Download or read book An Academic Life written by Hanna Holborn Gray and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling memoir by the first woman president of a major American university Hanna Holborn Gray has lived her entire life in the world of higher education. The daughter of academics, she fled Hitler's Germany with her parents in the 1930s, emigrating to New Haven, where her father was a professor at Yale University. She has studied and taught at some of the world's most prestigious universities. She was the first woman to serve as provost of Yale. In 1978, she became the first woman president of a major research university when she was appointed to lead the University of Chicago, a position she held for fifteen years. In 1991, Gray was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in recognition of her extraordinary contributions to education. An Academic Life is a candid self-portrait by one of academia's most respected trailblazers. Gray describes what it was like to grow up as a child of refugee parents, and reflects on the changing status of women in the academic world. She discusses the migration of intellectuals from Nazi-held Europe and the transformative role these exiles played in American higher education—and how the émigré experience in America transformed their own lives and work. She sheds light on the character of university communities, how they are structured and administered, and the balance they seek between tradition and innovation, teaching and research, and undergraduate and professional learning. An Academic Life speaks to the fundamental issues of purpose, academic freedom, and governance that arise time and again in higher education, and that pose sharp challenges to the independence and scholarly integrity of each new generation.
Download or read book Rhythms of Academic Life written by Peter J. Frost and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 1996-07-16 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This invaluable source book offers guidance, support and advice for those contemplating or involved in academic careers. The contributions provide rich, personal, sometimes poignant and often humorous accounts of shared and unique experiences of those in the world of academia.
Download or read book Mama PhD written by Elrena Evans and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every year, American universities publish glowing reports stating their commitment to diversity, often showing statistics of female hires as proof of success. Yet, although women make up increasing numbers of graduate students, graduate degree recipients, and even new hires, academic life remains overwhelming a man's world. The reality that the statistics fail to highlight is that the presence of women, specifically those with children, in the ranks of tenured faculty has not increased in a generation. Further, those women who do achieve tenure track placement tend to report slow advancement, income disparity, and lack of job satisfaction compared to their male colleagues. Amid these disadvantages, what is a Mama, PhD to do? This literary anthology brings together a selection of deeply felt personal narratives by smart, interesting women who explore the continued inequality of the sexes in higher education and suggest changes that could make universities more family-friendly workplaces. The contributors hail from a wide array of disciplines and bring with them a variety of perspectives, including those of single and adoptive parents. They address topics that range from the level of policy to practical day-to-day concerns, including caring for a child with special needs, breastfeeding on campus, negotiating viable maternity and family leave policies, job-sharing and telecommuting options, and fitting into desk/chair combinations while eight months pregnant. Candid, provocative, and sometimes with a wry sense of humor, the thirty-five essays in this anthology speak to and offer support for any woman attempting to combine work and family, as well as anyone who is interested in improving the university's ability to live up to its reputation to be among the most progressive of American institutions.
Download or read book Mad at School written by Margaret Price and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2011-02-17 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the contested boundaries between disability, illness, and mental illness in higher education
Download or read book Academic Life and Labour in the New University written by Dr Ruth Barcan and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be an academic today? What kinds of experiences do students have, and how are they affected by what they learn? Why do so many students and their teachers feel like frauds? Can we learn to teach and research in ways that foster hope and deflate pretension? Academic Life and Labour in the New University: Hope and Other Choices addresses these big questions, discussing the challenges of teaching and researching in the contemporary university, the purpose of research and its fundamental value, and the role of the academy against the background of major changes to nature of the university itself. Drawing on a range of international media sources, political discourse and many years’ professional experience, this volume explores approaches to teaching and research, with special emphasis on the importance of collegiality, intellectual honesty and courage. With attention to the intersection of large-scale institutional changes and intellectual shifts such as the rise of transdisciplinarity and the development of a pluralist curriculum, this book proposes the pursuit of more ethical, compassionate and critical forms of teaching and research. As such, it will be of interest not only to scholars of cultural studies and education, but to all those who care about the fate of the university as an institution, including young scholars seeking to join the academy.
