New Books In Education

Is it possible to integrate scholarly study with contemplative practice? What are the benefits and potential pitfalls of doing so? Join us as we speak to Dr. Ben William about Naropa University’s vision of Contemplative Education along with their brand-new Masters in Yoga Studies program. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at cgessler05[at]gmail.com or dr.danamalone[at]gmail.com Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear about: a student’s goal to study abroad during college, how she dealt with unexpected restrictions on becoming an international student during a pandemic, her transatlantic travels, living in a “bubble” in her new dorm, and what she’s hopeful about for her return to her American campus for her senior year. Our guest is: Emma Halfin, who is a junior at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) majoring in Political Science and History and minoring in French. She is currently a visiting student at the University of Oxford in the UK studying history and politics and is lo

Listen to this interview of William Tierney, University Professor Emeritus and Founding Director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California. We talk about his book Get Real: 49 Challenges Confronting Higher Education (SUNY, 2020), about what people really believe when it comes to higher education, and also about what people need to do when it comes to higher education. William Tierney : "Oftentimes the board and the administration and the faculty are in cahoots with one another, in the sense that the marker is only how to improve in the rankings. And you can see this when a teaching college becomes a state university, and then it will try to move away from teaching and move towards research. And a board member will feel good about that: 'Boy, I came in, and my institution was ranked 250th, and now it's a 100. We the board are doing a great job.' And what the administration will say is: 'I transformed the institution. We were 250, and now we're 100.' And the faculty wil

In Campus Carry: Confronting a Loaded Issue in Higher Education (Harvard Education Press, 2020), editors Patricia Somers and Matt Valentine lead an examination of the unintended consequences of campus gun policy and showcase voices from the college community who are grappling with the questions, issues, and consequences that have emerged at their respective institutions. While making the case that campus carry legislation is harmful, the book gathers some of the very best thinking around enacting such policies and offers valuable recommendations for mitigating its effects and preserving university values. The implementation of campus carry is complex and has provoked many questions: How does concealed carry on campus affect the free expression of ideas in the classroom or the safety of faculty holding unpopular or even controversial views? Should students who misplace or leave their weapons unattended be disciplined? How are communities of color impacted by campus carry? Along with the book's contributors, So

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at cgessler05@gmail.com or dr.danamalone@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear about: how Clair adapted to changes in her academic timeline, re-planned her wedding, and postponed taking the Bar exam due to the pandemic. Our guest is: Clair Wright Sumerfield, a fourth-year, dual-degree graduate student at the University of Denver. She is earning both a JD from Sturm College of Law and an MA is Art History & Museum Studies from the School of Art and Art History. She expects to graduate from both programs by fall 2021 and hopes to find a job that combines both fields. Originally from Illinois, Clair currently lives in Denver, Colorado with her husband

In Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving in and Beyond the Classroom (Duke University Press, 2020), Katina L. Rogers tackles three major issues in academia – post-PhD careers, academic labor practices, and inclusivity and equity. Rogers demonstrates how scholarly reward practices hide the realities of faculty work, value normative rather than innovative outcomes, drive admissions practices for graduate programs, and narrow the definition of post-PhD success. Yet Rogers does not accept that the university of the past – or even the present – must be the university of the future. Rogers begins from the basis that higher education, humanities graduate study and scholarly research are public goods. She calls for a more expansive view of humanities graduate training that is generative rather than replicative. Rogers argues against reducing humanities PhD cohorts and programs, instead laying out a framework for faculty and advisors to initiate institutional change. She provides graduate students with context

I've had 18 years of formal education - why is writing so hard? Today's guests Dr Katherine Firth explains the disease's cure. The book Level Up Your Essays guides the reader through university essay writing, running through stages including essay plans, developing research strategies, writing with distinction, finishing strongly with editing, and getting your referencing right. Katherine Firth manages learning programs for undergraduates and graduates in university settings, and has been developing students as writers for more than a decade. She runs writing workshops for doctoral students and currently runs the academic program at International House, a college of the University of Melbourne. She is co-author of Your PhD Survival Guide and gives writing advice on her blog Research Degree Insiders. Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). be

