Dr Flavius Akerele III's The E Team Education blog

I will be taking a break for Christmas, but I wanted to wish you all a great holiday and new year. 

“Former Baruch College Official Pleads Guilty in Grade-Fixing Case”   http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/former-baruch-college-official-pleads-guilty-in-grade-fixing-case?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en   “ Senate Passes Bill to Protect Veterans”   http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/12/21/senate-passes-bill-protect-veterans   Each article is just one short paragraph and there is not much detail, when there should be a lot of detail for titles like that. Why do some important topics get a cursory mention and others of less importance get pages and pages?   Grade fixing stories should be a big deal; especially when we have seen a lot of mentions over the last couple of years on how adjuncts are feeling pressure from student evaluations to keep their jobs, and therefore, grades become inflated.     A bill to protect veterans: what exactly does that mean? What does the bill do and how exactly does it help vetera...

  This is a touchy subject, but it is one that needs to be addressed quickly and definitively.   A recent article in the Associate Press (AP) reports a 23% spike in “reported” sexual assaults at military academies ( http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ix-ahdBkWnRL_pxX3qPWWOmHzUPg?docId=e7ad3ca6bedc4978992805b5c6ed71c3 ); keep in mind these are just the reported ones. I wonder what the numbers of unreported ones are? Military folks do not like to ask for help in these kinds of situations, unfortunately there is a false assumption of weakness if they do. Most of this violence is against female servicemembers; however, men are far less likely to report any kind of sexual assault at all, so we will never know the true number. Imagine, having to constantly worry about the people who are supposed to be watching your back? When someone makes the commitment to serve their country, to put on a uniform and lead, they deserve the best possible start, and this is ...

After seeing the title of an article today: “ Accreditation Actions Increased During Financial Downturn”, I was looking forward to reading a report with some good data, on what should be an important educational topic topic ( http://chronicle.com/blogs/bottomline/accreditation-actions-increased-during-financial-downturn/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en ).   After actually reading the article (although well written), I noticed it was missing something very important, the actual report itself. Apparently, “ the report is available only to Moody’s subscribers”. So my question is: why withhold great information like that from the general public?   There is a tendency in educational research to ‘archive’ data, rather than widely disseminate it. A lot of great information is just sitting somewhere, locked away, as if in a cave gathering dust, almost like the gold of Fort Knox, and that is a shame. There is a great blog article by Ben Baumberg, which...

I can remember learning an interesting fact about education a few years ago, and that is: ‘a doctor from 100 years ago could not perform in today’s medical environment, but a teacher from 100 years ago could certainly do it’. Education has not really changed much, we think it has, we hope it has, and we do our best to make changes: but what are we really doing?   I just read an article in the Chronicle titled “ For Whom Is College Being Reinvented” http://chronicle.com/article/The-False-Promise-of-the/136305/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en . It was an interesting article in the sense that it reminds us of how far we have to go in truly making meaningful changes in higher education. Are we really helping students gain skills and a job? Who is gaining from these new methods and what are they gaining? How many people actually know what MOOC stands for (massive open online courses)? What does MOOC mean to you besides being the latest buzzword?   I wish I ha...

Currently, the news is dominated by the tragic events in Connecticut, and there is nothing much I can add to the conversation that will help. In fact, as a society, we tend to overdo it with information when it comes to tragedies like this. Personally, my own kids know nothing about it and we do not intend to talk about it with them anytime soon (unless of course they ask). As educators and parents, we still have a job to do, and that is to help students. Students need to be able to concentrate on their learning and on their educational plans. It is also Christmas (whether you celebrate it or not), and it is more useful to concentrate on the season of positivity than a topic of negativity.   My point is, stay the course, do not lose focus on what we are supposed to be doing, no matter what we feel, because that is what students really need in the long run. A good well-rounded education can help solve future issues like the one that just occurred, and it is up to us to ...

