A few years ago, after finding a copy of my college transcript in a box of papers, I sent notes of thanks to the undergraduate professors who made a difference. Many teachers have helped me over the years and I am increasingly aware of just how much they have mattered. It is fascinating just how…
Category: Deanspeak
Posts about the wide realm of higher education from a deanly perspective
Clarity and Chaos: Words, Ideas, and Universities
History is difficult. Comparative history is harder. And comparative policy – the study of ideas, power, history and practice across countries – is more challenging still. If I have learned one lesson from reading about comparative educational policy, it is to tread very carefully. Assumptions and comparisons are fraught with local complexity. Stefan Collini is a…
Vision and Elite Institutions
Many of the forces that make for quality in higher education are isomorphic: impactful faculty scholarship and research, bigger libraries, better prepared students, more opportunities for academic and student support. Many of them simply boil down to more institutional money. It is a challenge to be different and to be better. That question is at…
Locating the Finish Line: Completion Several Years On
Eight years ago, William Bowen, Matthew Chingos, and Michael McPherson wrote Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities. A massive longitudinal study of student completions at a host of four-year public flagship institutions and state systems, the book was immediately recognized as an important work, a milestone in the effort to improve…
Political Science Prescience
Many years ago, as an undergraduate at Rice University, I took a course on political ideology. I wasn’t a political science major and I didn’t know anything about the professor, Fred Von der Mehden, before signing up. The class fit my schedule and completed a distribution requirement. My expectations were not high. I remember getting…
Unacceptable is Unacceptable
Years ago I read a short piece about Richard Feynman, the Nobel-award winning physicist. I was intrigued. A genius who had the chops to work at the leading edge of his field and the communication skills to make science understandable to the public, he was known as brilliant, eccentric, dynamic, and the kind of thinker…
Doing Good and Giving Back
Higher education needs more friends like Robert Owen Carr. Fifty plus years ago Carr attended Lockport Township High School in rural Illinois. Thanks to a nomination from a high school counselor, Carr won $250 from a local woman’s club. The award made a big difference. Carr’s family of nine – six children, grandmother and two…