I sat listening to Dr. Cornel West’s MLK Celebration Lecture two weeks ago hearing echoes of the still-in-progress legacy of President Francine McNairy. West’s talk might well have been the keynote for the existence of CCERP. Just a look at that Thursday evening’s audience confirmed that the MU family and the Lancaster region had come together in a moment of community engagement.
If there’s a university that has a better line-up of lecturers year in and year out than we do at Millersville, I haven’t yet found it. Coming to campus soon are accomplished animal behaviorist Temple Grandin and Yevgeni Yevtushenko, whose willingness to speak out through his poetry encouraged generations of Russians to recognize Soviet atrocities toward Jews.
OK, so I was yip-yapping all fall about decisions being made with respect to money and priorities and institutional identity. And yip-yapping, though useful sometimes, only gets you so far. I heard there is a Suggestion Box, a kind of “Well, if you’re so smart, what would YOU do about our financial situation?” depository. Here’s what I’ll put in if I ever find the box.
Can you spell “cash cow”? U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan can. In a hard-hitting talk at Teachers College, Columbia University last week, Duncan said that most teacher education is lousy (my word, not his).
Soon I’m going to a budget forum. Actually, there are three of them: Friday, November 6 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. in McComsey Hall — Ford Atrium, Tuesday, November 9 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. in Stayer Hall, MPR, and Wednesday, November 11 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., also in Stayer. [...]
“Money makes the world go round,” sings the Cabaret emcee. And it is unquestionably money that’s turning the wheel of decision-making at Millersville right now.
Faculty came back to the fall semester to greet many more shining faces in each of their classes.
Without warning, five, or ten, or fifteen students were added to most sections, often necessitating additional work on the part of the faculty member to rework syllabi and assignments.
Each student brings with him or her additional grading time and interpersonal interaction.
News flash for first year students: All education is self-education.
At least, that is what Hans Georg Gadamer thought. Gadamer, a premier European philosopher of the 20th century who is best known for drop-kicking the field of philosophical hermeneutics into existence, insisted in his old age that this was the point he had been making throughout [...]
Last week I was on my way from a conference at Oxford (that venerable British University that may take itself a tad too seriously) to a rendezvous with my Portuguese colleagues at Universidade de Évora, so I stopped off on the way in Parma, Italy to visit with Dr. Carole Counihan of the Sociology and Anthropology Department.
As a high school junior, I intended to become a research chemist. A family friend, the male director of research at Armstrong Cork Company, told me that research chemists were all “pointy-headed people,” and that I should abandon my plan because I was not. He did not mention that they were also all male, though I wonder now whether my gender was a factor framing his advice. I did change my mind, partly because I became fascinated with government and partly because I realized that my science of choice was not chemistry but physics.
What are your plans for the upcoming spring break?
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