    An article I just read titled “ Certifying Soft Skills?” got me thinking; about all the pitfalls, we have to deal with when it comes to social media in the educational arena ( http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/certifying-soft-skills ). Do you accept Facebook requests from students or not? LinkedIn request are ok right? How about Google plus, Pinterest, Twitter, and Flickr requests?   What is the proper way to turn down dating requests from students, who nowadays might be your own age, and prevent rumors from spreading about you through social media? When people post false stories about you, are you supposed to dignify them with response or take the high road and ignore them?   How do you help your students understand that complaining about a problem does not allow you to cuss incessantly to the dean of campus about the problem? In addition, how do you keep a neutral mind when that same student comes to ...

A recent article in Inside Higher Education titled “ Mum's Not the Word” got me thinking about confidentiality in education. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/12/13/aaup-recommends-against-confidentiality-agreements-shared-governance . While the article talks about confidentiality agreements for the most part, I believe there is another direction we need to think about, and that is discretion. Educators are notorious gossips; there I said it out allowed, but it is true. For those of you, who have taught K12, think about all the times you have talked about your students in the teachers’ lounge, at the mall, or at a bar while having a drink. I would guess that a lot of that “talk” violated FERPA (family educational rights privacy act).   In higher education, it is just as bad, although a lot of the gossip tends to focus on internal issues. Good people lose their jobs quite often in higher education because of office gossip, office slander, or forwarding inapprop...

A new article today in chronicle; but not really a new subject. http://chronicle.com/article/As-GI-Bill-Expands-So-Do/136241/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en . It calls for "tracking of veterans academic success"; again. Why should we care about how veterans are doing in school? 1.       We track all other students, especially those using financial aid 2.       We want our veterans to succeed 3.       It could, and probably will save money by putting funds where they are most needed for veterans academic success 4.       It can prevent fraud by unscrupulous players in higher education 5.       It will preserve the entitlement for future generations 6.       Because it is the smart thing to do We are in analysis paralysis with this subject, let's take some action and start doing it in a meaningfu...

  A recently read article got me thinking of how technology in all kinds of forms seems to be seen as the panacea for everything: http://chronicle.com/blogs/onhiring/the-challenge-of-technology/35373?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en . As a college professor, how often have you seen a student using Facebook in class and then complaining about their bad grade later? As a K-12 teacher, how often do you see a student staring into their lap with a smile, knowing they are really just texting? How often do we see the latest and greatest of technology machines gathering dust, or being used to play games (not its original use)? Do not get me wrong, technology has altered our lives in so many positive ways, but we need to remember that it is just a tool; and tools can be misused.   Feel free to chime in on this conversation; maybe we will find the solutions if we work together. We do want solutions right? Dr Flavius A B Akerele III The ETeam

  I am sure this article was widely seen, and in today’s economy, we are all curious about salaries. Pay and Perks Creep Up for Private-College Presidents http://chronicle.com/article/PayPerks-Creep-Up-for/136187/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en .   I am certainly not going to begrudge anyone a large paycheck, especially if it has is earned. One of the main jobs of college presidents nowadays is fund raising, and some of these presidents are masters of raising money, so in some ways, they are raising the money for their own salaries and then some.   However, there are some huge disparities where there should not be, and I do not care whether you are a non-profit or a for-profit, retention of your staff should be as important as retention of your students. In my experience, staff pay has been a large contributor of staff turnover, especially at the front line level (I should add that having a competent HR department, which is not univer...

In a recent article titled “ put your money where your Adjuncts are”, http://chronicle.com/blogs/onhiring/put-your-money-where-your-adjuncts-are/35319?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en   the main theme is lack of funding opportunities for adjuncts. I do believe lack of funding opportunities is a huge understatement, considering how many institutions depend on adjuncts nowadays to teach their classes. In the nontraditional market, adjuncts are the majority faculty. Some schools like to talk proudly about their “practitioner model” of instruction versus “research model”, and in theory having someone who is currently working in what their teaching should benefit students, especially the growing population of nontraditional students. However, how many times do we see classes not filled by a professor until the last minute (professor is consequently unprepared), or classes cancelled because they could not find a professor? This is a symptom of not paying your adjunc...

