Welcome to Fall Semester 2016! It is a new college year and full of hope.
Many of us have taken the rollover of the calendar as a chance to make changes and reaffirm commitments. Usually these decisions take the form of the New Year’s resolution or in this case, new school year resolutions. Think your annual promise that you will always follow up on emails, take better notes, or get to that research project. Continue reading
I love basketball and now I get extra basketball for the summer Olympics.
These teams will struggle to score against fierce defenses, try to maneuver for the perfect shot, and hopefully draw a foul and a chance for an “and one” scoring possibility. “And one” refers to the free throw awarded to a player who is fouled and still manages to get a shot into the basket, thus giving the player a chance for a three- or even a four-point play. Continue reading
Is there any greater struggle between instructor and student than the dreaded “group assignment”?
From the day it is assigned, students begin the process of passive-aggressive resistance and instructors have the difficult task of grading an assignment they know was basically completed by one overachiever. However, we keep giving these assignments to our students because we realize the value of working together in a collaborative environment.
Virtually everything we know about group dynamics tells us as educators that the wisdom of crowds almost always gets a better result than the lone-wolf approach. The reason is simple: When people are working together on the same project they all tend to see the same problem with a different lens – and that results in added perspective.
It was a symbol of excess and waste in 1980s New York City. The massive 2,200-acre Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, N.Y., was once the largest garbage dump in the world.
And it smelled.
What does it take to make a more ethical campus? What does it mean to have a more ethical campus? What elements must we have, what culture must we extend to have a more ethical campus? The answer may be in the work of Architect and Zoo Director Dr. David Hancocks. In his 2002 book; A Different Nature, Dr. Hancocks explores the paradox of the modern zoo. The idea that, as humans, we take animals that were meant to life and thrive in the wild and place them on display at zoos for the purpose of study and our own entertainment. We take these animals that are meant to roam free in wide geographical expanses and place them in a controlled environment. Of course this can go tragically wrong as we were made aware in early 2016 when a male gorilla was killed after a 3 year old boy fell into his enclosure. The incident sparked a spirited debate on the part of both animal and child welfare activists. However, one of the central arguments was not really pursued. That argument is what is the place of zoos in modern society? Continue reading
