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Today in my Social Movements class Kevin Simowtiz of Virginia Organizing shared his experiences as a student organizer of the Living Wage Campaign. He also facilitated a useful discussion with the class on the obstacles and resources for student led movements. Here are the highlights of their conversation: What are the obstacles to student* involvement…
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Today’s Congressional hearing on for-profit educational institutions is raising questions of finance, accountability, and technology. The most unethical for-profits, who Sen. Franken has dubbed “bad actors,” show us the worst-case scenario of our times. The bad actors have capitalized on trends of joblessness, educational expansion, on-line learning, and easy access to student loans. A lack…
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This is a re-post from a blog I keep with my mom about family genealogy called social genealogy. It’s a historical look at the problem of education in a changing economy. — Willis Blaisdell was my great-grandfather. Before he passed when I was 5, he left me a number of neat and thoughtful tokens of…
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This week at Prof Hacker, Billie Hara suggests that service learning is not just for students. Service can also enrich the life of faculty. Specifically, service can help faculty break out of the ivory tower, teach us new things about “industry, community, populations, or activism,” and help us create work-life balance. In addition, I would…
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This is the question asked by Andrew Cedermark, songwriter and recording artist/rock journalist, in the current issue of C-Ville Weekly. The reasons are social, cultural, and historical – stretching back to constraints on women’s ability to be “alone” in public spaces, to ongoing girlhood socialization as quiet and non-aggressive. The article covers the experiences of…
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The University of Virginia has developed a growing community of scholars involved in academic community engagement, which is elsewhere sometimes known as community based research or service learning. At an end of the semester reflective luncheon this afternoon, over twenty faculty gathered to discuss their previous experiences and their plans for the upcoming year. The…
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I had this idea that I wanted to do something to organize adjuncts, but I didn’t know what else or who else was out there. Today I stumbled through a web of blogs that have given careful consideration to issues ranging from gender inequality, to the class war between part time and full time faculty,…
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Higheredjobs.com recently posted an interview with Cathee Johnson Phillips of the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) about the current state of post-doctoral researchers. Postdoctoral positions have been increasing since the 1970s (though Phillips predicts a dip in 2011 due to the recession) and post-docs have struggled to gain recognition as a class of workers. Post-doc positions…
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A colleague of mine commented today on facebook that it is better to give than receive, and this is particularly true during exams. But I often find myself nervous to see how my students perform. Did my intentions for their learning get realized? This semester I taught a new course on Community Arts that had…
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A colleague of mine commented today on facebook that it is better to give than receive, and this is particularly true during exams. But I often find myself nervous to see how my students perform. Did my intentions for their learning get realized? This semester I taught a new course on Community Arts that had…
jacob alden sargent 