Teddy, cat. Earlier this week.

Recruiting Students Overseas to Fill Seats, Not to Meet Standards (NYT)

     … “There are some incentives for not delivering complete clunkers, but the underlying motivation for both the university and the agent is to get warm bodies in the door,” said Philip G. Altbach, the founding director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College.
     At Western Kentucky, 106 of 132 students admitted through the recruitment effort scored below the university’s requirement on an English skills test, according to a resolution adopted last fall by the graduate faculty council, which raised questions about the program. “The vast majority either didn’t have any scores or there wasn’t documentation of their language skills,” said Barbara Burch, a faculty member of the university’s Board of Regents.
     The university senate and the student government association also expressed concerns. “It is ethically wrong to bring students to the university and let them believe they can be successful when we have nothing in place to make sure they’re successful,” the student association president, Jay Todd Richey, said….

   [A year or two ago, IVC's academic senators learned that there was a move afoot to expand our International Students program. Many faculty voiced concern that these students often are unprepared for their courses and tend to be mired in basic and remedial instruction before they can finish a degree or certificate (their visas are limited). The Senate approved the move to expand the program, provided these students were offered adequate remedial and other support and instruction. It is, of course, routine to find international students in our courses who have no business taking courses that require writing in English. --RB] 

New College-Enviro Activism Partnership Kicks Off Tonight with Racing Extinction (OC Weekly)

A lauded film about efforts to prevent mass extinction on this planet tonight kicks off a three-event partnership between Orange County for Climate Action and Coast Community College District organizations....



Stephen Fry

Oops—the students were excellent

     We recently received information to the contrary of what we reported, earlier today, about the Gala. No, as it turns out, students did not get up before the crowd to present their miserable circumstances in order to solicit assistance. The money they raised went to support the Foundation, not themselves. Further, I'm told that the students' speeches were excellent. So, there you go.

Irvine Valley College's bouncy house invitationals!

     Earlier today, I noticed that some of my colleagues were hot and bothered about some fresh atrocity, but I had to rush off to teach before I got clued in. Later in the afternoon, I learned what all the fuss was about. It was about a flier we had all received regarding next week's "Sexual Assault Awareness Week." Since there's a senate meeting tomorrow, and I'm one of my School's senators, I immediately wrote my colleagues:

     As you know, many of us have long complained about the anti-intellectualism and sub-collegiate cluelessness of college leadership and of so much of what goes on at IVC (embarrassing commencement speeches, bouncy-house invitationals, dubious kiddie competitions, etc.).    
     The latest chapter, in my view, is the upcoming “Sexual assault awareness week,” which appears to have been organized by the Young Republicans. Check it out. (There’s a flier in your mail slot.)   
     Obviously, I have no objection to holding such a "Week." The various events of the “Week,” however, seem to reflect an understanding of the sexual assault issue according to which women had better get on the stick (self-protection, increased assertiveness, survival), men seemingly have no role at all, and, luckily, Title XI IX “protects all.”
     Really!      

Featured speaker Janina Scarlet

     Further, the “Week” ends with a presentation by speaker Janina Scarlet, who will explain “Superhero Therapy,” which “refers to incorporating characters from geek culture, including Superheroes and other characters from comic books, as well as characters from fantasy, science fiction, and video games into evidence-based therapy….”   
     I’m not familiar with the latter, but it doesn’t sound promising. (See Scarlet’s video, Coping with Celebrity Deaths.)      
     Part of the problem here, I think, is that the organizers of the “Week” failed to consult with the various experts that are available among faculty, including especially some of the faculty of the School of Humanities (Women’s Studies instructors, et al.).   
     At Thursday’s Senate Meeting, I will note this problem and will ask that the Senate Prez to communicate faculty’s displeasure with the planned "Week," if such is the case. Perhaps future organizers will be encouraged to at least engage in the appropriate consultation.  

--Senator Roy

     I have already received several responses. Some viewed Scarlet's video and were horrified, despite their love of geek heroes David Bowie, Alan Rickman, et al. Some seethed anew about more familiar routine spasms of abject anti-intellectualism at this college. One person agreed with my sentiments but suggested that my referring to the "Young Republicans" was passé. A colleague noted that one of Scarlet's geek heroes is a known anti-Semite. Sheesh!
     What do you think about this superhero guff and the rest of "awareness" week?

From the flier:

A ten-minute survey: the Board of Trustees

     This morning, district personnel received this email from Chancellor Poertner:

Dear District Employee:   

The Board of Trustees is seeking information on its performance and is requesting your participation in a short survey. The purpose is to identify areas of board functions that are working well and areas in need of improvement. All responses will be kept anonymous and aggregated.   

The survey should take approximately 10 minutes to complete and will close on April 15, 2016. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.  

Please click on the link below to access the survey. If the link does not take you to the survey, please copy and paste the URL below into your internet browser.

Thank you.  

Gary L. PoertnerChancellorSouth Orange County CCD

 Let's tell 'em what we think, eh?

Big union win

Unions Win Fee Victory as Supreme Court Ties 4-4 (NYT)

     …When the case was argued in January, the court’s conservative majority seemed ready to say that forcing public workers to support unions they had declined to join violates the First Amendment.
     But the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February changed the balance of power in the case, which was brought by California public schoolteachers who chose not to join unions and objected to paying for the unions’ collective bargaining activities on their behalf….

Colleges Spending Millions to Deal With Sexual Misconduct Complaints (NYT)

     …Recently, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, resigned when it became public that he had been disciplined for sexually harassing his executive assistant, yet he had been allowed to remain on the job. The dean apologized, though he later disputed the circumstances of the case.
     And the captain of Yale’s basketball team was expelled in February after a confidential school proceeding found that he had nonconsensual sex with a female student, according to his lawyer. But the lawyer said that the former player maintained that the woman had consented….

Why I’m Sticking to My ‘Noncompliant’ Learning Outcomes (Chronicle of Higher Ed)

     …My chairman initially offered me several sets of "compliant" student-learning outcomes from genetics-laboratory courses at other institutions: "Manipulate the fruit fly as a genetic research organism, perform hands-on laboratory skills such as gel electrophoresis, graph data in excel software." I could easily have pasted any of those sets of bullet points into my syllabus and been done with it.
     But such trivialities are not learning outcomes toward which I teach, and it would have been a misrepresentation of Genetics 305L at the College of Charleston to imply otherwise. Woodrow Wilson and I understand higher education to be, well, higher.
     In the liberal-arts tradition, our business is to impart the right thought of the world, not drill our students in bullet-point lists of banalities….