Higher Education Observer

A friend who is leading the QEP at another college sent me a somewhat desperate email the other day about how were we doing the writing of the QEP?  Well, this is what I told her.  We didn't start writing until the whole thing was hashed out. We're still hashing a bit, but the main points are done.  We split into four subcommittees to do the sections:  Introduction/Rationale/Objectives/Student Learning OUtcomes + Lit review on best practices + Actual Plan and Budget + Assessment.  The Editor is doing the executive summary and we are all responsible for the references.  I did not want any one person to do all the writing; on top of that, we have a lot of English faculty on the team, and we are supposed to be decent writers.   I want to get the first draft to the liaison early--within a month from now.  I despise procrastination.  I wrote a big section of it (the first one) to get the rest of them inspired and started (I'm being fa...

http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-at-Stake-in-the-Georgia/127718/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en I tried to put on a copyright workshop for our faculty.  Three people showed up (I'm not exaggerating).  I strongly believe instructors need to get a grip on this matter.  I see people photocopying randomly out of books all the time.  As an author of textbooks and novels, I resent that, first of all, because it says "your work is good enough for me to use in the classroom but not good enough to credit and definitely not worth paying for."  It is an insidious form of plagiarism, and then we tell our students not to plagiarize! 

Alan Altany at Georgia Southern U. puts on a super conference, too. http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/v5n2.html

This was sent from our Board of Regents office. Court Backs Right of University to Discipline for Facebook Comments The Minnesota Court of Appeals has upheld the right of the University of Minnesota to discipline a student in a mortuary sciences program who posted jokes about a cadaver on a Facebook page, Minnesota Public Radioreported. The student argued that the First Amendment protects the posts, but the appeals court found that the university could take action if it could "reasonably conclude" that the Facebook postings would "materially and substantially disrupt the work and discipline of the school."

Update: I have been teaching summer school, two classes in a 20-day period, so it takes up most of my energy. QEP has been put aside but must be resurrected. I am concerned about fatigue. Today I am wearing a heart monitor (I do once a year) because of a past procedures; it may tell me something. Whoever said college professors live in ivory towers? That was long before my time. We are as affected by the market as anyone. I work, grocery shop, pay taxes, deal with personalities and deadlines, cut my grass, clean toilets, just like everyone else. The only difference I see is that my job is not 9-5. Sometimes it's 10-12; sometimes it's 7:00 a.m. to 10 p.m. I don't get a lunch break. And we make much less money than is thought. I may be in the minority, but at our school even some Ph.D.s make less than I do, which isn't much, and we might be furloughed. But I have the greatest job in the world, and I work at a wonderful institution. I truly mean that.