Quick hits.
- The field of behavioral genetics is under scrutiny after the suspected gunman in Buffalo, N.Y., cited genome research as justification for carrying out his white-supremacist attack that killed 10 people. (STAT)
- Britain has announced that recent graduates from a select list of international universities will be able to apply for visas to live and work in the U.K. for up to three years, even if they don’t have job offers. To qualify for one of these High Potential Individual visas, Forbes reported, applicants must have earned a degree from one of the listed institutions in the past five years.
- Also across the pond: Engineers, architects, and conservation experts are set to begin a $95-million restoration project on Trinity College Dublin’s Old Library, which houses some of Ireland’s oldest and most valuable books. (The New York Times)
Emotional labor isn’t shared evenly among faculty members.
As students have confronted the many challenges of the past two years, they’ve leaned on their professors for support. They’ve asked for accommodations, extensions, and flexibility. They’ve sought help coping with personal issues, including strains on their mental health.
It adds up to a lot of extra work for instructors. But that work has not been distributed evenly. White, male professors performed less emotional labor — that is, managing students’ feelings and their own — in the early stretch of pandemic teaching than did their colleagues of color or women, according to a recent study based on faculty surveys from three colleges.
That uneven burden is driven by the different demands that students place on professors of different identities, according to a paper recently published in the journal Sex Roles. Instructors who are white, cisgender men, it says, have a “status shield” that protects them from students’ requests.
Men and women of color, white women, and gender-nonconforming professors did not have that protection, it found.
The extra emotional labor put in by professors who don’t have that status shield has real consequences. Research shows that students hold these instructors to different standards and judge them more harshly in course evaluations. On many campuses, those evaluations, despite their documented biases and other flaws, remain the primary form of evaluating teaching, so students’ uneven expectations can damage the careers of professors who are women, people of color, and, especially, both.
Our Beckie Supiano has more.
Quote of the day.
“This is not an innocent selection of the greatest that was ever said and thought. This is an identity project in itself.”
That’s how Bethany Moreton, a historian at Dartmouth College who has written about American conservatism and capitalism, describes the right-wing obsession with classical education and the flooding of American colleges with funding to preserve the “Western canon.” (Salon)
Comings and goings.
- Josef Sorett, a professor of religion and African American and African diaspora studies, chair of the department of religion, and director of the Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice at Columbia University, has been named dean of Columbia College and vice president for undergraduate education.
- Mirta Martin, president of Fairmont State University, in West Virginia, has been removed from her position by the Board of Governors. Diana Phillips, provost and vice president for academic affairs, has been named acting president.
- John Griffin, senior associate provost at Clemson University, has been named dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University at Camden.
- Aswani Volety, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Elon University, in North Carolina, has been named chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He will succeed Jose Sartarelli, who will retire in June.
Re-engaging students.
Reading quizzes, small groups, self-selected mini-research topics, video emails, extra reminders, flexible deadlines. Those are six approaches that you, dear readers, told us worked to motivate students this past semester. Someone mentioned “motivational syllabi,” while another said: “Positive psychology sets my teeth on edge.” One person told us nothing worked, but added a smiley :-) emoji, perhaps a small sign of hope, or at least solidarity.
Sign up here to join us next week for a subscriber-only virtual discussion on how to reach disengaged students — and what type of institutional support helps faculty members who are burnt out themselves.
Footnote.
Here’s a story for these times: Alexis Buncich, who majored in English literature with a focus on human rights and theater, made it through the entire pandemic without catching Covid, only to test positive on the day before her graduation from Columbia University. So the graduate, who hails from tiny Davidsville, Pa. (population 1,145), asked Mikella Buncich, her sister, to walk in her place. Wanting to make it special, Mikella had photo posters made of Alexis wearing her cap and gown, and mounted them so that she could hold her sister’s photo in front of her own face as she walked. She also FaceTimed the proceedings with Alexis. “I got these little cutouts printed out of Alexis’s face, and decided to just bring them as signs for graduation. I had all of her friends take pictures with them,” Mikella told WJAC in Pennsylvania.
“Even though it wasn’t what I expected at all, I was still able to make it unique to me, and still make a really memorable celebration,” Alexis told the station.
Now that’s sisterhood.
