Rhythms of Academic Life

Rhythms of Academic Life
Author: Peter J. Frost
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 536
Release: 1996-07-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1452264694

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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.

An Academic Life

An Academic Life
Author: Hanna Holborn Gray
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0691179182

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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.

Prestige in Academic Life

Prestige in Academic Life
Author: Paul Blackmore
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2015-11-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317505034

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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.

Academic Life and Labour in the New University

Academic Life and Labour in the New University
Author: Dr Ruth Barcan
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2014-01-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1472405773

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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.

Mama, PhD

Mama, PhD
Author: Elrena Evans
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0813543185

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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.

College Student Development and Academic Life

College Student Development and Academic Life
Author: Philip G. Altbach
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2014-06-23
Genre: Education
ISBN: 113564442X

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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?

Mad at School

Mad at School
Author: Margaret Price
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2011-02-17
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0472071386

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Explores the contested boundaries between disability, illness, and mental illness in higher education

Academic Life in the Measured University

Academic Life in the Measured University
Author: Tai Peseta
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2020-05-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0429767455

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While a life in academia is still one bestowed with enormous privilege and opportunity, on the inside, its cracks and fragility have been on display for some time. We see evidence of this in researchers bemoaning time spent applying for grants rather than doing research; teachers frustrated at the ways student feedback data are deployed to feed judgements about them; and doctoral students realising that they have little chance of securing full-time academic work. Yet in the public policy domain, the opposite appears true: academics left to their own devices in their elite ivory towers, rarely ever do enough. This collection addresses the fact that academic life deserves to be rigorously researched. Its emphasis on the measured university traces how academic life had ceded itself to the logics of perverse measures, and raises questions about whether the contemporary university may well have become too measured to adequately counter the political times now upon us. The contributors explore the ways in which measurement inhabits paradoxical positions in these spaces. It sketches the contours and consequences of mismeasurement, including the personal costs to academic staff. It examines our desires and fumbled efforts at institutional transformation, and it puts on display our own ethical conduct. The collection concludes with a call to chart a course for a revitalized moral economy of academic labour. This book was originally published as a special issue of Higher Education Research & Development.

The Academic Citizen

The Academic Citizen
Author: Bruce Macfarlane
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2006-09-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1134247273

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With increasing focus on excellence in research and teaching, the service role of the individual academic is often neglected. This book calls for greater recognition of this important aspect of academic life, highlighting the importance of mentoring, committee work and pastoral care in the daily running of universities. Drawing from extensive examples from models around the world, The Academic Citizen points to the benefits of effective communication with colleagues in the faculty, across the university and in corresponding faculties across the world, as well as those in maintaining positive associations with the wider world.

Fields of Play

Fields of Play
Author: Laurel Richardson
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1997
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780813523798

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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.