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N.C. Republicans are trying to ruin the UNC system

Seemingly not content to just ruin K-12 public education, North Carolina Republicans have set their sights on ruining the UNC system. The latest mockery surrounds the presidential search to replace ousted UNC president, Tom Ross. The UNC Board of Governors met last Friday to evaluate the candidacy of Margaret Spellings, former U.S. Secretary of Education under George W. Bush. Legislative leaders and board members complained about the search process leading to mass chaos. The search is only the latest evidence that N.C. Republicans are trying to ruin the UNC system.

Photo credit: WCNC

For many years, the University of North Carolina remained above the partisan fray. While some Republicans complained over the years about liberal leanings in Chapel Hill or the legislature being too lenient on UNC leaders, the UNC system was not used as a political piñata.

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The need for faculty self-discipline

University of California- Berkeley professor and famed astronomer Geoff Marcy has resigned. For those who haven’t been following the story, Marcy was accused by numerous former students of sexual harassment (here and here for more details). Nearly everyone has decidedly condemned his behavior. Many have been critical of the university’s response and seeming inability to discipline a member of the faculty that was sexually harassing students for many years. There is little question that Marcy’s behavior was reprehensible, but I want to discuss another aspect of the case: the need for faculty self-discipline.

After an extensive investigation of the facts of the case, the university found there to be convincing evidence against Marcy.

As a result, the university (with Marcy’s agreement) instituted a no-tolerance policy and said further actions by him would result in termination. The university administration claimed this was the best it could do under University of California faculty policies and that removing future appeal and procedural options for Marcy was a significant penalty.

No surprise, the backlash against this was swift. And in my view, justified.

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The most useful features of Evernote

After my last post about how to get rid of your filing cabinet, I got a number of questions regarding Evernote which is the software I use to manage my digital files. I rely on Dropbox for everyday files such as Word documents, but all of the digital files that I store are kept in Evernote. In today’s post, I want to share some of the most useful features of Evernote.

What is Evernote? Simply put, Evernote is an online app that saves a note (PDFs, documents, webpages, photos, or pretty much any digital files) and works across platforms (desktop and mobile; Apple, Windows, and Android). Each note can be tagged with keywords, placed into folders, and easily searched.

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How to get rid of your filing cabinet

Although our world is increasingly digital, I love paper. I read student papers and research articles in hard copy form. I keep copies of my notes and activities for class in folders by class session so they can be easily retrieved during the next semester. This means I was collecting lots and lots of paper which required ever-growing file space needs. Pretty quickly, I filled up six to eight filing cabinet drawers. Enough was enough. Today, I have one drawer of paper files. In this post, I will share how to get rid of your filing cabinet. It is easier than you think!

Photo credit: mcfarlandmo

Before beginning my mission to reduce my filing space needs, I thought about why I was keeping all the files in my filing cabinet. In almost every case, it came down to I might need this one day. Most of the files were infrequently accessed, but they would be hard to recreate again if it turns out I needed them in the future.

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We still need gun control to protect our students.

Again, we have to face another mass murder in our country. Yet again, horror has been brought upon students just trying to learn and improve their lives. After the Sandy Hook shooting, a group of college presidents wrote an open letter to our leaders pleading for change. After the shooting in Oregon last week, it is sad to realize still nothing has changed.