NITLE News: CLIR and NITLE to Launch Digital Academic Publishing Program

NITLE News: CLIR and NITLE to Launch Digital Academic Publishing Program.

When I first started working at NITLE (the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education), one of the advantages of staying in the position was (and is) the tuition exchange program between liberal arts campuses throughout the nation. Sending my children to fantastic schools without the burden of tuition? That could be fantastic!

Then I had a conversation with my brother, who had just finished putting three kids of his own through college.

Tuition? That's maybe a third. "Then you got fees..." he told me. On top of that, books are..."ridiculous. I couldn't believe it."

The same is true with academic and scholarly research. To build my own website, using my own research examples, I ended up paying through the nose for the rights to my own writing. I wrote it. Then I paid for it. And I paid a lot.

Further investigation for my job revealed the thousands upon thousands of dollars that libraries pay for journals read by few, if any, faculty and staff. Forget about students reading those journals, especially undergraduate students. That's not really even a thought given to most of the very expensive journals.

Today, my employer (Southwestern University) and my actual employer (NITLE) are partnering with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to change all of that. Anvil Academic is going to offer a real alternative to the current juggernaut held on academic publishing by a very small group of publishers and groups.

This could change everything. I'm proud and grateful to be a part of such a transformation. Libraries, scholars, consumers, students, even taxpayers will see their lives change for the better over time. And it all started today.

Adrenaline...WAY better than caffeine!

Preparing for an Interconnected World: The Case for Liberal Education

[caption id="attachment_316" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Image from http://www.berkeleyromanians.org/"][/caption]

True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own.

-Nikos Kazantzakis, poet and novelist (1883-1957)

As I write this, “our country” is working to encourage more and more students to attend college. Affordability is important. So is making sure we have people to fill positions in the job markets of the future (at least the immediate future). Thus, policymakers have strong opinions about how best to get students into colleges. Mostly, this involves a community college component to keep things cheap and a more lenient transition to larger state universities.

I beg to differ with this approach. I think Nikos would agree. His character, Zorba the Greek, would have never made it through this factory model. Yet the world is crying out for Zorbas. Unfortunately, the only place developing the world’s next Zorbas are liberal arts campuses.

Case in point, consider a recent newsletter I received in my Inbox. It had three major stories at the top:

• Students in one class held a competition involving recipes. All had to be created using foods that could be bought using food stamps. The winner made a tasty Mexican dish, and the recipe caught national attention.


• Another class was focusing on students learning how to start foundations and charitable organizations. Their class brought in experienced directors from around the philanthropic world.


• A third article discussed the work of three students in theatre. Over the summer, they had created their own theatre company, a type of self-service summer stock. They produced four shows, two of which were sold-out performances. Important: they spent the summer 200 miles from campus—it was their own initiative, hard work, and creativity.

These three stories have one thing in common: they deal with the actual work of undergraduate students. They have one less tangible thing in common: they demonstrate the success of this institution in encouraging students to become successful people.

Unlike the community colleges mentioned above, this institution is a liberal arts college. The students in the first two examples were not majoring in food science or sociology; they came from all different majors. The students in the third were theatre majors, but they also were given the emotional and academic safety of daring and doing. So…they did. In all three cases, this is significantly different from a cookie-cutter philosophy. It instead focuses on learning about the bigger picture, learning about how the world actually works.

Unlike large universities, smaller schools do not have a strong cadre of graduate students to make headlines. Although liberal arts colleges have fine faculty, they often focus on teaching undergraduate students. Big research projects don’t always come from small campuses, though it’s not unheard of. However, the star researchers do not necessarily make fine teachers, and many undergraduate students find themselves being taught by the graduate students. It can become misleading, in a way. Go to this huge school for a bachelor’s degree because of its stellar reputation—fueled by professors teaching graduate students.

If we are truly working to develop more creative, thoughtful leaders for our nation, it would behoove us to structure a curriculum that puts undergraduate students in situations where they make decisions that matter. It would help if we taught students less about course requirements, deadlines, and checklists--and more about:

• different ways of knowing things


• how to synthesize ideas, and


• created environments where undergraduate students were free to try things, learn new ideas, and make mistakes.

If we are looking to higher education to develop the next great leaders for the free world, the answer lies in liberal education. Right now, the unfortunate focus is on continuing a public school model everyone seems to agree doesn't fit this purpose.

Hopefully, leaders will lead. After all, many of them have a liberal arts education. If they do, we will see more of the model that works...and less of one doomed to long-term failure by its very design.

Stop Online Piracy: Tell Congress to Kill the Stop Online Piracy Act!

(Future Violation of SOPA, from http://sopastrike.com/strike)

The Stop Online Privacy--er--Piracy Act is making its way through Congress. SOPA. Today is a good day to stop Congress from, well, being themselves again.

One of the problems with our current governing bodies is that they really want to control things, to make them right. What's worse, they think they can legislate against all objectionable activity and handle any unintended back-door consequences through amendments. Ironically, it's the same group that talks about how government is too big. This same group will point to a health care bill or the tax code and tell you how many pages long it is. Then, they will turn around and draft bills that are even longer.

You never account for all the problems. Heck, you never account for all the idiots! "We're for freedom, as long as it's the right kind of freedom." I'm still holding out hope that one of the presidential candidates goes so far as to say those words. True entertainment is so hard to find...

