. Now that professors and administrators are catching Facebook fever, they should heed their own advice. The author…

When it comes to hard data about what they do, policy makers and educators in the humanities have been mostly left out in the cold, forced to rely on isolated statistics that do not give an overview of the field. That changed this month, as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences unveiled the prototype of its long-awaited Humanities Indicators…

This article reports on Blackboard, a course-management system used by the University of Maryland-Baltimore County to rate and track the "most active instructors" using the university's course-management system. Just about every college has such a system these days, designed to track assignments and manage online class discussions, but the…

In this article, the author shares some of the tricky discussions he has presented to his students in his "Argument and Persuasion" course, a second-level writing class designed to develop students' skills in reasoning, conducting research, and writing essays. He relates how this course always makes it difficult for him to be neutral when…

Many professors do not give much thought to what students take away from their syllabi. Researchers who have formally pondered the question suggest a number of areas for instructors to consider when drafting a document which is described as a contract drafted with "less attention paid to the language" than any other. In a comparison of syllabi…

When video recordings of Ravi Janardan's computer-science course at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities first went online, the students loved it. Instead of dragging themselves out of bed for the 8 a.m. lectures, many started skipping classes and watching the recordings instead. Recording lectures is becoming more and more common, and many…

Teachers may resist the notion of teaching as a performance but his or her voice, gestures, and movement in the classroom can help or harm student attentiveness. Strong skills in voice and movement can help illuminate a teacher's questions and ideas for students, drawing attention to what matters, holding their attention through a long class, and…

For the majority of community-college professors, teaching is the most important part of their jobs, and it is not easy. Community-college students are a diverse bunch, but often face a particular set of challenges. Many entering students are not prepared for college-level work. While some students plan to transfer to competitive four-year…

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This January 14, 2005 issue of "Chronicle for Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "Utopia College: A Distinctive Alternative" (Nemko, Marty); (2) "An Inspired Collection Honors a…

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This January 7, 2005 issue of "Chronicle of Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "College Presidents Must Take Charge of College Sports" (Cowen, Scott S.); (2) "Colleges Need to Give…

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This January 21, 2005 issue of "Chronicle of Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "The Perils of Pursuing Prestige" (Lovett, Clara M.); (2) "A 'Civilizing' Mission in Late Colonial…

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This February 11, 2005 issue of "Chronicle of Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "A Giant Eye on the Stars" (Lloyd, Marion); (2) "Taiwanese Ministry Disavows Effort to Purge 'China'…