I appreciate you post and share your stance that it is important that when making these types of large scale decisions that we remember how teaching can inform research and vice versa. I think you mention an important link when you bring up peer evaluations. I think this should be a mandatory part of the process for every university. The depth of information that it can provide is supremely beneficial to the process of developing a strong teaching practice.

This is fascinating the way we construct arbitrary meaning around social characteristics such as gender. More importantly we treat people different based on these classifications. There should be more accommodations in academia, conference structures, travel structures, etc to support pregnant women. But, since we believe pregnant women should be stationary we don’t come up with innovations to make life more accessible for this part of the population.

I agree Jake. While these poor professors are questionably employed, for every one of them there is a professor/instructor at the other end of the spectrum. Something I keep in mind, though, is the diversity of the learning experience at the university level, and that just as much as these professors hurt some students, they teach others to independently learn; though this should be intentionally taught, not forced for lack of classroom substance.

In my experience, those that have been turn offs because they were too politically charged or just horribly incompetent to teach have had major impact on my life almost as much as the best of the best. The mediocres, though, I can’t remember….I’ll leave that right there!

What a great topic for your paper. I would love to read the whole thing sometime if you are up for sharing! Anyways – I wanted to pass along this blog post written by one of my lab team’s collaborators about what she says to women in academia who want to have children. http://hopejahrensurecanwrite.com/2013/12/10/five-things-i-say-to-career-women-who-tell-me-they-might-want-to-have-a-baby/

This is really concerning to me. In GTA workshop we were asked to keep our personal and professional life separate. Many professors deny their students request to be friend on Facebook. They are afraid of exposing their private life to students. Likewise students do not like their teachers to know what they feel and how they spent their weekend. I personally believe social media is invading our privacy and has turned into a big issue.

I know that humor tends to be a great unifying factor when it comes to relationships. Some of my favorite teachers, going all the way back to high school, were ones that could make jokes with us and lighten the mood a little. Maybe the next teaching workshop our professors should have to go to should be an improv one.

Imagine if we could make it so that part of the post doctoral process involved having to learn how to effectively teach, this way future professors could prove themselves a efficient teachers as well as researchers.

The points you made about reviewing a study that similar to your own is very interesting. I agree it being a lose-lose situation so might as well someone else reviews that paper.

I ask about teaching differently partly because, when I taught a databasing class over the summer, I tried to base their project on a database I actually built in my job. Same type of data, same type of requirements, just with a lot fewer errors in the data. I think the project I would have given them if I had never worked in industry would have been much different. I also feel like I wouldn’t be able to respond to the complaints of “Why do we have to learn this? We’ll never need this!” nearly as well. (I understand the complaints. I made them myself. Then I ended up building databases while working in a job that had nothing to do with databases, simply because I was the only one who knew how.)

Partly this post is coming from my essay, which is about the debate over the link (or lack thereof) between teaching and research. Some people argue that a good college teacher must also be an active researcher. However, many of the arguments they make could also be applied to former industry professionals in fields like engineering. I’m curious if anyone’s ever really looked into that, from an education research standpoint.

Hey Jessica-

Thanks for your comment! I’m not entirely certain what efforts would be most successful; however, I think that implementing these initiatives at a college and/or departmental level would be one way to increase awareness of these initiatives and put some focus on their principles. If this were to occur on a college and/or department level, it would also increase the likelihood that the majority of students at least know the initiative exists, and may possibly be more effective at beginning this shift than say, listserv emails.