21st Century Scholar

Too often we get consumed by our own situations and forget the plight of others. As I’ve written blogs over the years I have despaired at budget cuts and administrative excesses. I have pointed out the importance of clear standards for promotion and tenure and called for greater faculty voice in shared governance. I mean [...]

How do you think our administrators should travel—first class or economy? What about where they stay—a regular hotel or a five-star hotel? How about getting back and forth from the airport—taxi, shuttle, or limo? And if they’re going to San Francisco for a meeting what should the per diem be? Before we get to the [...]

About 90% of books published about higher education every year are dull, repetitive, or armchair treatises that have little of interest to say about the current state of academic affairs. –Benjamin Ginsberg. The famous sportswriter, Howard Cosell, once wrote an important book entitled I Never Played the Game. When Cosell was in his prime he [...]

The lack of academic coaching highlights how little regard the academy has for mentoring scholars. Assume you’re an assistant professor in your second year and you’re worried. You only have published one paper, another you have resubmitted, and three others have just been rejected. You also submitted a proposal for funding and they didn’t even [...]

Naomi Schaefer Riley does not like tenure. I do not like this book because it is poorly argued. What do these two sentences tell us? The first statement is factually correct; I assume that anyone who reads The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won’t Get The College Education You Pay For will come [...]

I have written about the changing nature of tenure and what gets expected of someone who is going from assistant to associate. I also have been thinking a great deal about promotion to full professor. During the summer I am asked to review a lot of dossiers for tenure-track candidates, and candidates who are up [...]

Several years ago, I set out to conduct a qualitative study of the experiences of Black gay male undergraduates (BGMUs) in college, recognizing that much of what had been written (some of which was my own work) tended to focus almost exclusively on African American college men who enjoyed the admiration and respect of their [...]

I had begun this blog a couple of weeks ago as I contemplated Gay Pride and what it means to me. Unlike many of my gay friends, I remained in the closet until about 10/11 years ago. I remember taking a deep breath and telling my children—who were all adults by that time—fearing they would [...]

Are we different from any other dual-career couple in academe? We both have PhDs. One of us (Kris) is a tenured faculty member at Michigan State. The other (Melissa) directs a multi-year NSF grant for the MSU provost’s office. We feel lucky to have two good jobs in the same good place. Does it matter [...]

It is 1986 and Barry and I have arrived at Penn State. The University does not have a nondiscrimination clause for gays and lesbians which makes discrimination against us okay. A nascent gay rights organization has formed with equal dollops of solidarity, confusion, and fear. Around 1988 we write a respectful letter to the President [...]