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Thursday is TechDay: IGNITE Update
Today’s post offers follow-up commentary on the IGNITE format I introduced in a previous post. To quote myself: IGNITE is… a [new] format for good ol’ fashioned PowerPoint. Nothing fancy, just some new rules. The parameters are simple: (a) presenters are limited to 20 slides, and (b) the time allotted to each slide is 15 seconds, no [...]
On Rejection
By Bill Tierney
Kurt Vonnegut once said to a group of eager writing students, “Probably all of you are good enough to make it as writers. But it’s likely that only one of you has what it takes to endure the constant rejection.” I’m not sure I would reduce academic life to such a straightforward statement, but he’s [...]
Some of My Top Moments from AERA 2013 (Part I)
What can I honestly say about AERA 2013? This was a serious inquiry as I looked to my notepad from sessions and realized that for the first time I had relatively few notes on paper from a conference. As I scrolled through my tweets I realized I highly enjoyed the conference through Twitter while still [...]
Avalanches, Tsunamis, Earthquakes, and Other Disasters About to Happen
By Bill Tierney
How the higher ed world changes in such a short time. K–12 education has been in “crisis” much of my adult life, but usually higher education has been spared the Hollywood-like metaphors. “A nation at risk” paralleled other 20th century reports that forecast calamity because particular goals had not been reached in K–12 education. The [...]
Have Ph.D. … Will Travel—Part II
Because newly-minted Ph.D. graduates far outweigh the number of tenure-track positions [read about the sobering statistics here], many will have to travel if they want a job in academia. From my own experiences with friends and colleagues, graduate students deal with the possibility in different ways. Some have families and friends and roots. Travel is [...]
The Thursday Pop: From the Mailbag
So here is a real e-mail that I received last week, I thought my response to it might be worth posting, so here it is. I’ve changed the name of the sender for privacy. Dr. Venegas: I am an English and AVID teacher at TW High School. I recently read your profile on the USC school [...]
Whistling Vivaldi
By Bill Tierney
We all know that stereotypes exist. Some are funny—white men can’t jump. Others remain from a distant past—all professors wear bow ties, tweed jackets, and smoke pipes. And others are pernicious—African American students don’t do well on standardized tests. Stereotypes also tend to speak as much about the group not mentioned as the group mentioned. [...]
Reflections on Racial Profiling at USC
As I approached this May 7 blog post I was all set to write about AERA 2013, a phenomenal career-changing experience. I left San Francisco feeling refreshed in my purpose as an emerging scholar in the field of postsecondary education. But shortly after I returned home I was reminded by another unfortunate incident of my [...]
AERA Poverty Videos
By Bill Tierney
These are the two videos (click here and here) that preceded the AERA lecture. Many of you have asked for them. Leo Diaz made them. I’ll be thinking and writing about this past year after I catch my breath. Adieu.
What’s Race Got to Do with It?
As faculty members and co-directors of the Center for Urban Education (CUE) at the University of Southern California, we lead action research using CUE’s Equity Scorecard. The mission of our center is to create the “tools” needed for colleges and universities to bring about racial/ethnic equity in students’ collegiate experiences and outcomes. In the action [...]
