Posted on

Faculty are the core of the university

Faculty are lazy. Faculty are self-centered. They only care about their projects and only want to work with students if it benefits them. Why is tenure needed? No other profession gets that kind of job security. For over a generation, these criticisms of faculty could be heard from trustee meetings to the state house. Let’s be honest: faculty are easy targets. But I worry that with all of these attacks on faculty that we’ve forgotten a fundamental truth: Faculty are the core of the university.

Photo credit: Michael Bentley

Universities have different missions, but each is typically a variation on the phrase: teaching, research, and service.

What group does the work of all three areas?  Not students. Not administrators. The faculty.

Posted on

How to get your writing groove back

What makes you a writer? It isn’t some special skill or ability, but rather simply being someone who writes. I think students and even early career faculty often look at senior scholars assuming they have some experience or ability that makes them better writers. While experience and practice helps with writing, the biggest help is simply writing. Yet, even the best writers lose their way. In today’s post, I want to share a few tips about how to get your writing groove back.

I recently completed two major writing projects. Even after working on them for months, I had to do a lot of extra work (binge writing) to get them completed on time. Binge writing is terrible for many reasons, but the greatest issue may be how burned out it makes us.

After those projects were finished, I was completely burned out on writing.

Simply put, I’d lost my writing groove.  

Posted on

What are academic versus administrative decisions?

The gap between faculty and administration continues to grow. The fight over tenure and academic freedom in Wisconsin has only continued to demonstrate the challenges in thinking about the role of faculty and shared governance in higher education. I have been thinking about the divide between academic and administrative lately. In today’s post, I want to argue why I think we need to acknowledge that the divide between administrative and academic is far more gray than many people admit.

Photo credit: Patrick Feller

Before discussing the proper role of faculty and administrators in institutional decision-making, we have to accept one of the problems facing university administrators. Too often, administrative leaders have been asked to make short term decisions in an attempt to respond to the funding crisis of the moment or some other external demand.

Posted on

How to respond to a revise and resubmit from an academic journal

When submitting your writing for publication, the best you can often hope for is to receive a revise and resubmit request from the editor. This means the reviewers and editor found value in your manuscript, but want to see revisions. After the revisions, the journal is willing to have you resubmit the manuscript for a second review. While there is no guarantee that the journal will accept the article after revisions, your odds are certainly better than if they rejected you! In today’s post, I will share a few tips and suggestions for how to respond to a revise and resubmit from an academic journal.

I recently went through several rounds of revisions on a manuscript that I am publishing. I received literally hundreds of comments and suggestions for changes. One round of revisions had 277 items to address!!

Posted on

3 reasons why higher education needs optimist leaders

Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have little in common politically. Moreover, they think about how to make decisions differently. I was fortunate to attend an event recently where both men talked about leadership (full video is at the end of this post). While they offered great specific advice, one point constantly struck me:  they are both optimists. Much of the higher education world is filled with doom and gloom from reduced funding, waning public support, and criticism about costs and outcomes. Given all the challenges facing higher education, I want to share 3 reasons why higher education needs optimist leaders.

Photo credit: Reuters

Presidents Clinton and Bush faced numerous crises during their administrations. The address problems using a different ideology, management style, and decision-making philosophy.