Download or read book Fields of Play written by Laurel Richardson and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do the specific circumstances in which we write affect what we write? How does what we write affect who we become? How can we maintain professsional and personal integrity in today's university? In a series of traditional and experimental writings, a culmination of ten years of works-in-progress, Laurel Richardson records an intellectual journey, displacing boundaries and creating new ways of reading and writing. Applying the sociological imagination to the writing process, she connects her life to her work. Deeply engaging, movingly written with grace, elegance, and clarity, the book stimulates readers to situate their own writing in personal, social, and political contexts.
Download or read book Prestige in Academic Life written by Paul Blackmore and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The achievement of academic excellence is inherently competitive. Deliberate government policies, globalisation and changes in communication technologies mean that competitiveness in the academic world is sharper than ever before. At the centre of this is the seeking of prestige, at all levels from the national system to the individual. Prestige in Academic Life aims to increase understanding of motivation in universities by exploring the part that prestige plays, for good and ill. The book’s focus on motivation and prestige helps to answer fundamental questions that run through much discussion on universities, such as why some problems are never solved; why change can be so difficult to achieve; and how individuals and groups can enable it to happen. Issues explored include: • What role does prestige play in academic life? • How does prestige play out in the working lives of academics, students, administrators and institutional leaders? • How can the positive aspects of prestige be encouraged and the negative ones diminished? University leaders and managers, academics, administrators and students, indeed all who are interested in universities, will find this valuable reading. It will help those in leadership positions to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness and wellbeing of their institutions, and will support academic staff in negotiating their career path. Paul Blackmore is Professor of Higher Education in the International Centre for University Policy Research, Policy Institute at King’s, at King’s College London.
Download or read book Behind the Academic Curtain written by Frank F. Furstenberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-09-23 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More people than ever are going to graduate school to seek a PhD these days. When they get there, they discover a bewildering environment: a rapid immersion in their discipline, a keen competition for resources, and uncertain options for their future, whether inside or outside of academia. Life with a PhD can begin to resemble an unsolvable maze. In Behind the Academic Curtain, Frank F. Furstenberg offers a clear and user-friendly map to this maze. Drawing on decades of experience in academia, he provides a comprehensive, empirically grounded, and, most important of all, practical guide to academic life. While the greatest anxieties for PhD candidates and postgrads are often centered on getting that tenure-track dream job, each stage of an academic career poses a series of distinctive problems. Furstenberg divides these stages into five chapters that cover the entire trajectory of an academic life, including how to make use of a PhD outside of academia. From finding the right job to earning tenure, from managing teaching loads to conducting research, from working on committees to easing into retirement, he illuminates all the challenges and opportunities an academic can expect to encounter. Each chapter is designed for easy consultation, with copious signposts, helpful suggestions, and a bevy of questions that all academics should ask themselves throughout their career, whether at a major university, junior college, or a nonacademic organization. An honest and up-to-date portrayal of how this life really works, Behind the Academic Curtain is an essential companion for any scholar, at any stage of his or her career.
Download or read book How to Be a Happy Academic written by Alexander Clark and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2018-03-12 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Want to be an effective, successful and happy academic? This book helps you hone your skills, showcase your strengths, and manage all the professional aspects of academic life. With their focus on life-long learning and positive reflection, Alex and Bailey encourage you to focus on your own behaviours and personal challenges and help you to find real world solutions to your problems or concerns. Weaving inspirational stories, the best of research and theory, along with pragmatic advice from successful academics, this book provides step-by-step guidance and simple tools to help you better meet the demands of modern academia, including: Optimising your effectiveness, priorities & strategy Workflow & managing workload Interpersonal relationships, and how to influence Developing your writing, presenting and teaching skills Getting your work/life balance right. Clear, practical and refreshingly positive this book inspires you to build the career you want in academia.
