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Good Things
Ends of semester are always a bit tense, particularly in the spring. People are tired, a subset of students (and others) get weird, it’s obviously past time for a break. This spring, we probably have even more distractions than usual, including a constrained budget situation and some clear challenges in the coming year. But—and this […]
Global Information: A New Mason Register
One of the perennial challenges in trying to build a global university involves developing and sharing appropriate levels of information about what’s already happening. We had the experience a few years ago of rounding up about 35 faculty interested in Africa, from various disciplinary standpoints. Not only had many of them not met before, as […]
College Sports
These comments will surprise no likely reader, I admit in advance. They belabor the obvious. But sometimes it seems to me we need to dwell on the obvious in hopes that — despite all indications to the contrary — reality can be redone. It’s long been clear that the position of sports in American higher […]
Mason Students
Writing the first blog of the new year is a bit of a challenge. Obviously one wants to make it interesting. On the other hand, we emerge from a week where — professionally — not a lot has been happening (for which we are profoundly grateful). So let me talk a bit about aspects of […]
Rankings
The recent news that yet another institution has provided inaccurate data for the US News and World Report survey—however inadvertently—is yet another reminder of the importance of not taking any of the surveys too literally. Several cases of inaccurate submissions, both for the main US News ranking and for the law school version, suggest how […]
University Life
Recently, the President decided to shift the reporting status of University Life to the Provost. The move did not reflect a sense of huge problems to be solved. Rather it reflected a desire to improve further what is already a fairly constructive coordination of academic and co-curricular efforts in dealing with students. For my part […]
Budgets and Tuitions
A recent visit from a legislative official—seemingly a nice, responsible guy and a friend of Mason—brought comments about his bafflement about how higher education costs keep soaring, tuitions keep rising, there must be a storehouse of waste and inefficiency. I was, frankly, nonplussed—not at the comments, which are now common enough, but at the source, […]
Emails
I was intrigued and frankly astounded a week ago to read in the Post the report on many companies that are shutting down email systems at night and on weekends, to try to promote better, less work-haunted lifestyles and prevent burnout. It’s always intriguing to learn about concerns and systems so strikingly different from one’s […]
Grade Early, Grade Often
This is the time of year when faculty in many types of courses need to be sure they have developed a basis for early assessment of students so that, where problems exist, they can be conveyed to students directly and to relevant advisors with enough time to do something to remedy. My own experience after […]
Mason’s Vision Series
We’re about to launch the new round of our now well-established Vision Series. I’ve written on this before, but a renewed note is appropriate. We conceived of the series now five years ago as an opportunity for faculty from all sorts of fields to present their work to a general audience. Our hope was that […]
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