21st Century Scholar

I can’t tell if this is the best time to bring this up, but I am going to anyway. By the time you read this blog, USC graduation will be about a week old. This means that within the next three months or so, most graduates, except those who are continuing on to new academic [...]

One of my fondest memories of college occurred during my first semester as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, College Park. I remember walking from class one chilly November evening. As I was contemplating the class discussion of The Laramie Project, a play about the tragic death of Matthew Shepard, I exited from a [...]

A couple of weeks ago, I received Facebook messages from a few friends about the FAFSA—one of them was really disappointed because she believed that after going to a couple of financial aid workshops and starting to work on the FAFSA, that she and her family were going to have to pay a lot of [...]

It’s funny how a word can catch currency and all of a sudden you see it everywhere. The latest term of note is “moneyball.” Michael Lewis invented the idea with his book about the Oakland A’s general manager, Billy Beane. Brad Pitt recently starred as Beane in the movie of the same name. The idea [...]

Communication is a core component of David Coney’s articulation of cognitive strategies. Through argumentation, explanation, and critique, high school students might acquire and retain information necessary for college success. This idea has served as a catalyst for the first of three components of reciprocity performed in one of my research sites. As stated in my [...]

The Thrusday Pop This fall, I am teaching about 45 first-year graduate students. When I look back on the first 14 weeks of the semester, I am struck by how stressed out they are. Yes, there is the usual stuff about writing good papers, managing class participation, and making connections in a new social setting. [...]

It’s an odd experience to write a dissertation. Almost by definition if you get to the Ph.D. dissertation writing stage you must have been a decent student. Take my own experience as an example. I liked writing; I got good grades. I had written a lot of term papers. I passed my quals and the [...]

Let’s jump forward 20 years. Let’s also make a few commonsense projections: the internet/web/social media will continue to improve, and credentialing will only increase. It’s hard to argue with #1; we may disagree with the assumption of #2, but I don’t think that’s debatable either. That is, some may say that credentialing is wrong, etc., [...]

Some years ago an article in The Los Angeles Times discussed the explosive growth of yoga in southern California. I certainly have seen that growth in Silverlake; there must be a dozen yoga studios within two miles of our house. One of the points the article made was that at the time yoga instructors did [...]

This blog—the first of the academic year—now seems like an annual tradition. Over the past two years, I have started the year writing about my hopes and anticipations for the upcoming year. Today’s post is no different. Some feelings don’t change. For instance, there is nothing like the excitement of the first few weeks on [...]