Download or read book Keywords written by A Community of Inquiry and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An irreverent critical lexicon of academic life and culture The university: The very name evokes knowledge, culture, and the magnificently universal ambition at the heart of this essential institution. Bastions of free inquiry and a free society, engines of social transformation and economic progress, enclosed gardens of ennobling reflection and creation, universities encompass the wisdom of the past and the hope of the future. Or do they? This critical glossary—written by a group of Princeton graduate students and faculty—defines fifty-eight terms common to academic life in a style that will prick both egos and consciences. From “academia” to “vocation,” “canon” to “peer review,” “discipline” to “methodology,” the book scrutinizes the often stultifying structures of modern disciplinary life, calls out a slavish devotion to “knowledge production” as the enemy of thought, and even dissects the notion of “academic excellence.” Feisty and darkly funny, passionate and deeply insightful, this book raises hard questions about teaching, research, theory, practice, and academic labor. The result is a must-read dispatch from today’s academic trenches—one that is sure to provoke discussion and debate.
Download or read book Navigating an Academic Career A Brief Guide for PhD Students Postdocs and New Faculty written by Jeffrey J. McDonnell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-12-04 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demystifies the academic career path with practical advice With the number of people being awarded PhDs growing far more rapidly than the supply of academic jobs, those at an early-career stage must think strategically in order to be competitive and successful. Navigating an Academic Career: A Brief Guide for PhD students, Post docs, and New Faculty is a concise and conversational manual that guides readers through starting their academic journey, surviving the demands of their first academic position, and thriving in academia and beyond. Volume highlights include: Firsthand perspective on the characteristics of a successful academic Guidance on interviewing, negotiating, branding, and other essential soft skills Tips for effective time management and writing high-impact research papers Insights into developing leadership skills and mentoring others The American Geophysical Union promotes discovery in Earth and space science for the benefit of humanity. Its publications disseminate scientific knowledge and provide resources for researchers, students, and professionals.
Download or read book College Student Development and Academic Life written by Philip G. Altbach and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this series is to bring together the main currents in today's higher education and examine such crucial issues as the changing nature of education in the U.S., the considerable adjustment demanded of institutions, administrators, the faculty; the role of Catholic education; the remarkable growth of higher education in Latin America, contemporary educational concerns in Europe, and more. Among the many specific questions examined in individual articles are: Is it true that women are subtly changing the academic profession? How is power concentrated in academic organizations? How successful are Latin America's private universities? What is the correlation between higher education and employment in Spain? Is minority graduate education in the U.S. producing the desired results?
Download or read book Survive and Thrive in Academia written by Kate Woodthorpe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-19 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pocket mentor for the early career academic learning to strategically navigate the demands of an academic role, this book is a friendly and constructive companion providing hands-on advice about how to balance teaching responsibilities alongside other duties. More than just a ‘how to’, the text is a timely commentary on changes in higher education. Discussing contemporary developments and offering guidance on how to negotiate this evolving climate, the book uniquely captures the political, social, economic and cultural forces at play, taking into account the issues which influence and shape an academic’s career trajectory. Organised around the three main tasks within a conventional academic post – teaching, research and administration – the book includes tips, pauses for thought, author reflections and sources for further reading, and provides insight to help the reader reflect on what they are doing, why, and where to go next in their career. Crucially, it shows that in order to survive and flourish, the early career academic needs to take a strategic view as to their function, purpose and contribution both inside and beyond the intellectual establishment. From establishing a research niche to getting stuck into administration Survive and Thrive empowers the early career academic, helping them to build their academic reputation both internally and externally and maintain a sense of personal fulfilment and accomplishment within an increasingly commercialised environment.