The Department of Defense (DoD) released the DoD Voluntary Education Partnership Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Thursday, December 12, 2012. The quality of education received by our Service members is very important to the DoD. To ensure all Service members participating in off-duty, postsecondary education programs are provided quality education programs uniformly; the DoD established the MOU as part of the revised DoD Instruction (DoDI) 1322.25, Voluntary Education Programs dated March 15, 2011 (incorporating date of change 1, December 6, 2012). The current memorandum includes several protections enumerated in Executive Order 13607, "Establishing Principles of Excellence for Educational Institutions Serving Service Members, Veterans, Spouses, and Other Family Members," signed by President Obama on April 27, 2012. Effective March 1, 2013, the DoD is implementing the following policy: "For an institution to be eligible to participate in the DoD Tuition Assistance (...

We have probably all heard the saying “those who can do, those who cannot teach”; this is a truly despicable saying because it sums up the country’s view on teachers. How can people be successful if they have not had someone to teach them something? Recently there has been a lot of chatter on why teachers in Finland are doing so well, but we should also look at teachers all over the globe such as in the continents of Africa and Asia. Obviously, teacher pay is not going to be equal in all regions of the world and good pay is important, but there is something else more important that ties all this good teaching together, and it is very simple: respect . Where respect for the teacher and the teaching profession is paramount, you see good teaching and learning happening. My first teaching experience was in a Japanese high school; in Japan, when people discover you are a teacher, they bow to you and thank you. Imagine, how teachers would feel about their profession and themselves if...

An article I recently read in Inside Higher Education talks about a study that “finds that, in political science, earning a PhD from one of a relatively small number of universities is the key to landing a job at a research-intensive university”. Apparently, the study suggests, “the number of academic superpowers is so small that good candidates from less-favored institutions are likely being overlooked”. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/12/05/study-questions-whether-departments-are-too-focused-hiring-graduates-elite Higher education itself is an elite category if you think about it because; if college were easy, everyone would have a degree. Getting a terminal degree is a different category all together. Access to these elite colleges has always and continues to be ‘guarded by a castle moat’. If your family has influence, you can row across, if you are smart and the right person notices you, you can swim across and hopefully not get eaten by the crocodiles in the water. ...

First off let me say, that the purpose of this article is not to be self-serving, I will admit now to having been a middle schools teacher for about 10 years; the purpose is to shed some positivity on the strange institution called middle school. When I first started teaching in the early 1990s, I met a lot of teachers who talked about “doing time” at middle school, or “escaping the hell” of middle school. Let us face it; middle school students are completely insane: there are hormones raging, their bodies are growing, they temporarily lose their brains, and I have a strong suspicion that all middle school cafeterias add some kind of psychedelic stimulant to the food for flavor. Unbelievably, I purposely sought out middle school and I relished almost every (not every moment, I am human) moment of it because it because there was never a dull moment. Have you ever seen a bumblebee break dance in the middle of a hallway? I have seen it in middle school. Have you ever seen a soap o...

In a recent Chronicle article titled “Who Do I Think I Am?” ( http://chronicle.com/article/Who-Do-I-Think-I-Am-/135968/?cid=cc&utm_source=cc&utm_medium=en ), the main topic seems to be one professor’s struggle with an extremely persistent student. In my opinion though, there seems to be another underlying factor that California community colleges need to work on, and that is lack of classes for students. Community college has been a boon used by many people including high school students getting a leg up on their upcoming freshman year of college, students getting their A.A degree in hopes of transferring to a four year institution, and folks wanting a better future testing the waters with a class here and there. This past summer, a large majority of San Diego community college cancelled summer classes altogether, and while some private schools in the county scrambled to try and pick up the slack by offering “special summer classes”, it was too little too late for a lot...

I recently read an article in Inside Higher Education titled: “ The Customer Is Always Right” http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/12/03/marymount-enlists-students-mystery-shop-its-offices-improve-service , and it got me thinking some things. As an adminstrator, it is always a good idea to find out how your students (or customers) are doing, and whether they are satisfied with you. Notice I said satisfied not happy because it is very difficult to make everyone happy (seriously). Anyway, I started asking myself some questions such as: is it truly necessary to use subterfuge to find out all this information? Can we not just straight out ask our students or be more visible to the point where they always know how to find you on campus? We often ask students to fill out survey after survey, and even though these surveys are anonymous, it is often not difficult for a staff member or professor to figure out who wrote what comment; and because of this lack of anonymity, students are...