Quick hits.
- A coalition of 18 federal legislators is urging the U.S. Department of Education to expand its college-admissions data collection to include the gender, race, and ethnicity of all applicants, broken down by early decision, early action, and legacy admissions. (Higher Ed Dive)
- A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill laboratory, the Baric Lab, continues to be the target of internet conspiracy theories related to Covid-19, often accusing the lab of creating the virus. (The Daily Tar Heel)
- About 3,000 Michigan State University students sought counseling services after last month’s shooting that left three of their classmates dead. (Lansing State Journal)
- A University of Louisville medical professor has sued the university’s president, Neeli Bendapudi, and other school officials, alleging that he was demoted and will be effectively fired over comments he made about how to treat transgender children. (Courier Journal)
Professors are not always doing what they think they’re doing.
For years, education reformers hoping to improve student outcomes have urged professors to abandon the “transmission” model of teaching — where an expert imparts knowledge and students absorb it — and embrace evidence-based teaching approaches that make students active participants.
Yet many haven’t. Some professors hold an unshakeable faith in the transmission model; others are open to the idea but have decided that they don’t have time to try it — or that they might be professionally penalized for putting too much time into their teaching when research output is the coin of the realm.
Read more from our Beckie Supiano.
Teaching in the age of trauma.
Mary Gaitskill, the novelist, has been teaching creative-writing courses for a long time. And there’s always the possibility that things can go wrong. Back in the nineties, for instance, a middle-aged student in Texas insisted on writing about murdering women — over and over again, in graphic detail. It felt nasty, personal.
That’s one of the risks of the writing workshop: As an instructor you might come face to face with the lurid and disturbing fantasy-lives of your students. When is fiction just fiction, and when is it something more — a confession, a cry for help, a threat?
Those are some of the questions Gaitskill asks in her searching new essay in The Review. In recent years, she says, student mental health has become ever more fragile. In an age of increasing suicides and routine mass shootings, what’s a writing teacher to do?
Read more from our guest writer here.
Comings and goings.
- Pardis Mahdavi, provost and executive vice president of the University of Montana at Missoula, will step down at the end of the semester.
- KerryAnn O’Meara, a professor of higher education and special assistant to the provost for strategic initiatives at the University of Maryland at College Park, has been named vice president for academic affairs, provost, and dean of Teachers College, Columbia University.
- Ellen Taylor, vice chancellor for student affairs at Washington State University at Pullman, plans to retire in December.
- Aparna Dileep-Nageswaran Palmer, vice president for the Boulder County Campus and interim vice president for the Larimer County Campus of Front Range Community College, in Colorado, has been named chancellor of the University of Alaska Southeast.
To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com.
Footnote.
There’s more cat stories clawing their way into today’s Footnote.
Suzanne Shaw, vice president for marketing and communications at Missouri State University, sent us a sweet story about a cat named Mose.
“Mose lived in front of a residence hall and was being cared for by a group of students. He was named by the students after Dwight’s cousin Mose on The Office,” Shaw wrote.
“Mose was a survivalist... Since cold weather was imminent, Mose became the Marketing and Communication’s office cat in November 2019. He ultimately transitioned to the ‘home’ office at the beginning of Covid and remains there with his friend Ed Sheeran.” (Sheeran is Shaw’s other cat)
Did you adopt a campus pet during the pandemic? Reach me at marcela@chronicle.com.