Democracy is a good thing, but the problem with our government is that it is run by the kind of people who have enough money to do so. Congress is not a representative sample of this country. State legislators are similar. These are not people who blog, who send interesting photos from the internet to their friends, who share a song or short video with their families. Typically, they have "people" to do that for them.

The National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) had a nationwide "impromptu discussion" on this topic as it was becoming a real threat, "Bad news for higher education: SOPA, discussed." Props to my colleagues at NITLE for seeing threats like this on the horizon. If you live in the higher education world, it's a good read from a good discussion:

Techne » Bad news for higher education: SOPA, discussed.

Wordpress is "censored" today. I thought my computer had a virus, but it seems Wordpress is helping Fight for the Future, an online advocacy group, make a point.

Point taken.

I hate online petitions, but this one is worth signing. Today. I wish this advocacy group, Fight for the Future, continued success in their efforts to alarm Americans. You can't base policy on, "Oh, I'm sure they wouldn't go that far..." It's pretty obvious from recent experience that they will. That should ring true no matter your political leanings.

Here is a screen shot of today's Wordpress front page:



I suppose posting this would be a violation of SOPA, as well. That would be ironic, but not surprising.

Congress needs to back off here, but America needs to act. I've learned that in politics, anyway, numbers matter most. This online petition has the potential to be the biggest in history. Hit this link, take 20 seconds, and tell people that you at least tried to stop this foolishness.

http://sopastrike.com/strike

Teach for America, Inc. will collect $55,000 for each Ohio teacher

Teach for America, Inc. will collect $55,000 for each Ohio teacher.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote on Friday that Teach for America will receive more than $2 million to bring their corps members to Northeast Ohio schools next fall. The funding will come from the Cleveland, George Gund, Nord and Stocker foundations, along with a contribution from the Lennon Trust,...

Thanks to Dr. Michelle Winship for this, though I wish she would be riding Harley-Davidsons instead of reading things that jack up blood pressure. I wonder how many unemployed Ohio teachers have read this piece, published four days before Christmas on the year they lost their job due to budget cuts.

Wow.

There is HUGE money to be made in education, still. You just have to pull stunts like this.  While field trips are right-out due to funding cuts, the education community always seems to have all kinds of cash for the pet projects.

Anyone want to partner with me to start a charter school/think tank/teacher certification/education enrichment one-stop service center for inner-city kids that involves them doing custodial work and lots of computer time?

My "latent period" is half over, just in time for the election season. Somebody get me Newt Gingrich on the phone (“Nowlej for Newt”) or maybe Mitt Romney (“Romney’s Real-Good Reeders”). Of course, none of this could be possible without the over $100,000,000 in campaign contributions from the National Education Association to Barack Obama’s campaigns (“Boneheads for Barack”)

Sell out. "It's for the children."

Well, "those" children, anyway...

Gingrich: Changing Child Labor Laws Would Improve Schools - Politics K-12 - Education Week

I'm all for hard work, and I expect hard work from my children. However, we do have a candidate for president--now a serious one--that has a few...unorthodox...ideas about kids. What is Newt Gingrich's idea of the biggest challenge facing public schools today? Child Labor Laws.

My man Newt Gingrich is now working to fix child labor laws to include full janitorial work by young students. If we could just get rid of the UNION janitorial jobs...

[Note that UNION needed to be included in this whole line of Gingrich logic.]

...we could then put students in poor schools to work. We would give them a chance to earn money and learn how to show up on Monday, as his quote reads.

Newt, school starts on Monday. They are working, and they are even doing some of the custodial work. I remember banging chalkboard erasers back in the day, and my other kids fight for the opportunity to hold various class duties. The jobs teachers give the kids are seen as an honor. They imply a certain level of trust from the teacher.

Newt has a tendency to be creative in a very alarming way. In a previous campaign, he lamented that we don't have any really good orphanages in this country. This election, he sees child labor protection as a problem...and a way to get those dang UNIONS out of the picture. How do we create jobs? Fire all the custodians and have children do the work. That will teach them a work ethic. Of course, in those poorest of neighborhoods, these same kids see their parents out of work. Still, they get to school. On Monday.

How is it that these "great ideas" always begin under the guise of helping poor kids?

Gingrich: Changing Child Labor Laws Would Improve Schools - Politics K-12 - Education Week.

via Gingrich: Changing Child Labor Laws Would Improve Schools - Politics K-12 - Education Week.

Survey documents retirement worries of higher ed employees | Inside Higher Ed

Fox News joins boards of trustees around the nation and academic administration organizations to celebrate increasing job satisfaction

Many academic employees plan to "never retire"

Survey documents retirement worries of higher ed employees | Inside Higher Ed.

I Guess I Love the Orlando Magic. For Now.

I've been frustrated, lately. Nothing I could write would have meaning in my mind while Penn State was still playing football. The rage in my brain. Wow...

Fortunately, a prominent coach has done a fine job of pointing out about 60% of the issues. I'll let him do the heavy lifting with a repost.

Nebraska would have gone a long way toward legitimacy by refusing to play. We know what counts in Lincoln, though. Husker is another term for enabler. They have a history.

One last thing: if you close down SMU's football program for recruiting violations, I'll expect the death of this program shortly.

Here's the link.

Next week, I'll try to forget and blog again.

I'll try.