“Every bit of SEL”—or Social Emotional Learning, writes Jeffrey Benson—“you can integrate into your planning will not only begin to heal the wounds of passivity, racism, and inequity, but also give students an experience today, in your classroom, of that better world.” (157) The book, Improve Every Lesson Plan with SEL (ASCD, 2021), speaks to big ideas of the teacher’s role in expanding (and “saving”) democracy, while suggesting concrete tools that teacher can use tomorrow morning when the bell rings. Since “emotions and intellect operate in partnership” (7), we know our students must be engaged in order to enjoy meaningful learning. Benson proposes activities and techniques to draw students in, to help them become full participants and co-owners of their learning. He offers ways for us to get our students to share and give feedback that immediately improve their learning experience, while reducing the amount of work a teacher needs to do. For such a short and readable book, Improve Every Lesson with SEL, is

In an age characterized by rampant anti-intellectualism, Kathleen Fitzpatrick in her 'Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021) charges the academy with thinking constructively rather than competitively, building new ideas rather than tearing old ones down. She urges us to rethink how we teach the humanities and to refocus our attention on the very human ends that the humanities can best serve. One key aspect of that transformation involves fostering generous thinking, a mode of engagement that emphasizes listening over speaking, community over individualism, and collaboration over competition.  Kai Wortman is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Education, University of Tübingen, interested in philosophy of education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

David Galas describes his unusual journey from Air Force brat to theoretical physicist to Systems Biologist in charge of the Human Genome Project for the U.S. Department of Energy. He then became a bioscience entrepreneur creating both a string of start-up companies and co-founding, along with Hank Riggs, the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Science, the 7th and newest of the Claremont Colleges. He describes their unusual partnership and what led Hank to create KGI after his successful tenures as President of Harvey Mudd College and leading the first billion-dollar campaign in higher education for Stanford University. Together with the founding faculty they created the first higher education institution with the mission of bridging the gap between scientists and business to develop leaders who could help commercialize the exciting breakthroughs coming from the life science revolution. David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices S

In 2014 and 2015, students at dozens of colleges and universities held protests demanding increased representation of Black and Latino students and calling for a campus climate that was less hostile to students of color. Their activism recalled an earlier era: in the 1960s and 1970s, widespread campus protest by Black and Latino students contributed to the development of affirmative action and open admissions policies. Yet in the decades since, affirmative action has become a magnet for conservative backlash and in many cases has been completely dismantled. In To Fulfill These Rights: Political Struggle Over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions (Columbia University Press, 2019), Amaka Okechukwu offers a historically informed sociological account of the struggles over affirmative action and open admissions in higher education. Through case studies of policy retrenchment at public universities, she documents the protracted―but not always successful―rollback of inclusive policies in the context of shifting rac

One year to the day after George Flloyd’s murder, Dr. Jamila Lyiscott discusses her book on racial justice in education: Black Appetite. White Food. Issues of Race, Voice, and Justice Within and Beyond the Classroom (Routledge, 2019) A community-engaged scholar-activist, nationally renowned speaker and spoken word artist, Assistant Professor of Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and founding co-director of its new Center for Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research, Lyiscott—who may also invite you to call her Dr. J, if you’re cool—offers educators support for thinking and acting on issues of race, language, and the colonial logics that maintain white supremacy at the expense of Black wholeness through the lens of what she calls “Vision-Driven Justice.” Personal stories, scholarly citations, original poetry, choice excerpts of literature, and theoretical as well as applied analyses are written in the author’s flow of American Standard English, American Black English, and Car

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at cgessler05@gmail.com or dr.danamalone@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear about: Karin Fischer’s job as a contributing writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education, how she researches stories about international students, what the pandemic means for her work and for the students she writes about, and what she’s hopeful about. Our guest is: Karin Fischer, a higher-education journalist with a focus on international education, American colleges’ activities overseas, the globalization of the college experience, and study abroad. Her work has appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times, EdSource, the Washington Monthly, and Un

To what extent should scholarship foreground the beliefs and experiences of the scholar producing it? Where does the scholar-practitioners fit at the academy today? Join us as we explore such issues in conversation with Dr. Francis Clooney, Jesuit Priest and Harvard Professor of Comparative Theology, specializing in Catholic and Hindu traditions. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Michael Crow describes his 19-year tenure leading ASU’s transformation from a regional, “party school” to what has been recognized as the U.S.’s most innovative research universities for six years in a row. He outlines the model of “The New American University” that represents “The Fifth Wave” in the Evolution of American Universities”, described in his books with these titles by William DeBars, to create an institution that defines its success by how many students it can serve, rather than how selective it has become, and pushing forward transdisciplinary research that has a positive real-world impact on Arizona and the planet. He sees his role as a design-architect, creating an environment that fosters the development of new schools, colleges and institutes bringing together experts from different fields to seek solutions to important problems. David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member!

