Volume XXXVI, No. 14 | April 25, 2014 Institutional Wobble: An Avoidable Condition Many colleges use mascots to create a sense of community and identity. Typically they encapsulate real or desired attributes, such as intensity or tenacity, for their athletic teams. If you were to select a symbol that captures the essence of [...]
Volume XXXVI, No. 13 | April 18, 2014 The Importance of Student Stories I will never forget the first time I shared my community college success story. The president of the college where I had graduated from and was currently working asked me to share my success story at the college’s annual fundraising [...]
Volume XXXVI, No. 12 | April 11, 2014 Highlights of a Bestseller on Campus The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot was so intriguing that Illinois Central College faculty from various disciplines collaborated to read, write, and start a conversation from the common book concept, an extension of the community’s “Peoria [...]
Volume XXXVI, No. 11 | April 4, 2014 Composition Pedagogy and Theory: Writing as Process and Product Since the New England Association of Teachers of English convention in 1972, when Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Donald M. Murray presented his landmark essay, "Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product" (Murray 3), the product-versus-process debate [...]
Volume XXXVI, No. 10 | March 28, 2014 Mentoring Adjunct Faculty to Improve Student Success The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper. - William Butler Yeats As we move towards a cultural norm in higher education of adjuncts carrying the brunt of teaching labor, there [...]
Volume XXXVI, No. 9 | March 21, 2014 The Missing Ingredient in Student Orientation Every year, colleges and universities look for creative and more effective ways to run student orientation programs, which are fundamental to making strong connections with new students and facilitating their adjustment to college. Offices of Student Services are charged [...]
Volume XXXVI, No. 8 | March 7, 2014 A Call for a Practical Curriculum in Higher Education The various hierarchal levels in a corporate business and business mergers, countless statistical formulas for probability, and, of course, accounting, are just a few of the topics covered while working on my bachelor’s degree in [...]
Volume XXXVI, No. 7 | February 28, 2014 On Layers, Loops, and Learning Over the past decade we have made huge strides in understanding the wonders of brain development. If there are a hundred billion neurons and every neuron has the possibility of one to 10,000 synaptic connections to other neurons, the complexities, [...]
Volume XXXVI, No. 6 | February 21, 2014 PEDAGOGY BEFORE TECHNOLOGY: TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH THE DIGITAL GENERATION Tertiary education in Western society is seeing the impact of a new generation of students known as the Digital Generation. Although definitions vary somewhat by source, this generation, also known throughout literature as the Millennial [...]
Volume XXXVI, No. 5 | February 14, 2014 Promoting Critical Thinking and Active Learning by “Teaching Backwards” “Teaching Backwards” is an instructional method that explores cause-and-effect relationships by examining a series of connected events, starting with the last event first and proceeding backwards. Inspired by the movie “Memento,” this method promotes critical thinking [...]