Multilitteratus Incognitus

[Warning: longer than usual post] Recently I came across an article on InsideHigherEd titled In Higher Ed, Loyalty Is a One-Way Street , and the tagline was "Loyalty of students and faculty is often demanded. Is it returned?"   The main thesis of the article is that in higher education the job you're in is the job you're in unless you apply for another job and get in, at which point you can either leave your old job or use your new offer as leverage for a better job (or better pay) at your current job.  The article is written from a faculty perspective, but it resonated with my own experiences at the university.  However, I wouldn't really call it an issue with loyalty , but rather it's an issue of organizational culture and lack of meaningful (to the individual) rewards for that loyalty.   Here are my observations as a staff member from the last (close to) 20 years at my institution, and a story from my first job on-campus. When I first started working...

The past several weeks felt a little like a marathon and a spring combined while our team was getting ready to present on our topic.  For the second assignment for EDDE 804 we explored and proposed leadership implications and educational interventions for a complex issue in society.  The subject we selected was sexual harassment and assault in the armed forces (specifically in Canada).  Paper | done.  Presentation | done (clocked in at just under 26 minutes).  Now all we have to do is moderate a forum for a couple of weeks on our topic. 3 weeks left to go! (Can we get a break yet? ;-) ) EDDE 804 Educational Interventions & Leadership Implications Presentation from Apostolos K. EDDE 804 - Assignment 2 by Apostolos Koutropoulos

It seems that Inside Higher Education is playing a game of 7 questions . I thought that it would be interesting to respond to these when I has little more brain space to write some more in-depth answer instead of "agree or disagree" which was the original prompt.  These might very well fit into my Educational Leadership course now that I think of it.  So the questions are in italics , and my responses are in regular text. 1) A higher education program where students graduate with a credential, but without substantial career development, is a failed experience. It depends! I don't necessarily see higher education as being concurrent  with career development.  Sometimes, in some programs, and certainly depending on the degree, the benefits of higher education are seen in the long term, not just in the short term after graduation (i.e. gaining a new job or obtaining a promotion).  Some programs require  apprenticeships or practica.  In such cases I ...

I've been slowly working on EDDE 804 assignments and reading (which is why I have not been as active on this blog lately).  I've been slowly working on my third assignment, the 'big one' for this class, which is a portfolio of all my learning in 804.  As part of this I am uploading my first assignment, in which I explored the concept of emergent leadership  The portfolio is coming along...slowly...but I guess I need to turn my attention to our team project first where we're looking into the issue of Harassment in the Military. More on that later (once it's all done). Until then, here is assignment one. EDDE 804 - Assignment 1 by Apostolos Koutropoulos

Yesterday, while commuting, I had written a longer post about my MOOC-coverage fatigue.  It seems as though MOOC coverage has gotten out of proportion and it's spilled over to other non educational news outlets that I frequent, where I go for non-educational news. In any case, it seems as though the Google Blogger client of my iPhone ate my post.  Maybe for the best, because I feel like I was getting to have a cranky "get off my lawn" slant to it ;-)† In any case, in thinking about re-writing that post, I was skimming some recent MOOC related news on Inside Higher Education, the Chronicle and the non academia blogs that suddenly have picked up and started reporting on MOOCs since they are the subject of venture capital news. Despite being an MBA, I don't get all excited about VC news, I am more interested about the product than figuring out right away how to make money with it. While going through a day's worth of RSS feeds, I just had this crystallize: Many ...

I must admit, I had planned on writing a post about how finding college leaders is like dating at times, you can go with the blind date and be pleasantly surprise, or date one of your friends and (hopefully) know most of the information before hand. As I was reading the Washington Post article, however, I was overcome with a severe sense of facepalm, and as I was responding to the article, it got long enough to need a blog post of its own.  I decided to interweaver some of the dating metaphors where applicable ;-) So here we go: On Hiring: The article starts by talking about how most educational leaders get their positions in academia, and the usual path tends to be through becoming a tenured faculty member, and then, at some point, becoming an administator. The article goes on...: The usual way to accomplish [getting tenure] is to develop expertise in a relatively narrow area and publish like mad in it. Bold efforts to open up entirely new fields or draw grand syn...

The other day I was reading a Forbes article, which came to me via someone I follow on twitter, and the topic was Why MBA Programs Don't Produce Leaders . As someone with an MBA I was intrigued by the topic and what the author's views were so I added it to my Read It Later account for  my commute home. Hansen (the author) argues that MBA programs were places that people went to learn hands-on knowledge but at some point in time (50 years ago as quoted by an HBR article ) business schools shifted from practice to science - measuring and learning. As a result MBA students tend to be directed toward the numbers and an analysis of a situation but not act on this info; and the criticism is that soft skills aren't offered. Now, I have to say that I am of two minds on this.  My first reaction is that Graduate schools aren't workshops. I think that the point of graduate education is to get you acquainted with a few key sets of facts, figures, laws and mechanisms that are...