Download or read book The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career written by John A. Goldsmith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is a career as a professor the right choice for you? If you are a graduate student, how can you clear the hurdles successfully and position yourself for academic employment? What's the best way to prepare for a job interview, and how can you maximize your chances of landing a job that suits you? What happens if you don't receive an offer? How does the tenure process work, and how do faculty members cope with the multiple and conflicting day-to-day demands? With a perpetually tight job market in the traditional academic fields, the road to an academic career for many aspiring scholars will often be a rocky and frustrating one. Where can they turn for good, frank answers to their questions? Here, three distinguished scholars—with more than 75 years of combined experience—talk openly about what's good and what's not so good about academia, as a place to work and a way of life. Written as an informal conversation among colleagues, the book is packed with inside information—about finding a mentor, avoiding pitfalls when writing a dissertation, negotiating the job listings, and much more. The three authors' distinctive opinions and strategies offer the reader multiple perspectives on typical problems. With rare candor and insight, they talk about such tough issues as departmental politics, dual-career marriages, and sexual harassment. Rounding out the discussion are short essays that offer the "inside track" on financing graduate education, publishing the first book, and leaving academia for the corporate world. This helpful guide is for anyone who has ever wondered what the fascinating and challenging world of academia might hold in store. Part I - Becoming a Scholar * Deciding on an Academic Career * Entering Graduate School * The Mentor * Writing a Dissertation * Landing an Academic Job Part II - The Academic Profession * The Life of the Assistant Professor * Teaching and Research * Tenure * Competition in the University System and Outside Offers * The Personal Side of Academic Life
Download or read book On Spiritual Strivings written by Cynthia B. Dillard and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2007-03-15 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers both a theoretical and concrete example of what W. E. B. Du Bois called “spiritual strivings.”
Download or read book Office Hours written by H. N. Hirsch and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even a cursory glance at today's headlines reveals that higher education is in crisis. Tuition outpaces inflation, states slash budgets, graduation rates decline, and technology threatens to reshape everything. Universities continue to crank out new PhDs, but many will become poorly paid members of a secondary, adjunct labor force teaching most of today's college courses. Scholars lucky enough to be on the tenure track must publish more and more, while students at large universities sit in ever larger lectures, seldom interacting with professors. Yet every year, thousands of applicants from the world over apply to America's most prestigious colleges and universities, and students and their families continue to spend huge sums on college. What are colleges and universities really like-from the inside? What do we do wrong, and what are we doing right? What is it like to be a professor and administrator at one of America's leading educational institutions? This memoir asks these questions, in a very personal way. "This is the story of a serious scholar finding his vocation, his students and his gratifications, amidst the near-impossibility of such discoveries in higher education today. The writing is beautiful and the accounts of times, places and institutions are alternatively moving, penetrating and provocative." - Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley "Written in lyrical and sparkling prose, Harry Hirsch's Office Hours is, on the one hand, an intimate and insightful memoir of a Jewish gay man's trajectory from a Chicago boyhood to Princeton, Harvard, and beyond. On the other hand, it's a penetrating critical analysis of college and university approaches to education by an accomplished professor and dean (and dedicated teacher) who knows of what he speaks. Office Hours draws back the curtain on a major way of American life-the academic way-revealing at once the bright spots and the rotten ones. It should be read by every dean, professor, and adjunct, and by anyone involved in an academic career or contemplating one." - Priscilla Long, Author of The Writer's Portable Mentor and Crossing Over: Poems"
Download or read book The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology written by C. Ray Chandler and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology is an indispensable guide for graduate students and post-docs as they enter that domain red in tooth and claw: the job market. An academic career in the biological sciences typically demands well over a decade of technical training. So it’s ironic that when a scholar reaches the most critical stage in that career—the search for a job following graduate work—he or she receives little or no formal preparation. Instead, students are thrown into the job market with only cursory guidance on how to search for and land a position. Now there’s help. Carefully, clearly, and with a welcome sense of humor, The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology leads graduate students and postdoctoral fellows through the perils and rewards of their first job search. The authors—who collectively have for decades mentored students and served on hiring committees—have honed their advice in workshops at biology meetings across the country. The resulting guide covers everything from how to pack an overnight bag without wrinkling a suit to selecting the right job to apply for in the first place. The authors have taken care to make their advice useful to all areas of academic biology—from cell biology and molecular genetics to evolution and ecology—and they give tips on how applicants can tailor their approaches to different institutions from major research universities to small private colleges. With jobs in the sciences ever more difficult to come by, The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology is designed to help students and post-docs navigate the tricky terrain of an academic job search—from the first year of a graduate program to the final negotiations of a job offer.