A Collective Pursuit: Teachers' Unions and Education Reform (Temple UP, 2020) focuses on the idea that individuals, in this case, teachers, are multifaceted and multidimensional actors who pursue goals for a variety of reasons and those reasons are connected to their capacity to do their jobs, to the best of their abilities, as well as their interests as citizens and community members. According to Lesley Lavery’s research, the data indicate that teachers are the most important in-school predictors of student success. This suggests that in thinking about educational structure and reform, the focus should always include the individual teacher in a classroom and their capacity to do their job well. Thus, Lavery’s analysis in A Collective Pursuit is both to understand the capacity and role of the individual teacher in the classroom and in the American educational system, and to understand the role that organized labor has played in working on behalf of teachers but within a changing educational landscape.  This

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at dr.danamalone@gmail.com or cgessler05@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear about: how mentoring differs from friendship, common (mis)perceptions of how mentoring happens across the academy, what makes a great mentor, steps to take when connecting with a potential mentor, and how to construct your optimal “board of advisors.” Dr. Laura Gail Lunsford, author, scholar, speaker, consultant, and southerner. Dr. Lunsford is an expert in mentoring and leadership. She has written over 40 peer-reviewed articles, case studies and chapters on leadership and mentoring. She wrote the Handbook for Managing Mentoring Programs, co-edited the Sage Handbook of M

Listen to this interview of Martin Paul Eve (Birkbeck, University of London), Cameron Neylon (Curtin University), Daniel Paul O'Donnell (University of Lethbridge), Samuel Moore (Coventry University), Robert Gadie (University of the Arts London), Victoria Odeniyi (University College London), and Shahina Parvin (University of Lethbridge) about their book Reading Peer Review: PLOS One and Institutional Change in Academia, published this year by Cambridge University Press. The book is part of Cambridge UP's "Elements" series. It's also open access. We talk about excellence in higher education and about excellence in scientific research, and we talk about all the trouble that can bring. Martin Paul Eve : "Yeah, I think that's right that in scholarly communication, we're dealing less with language and more with discourse. And the most frustrating defenses of the humanities disciplines try to claim some exclusivity around language and expression and so on. And really, when you're dealing with extremely complicated s

Jeanne Simons devoted her career as a social worker and educator to the study, treatment, and care of children with autism. In 1955, she established the Linwood Children's Center in Ellicott City, Maryland, one of the first schools dedicated to children with autism. Her Linwood Model, developed there, was widely adopted and still forms the basis for a variety of autism intervention techniques. Incredibly—although unknown at the time—Jeanne was herself autistic. Behind the Mirror: The Story of a Pioneer in Autism Treatment and Her Work with Children on the Spectrum (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021) reveals the remarkable tale of Simons. In this interview I speak with Dr. Sabine Oishi, who co-author this book with Simons and also the book, the hidden child. Sabine Oishi, PhD, was educated first as a teacher and then as a child psychologist at the University of Geneva. She earned her PhD in child development and family therapy from the University of Maryland. She has worked as a teacher, researcher, and therapist both in

Listen to this interview of Martin Paul Eve and Jonathan Gray, editors of Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access (published open access by MIT in 2020). We talk about a lot, and all of it, really, falls under the head "Ethics of Scholarly Communication." interviewer : "How did you conceive of a project of this diversity on the subject of open access and publishing?" Martin Paul Eve : "What's really interesting to me is that most academics think they know about scholarly publishing because they have all published. This is a bit like me saying that I'm an expert in how car engines work because I can drive. It doesn't equate to the same thing. And so what we really wanted to do was to put together a volume that did not really attempt forcibly to synthesize all of the propositions made under its roof, but rather to give a space for a debate to develop, a space for argument and conversation to flourish about the difficulties surrounding open access." -