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Types of Academic Service for Faculty

There are two primary ways to categorize types of faculty service (Fear & Sandmann, 1995; O’Meara, Terosky, & Neumann, 2008; Ward, 2003). First, there are service activities that take place on campus at the departmental, school, or institutional level. These local activities tend to focus on operations necessary to getting things done on campus. Second, professional service activities include those with professional organizations, scholarly journals, and other activities that support the work of the discipline. In today’s post, I want to share the two types of service that are critical for higher education and playing the important role as academic citizen.

 

Types of Academic Service for Faculty

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Today I Learned reflection activity

The research on how people learn continues to show the value in helping students make meaning and learn through reflection. The process of reflection helps students take a step back to carefully consider that they learned, absorb the information, and process what it means to them. Fortunately, fostering reflection in the classroom can be relatively quick and easy. In today’s post, I share a simple, but powerful reflection activity, Today I Learned, from my book Teaching for Learning.

Photo credit: Erik Drost
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Planning dynamic and effective lectures

Lecturing is one of the most common and oldest forms of instruction. In recent years, lecturing has also become one of the more controversial teaching strategies as well. Recently, my campus hosted my friend and co-author, Todd Zakrajsek, who spoke on his book, Dynamic Lecturing:  Research-Based Strategies to Enhance Lecture Effectiveness. In today’s post, I want to share some of the highlights from the book and advice regarding planning dynamic and effective lectures. 

Planning dynamic and effective lectures

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Legal History of Higher Education Affirmative Action Before the Michigan cases

Each opening on the U.S. Supreme Court leads to everyone questioning how a change in justices might impact the legal environment for higher education. Just as after Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s departure, Anthony Kennedy’s retirement means the swing vote on many key higher education cases will be leaving the Court. While the Supreme Court’s more recent history with ruling on affirmative action in the context of the two rounds of cases involving the University of Michigan are more familiar to most people in higher education today, the longer history often is less understood. In today’s post, I will share the legal history of affirmative action in higher education admissions before the Michigan cases.

Legal History of Higher Education Affirmative Action Before the Michigan cases

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Tenure’s P.R. problem

Tenure has a P.R. problem. This is something we’ve known for a long time, but seems to be coming to a head with all of the internal and external pressures facing higher education institutions. The Chronicle of Higher Eduction has done a number of stories on tenure recently that highlight many of these concerns. Indeed, these concerns were part of what motivated me to write How to Get Tenure as I believe the current environment is as challenging as any in recent years for pre-tenure faculty. In today’s post, I want to share an article from the Chronicle that I provided some information for that I think does an excellent job highlighting these pressures.

Photo credit: Jereme Rauckman