FACULTY WANTED TO TEACH WRITING OF POPULAR FICTION

Assistant Professor of English
Location: Greensburg, PA
Category: Faculty - Liberal Arts - English and Literature
Posted: 11/10/2008
Application Due: Open Until Filled
Type: Full Time

Seton Hill University seeks published novelist of popular fiction (preferably mystery/suspense), to teach and to mentor novel-length theses in the graduate low-residency Writing Popular Fiction program (half-load), and to teach undergraduate courses in creative writing and first-year composition.

Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in English, MFA considered. Background in journalism, publishing, and/or editing a plus. Teaching experience/potential at undergraduate level desirable.

Send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, official transcripts, a statement of philosophy of teaching, a writing sample, a teaching portfolio, and three letters of reference. The review process will begin February 15, 2009 and will continue until the position is filled.

Seton Hill University is a Catholic, liberal arts University, educating traditional and non-traditional undergraduate and graduate students. Classes are offered in a variety of formats - day, evening, and weekends. Seton Hill has a student-centered campus culture based on Catholic values, acceptance, community and service. The campus is located 35 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Postal Address: Dr. John Spurlock, Chair
Humanities Division
Seton Hill University
Seton Hill Drive
PO Box 507F
Greensburg, PA 15601
Email Address: spurlock@setonhill.edu
http://fiction.setonhill.edu
http://www.setonhill.edu

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ALSO WANTED: COMPOSITION SPECIALIST!

Assistant Professor of Composition
Institution: Seton Hill University
Location: Greensburg, PA
Category: Faculty - Liberal Arts - English and Literature
Posted: 11/10/2008
Application Due: Open Until Filled
Type: Full Time

Seton Hill University invites applications for an Assistant Professor position in Composition, beginning fall, 2009. The faculty member will teach first-year composition courses, with a secondary teaching responsibility as a generalist in undergraduate English.

Candidates should hold a Ph.D. in Composition/Rhetoric with an M.A. in literature (or related area). Background in writing assessment and/or writing in the disciplines a plus. An outstanding candidate who has completed all but the dissertation may be considered.

Send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, official transcripts, and a statement of philosophy of teaching composition, a writing sample, a teaching portfolio, a developmental composition syllabus, a set of teaching evaluations from a composition course and three letters of reference to. The review process will begin February 15, 2009 and will continue until the position is filled.

Seton Hill University is a Catholic, liberal arts University, educating traditional and non-traditional undergraduate and graduate students. Classes are offered in a variety of formats - day, evening, and weekends. Seton Hill has a student-centered campus culture based on Catholic values, acceptance, community and service. The campus is located 35 miles east of Pittsburgh.

Postal Address: Dr. John Spurlock, Chair
Humanities Division
Seton Hill University
Seton Hill Drive
PO Box 507F
Greensburg, PA 15601
Email Address: spurlock@setonhill.edu
http://www.setonhill.edu

Of particular concern to some education researchers is the tendency of colleges to use part-timers to teach lower-level courses, as well as courses offered at night, when part-time students are most likely to be coming to campus.

"The reality is that both part-time faculty and part-time students are less engaged with the college," said Kay M. McClenney, director of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin.

In night classes, she said, "those realities collide," undermining students' chances of succeeding. She expects the situation to get worse in the current economic downturn, as people who cannot find jobs enroll at public colleges to learn new skills, and the colleges, facing tight budgets, turn to part-time instructors to meet rising demand.

Too often adjuncts get a bum rap. The issue, always, is "investment," and I do understand the logic. But too often, I think, we confuse being invested in an institution with being invested in a student's learning, or in a culture at large's education. Moreover, when an instructor has a deep investment in their field, probably through their scholarship, it is contagious -- even jaded students who don't feel a part of the campus life can catch the spark of intellectual curiosity from a teacher truly committed to his or her scholarship -- and that's all it takes to transform a class from a collision of apathy into a wellspring of collaborative inspiration. Those who hire adjuncts often emphasize teaching experience over scholarship; this could be a mistake. New teachers -- like ABDs -- sometimes have the passion for their field that can make all the difference in a student's life.

Schmidt's essay concludes with an interesting sidebar on "innovative contracts" for building a greater sense of investment and reward for adjunct faculty. Worth a look-see.

I cheer along with the crowd. But the confetti is thinning out in the air, and realism is settling back in. Already the pundits on tv news are asking Obama to "show me the money" when it comes to the economy. I hope we will remember how and why education matters even when the accounts run low.

Education Week has an article surveying Obama's challenges on the education front, once he gets in office.

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term,” said Mr. Obama at a rally in Chicago’s Grant Park.

But Mr. Obama said in the past month that he considers education an important ingredient for addressing the country’s long-term economic problems. In the Oct. 8 presidential debate, he rated education as a priority on a par with expanding access to health care, reforming entitlement programs, and developing new forms of energy.

Indeed: Education is a health issue, it is an energy issue, it is even a war issue. It is not simply a childhood issue. It seems patently obvious to me that we need to combat ignorance worldwide if we genuinely seek civility, peace, unity and understanding.

Obama's education agenda is pretty clear cut and reasonable. The challenges he faces will mostly be financial, but the pay off will be attitudinal. There will simply be less anti-intellectualism in government than there seems to be now (in my view) and more support for both early development and college learning -- fundamental ways of repaving a foundation for the future. And virtually any reform to No Child Left Behind his administration proposes will likely be applauded by teachers everywhere.

Education.com gives a clear overview of Obama's plans for reforming education at present, but to get a deeper sense of Obama's thinking about education in America, read his July 5, 2007 speech to the NEA, where he discusses something he terms the 'these kids' syndrome and outlines why we need to reform No Child Left Behind. It not only encapsulates his promises (which he may or may not be able to fulfill) but also his accurate perception of the problem in schools.

Nevertheless, as Education Sector points out, Obama wasn't necessarily elected on an public mandate to change the education system and the current economic crisis will still drive his attention. Even so, Education Sector recommends the top 8 Education Ideas for the Next President.

As for the thoughts of college professors on the future, Scott McLemee's latest IHE article, "Turning a Page" surveys teachers by asking them what book they would recommend to the future US president and why. (In comparison, here's W's official reading list...and the unofficial, as well).

If I understand it correctly, Ratliff is responding to a lecture by Bruce Horner that suggested that the motivations for assigning personal essays often contradict or muddle up the rhetorical task. I haven't heard Horner's argument, but I'd suggest that the multiplicity of rationales is actually a sign that the assignment is a rich one, operating on multiple levels and therefore meeting multiple student needs.

I assign personal narratives often at the beginning of a term. I see my motives in virtually all of the reasons Ratliff posts...the only motive not mentioned that I can think of is that it serves a "de-icing" function by humanizing the institution, inviting students to self-express to thaw out the chill of fear early in the term. It just seems like the most honest way to begin. It also can encourage a habit of critical journal writing, if that's a method used in the course. One of the difficulties I have is not assigning or assessing these papers; its weaning some students from writing too informally later in the term, when formal research papers are due. The struggle with academic voice victimizes the style and makes a mess out of things. But it's a good struggle, I think, ultimately.

• Ineffective Contextualization


• Unclear Learning Outcomes


• Misuse of the environment


• Illusive grading practices


• Inadequate time allocation

I don't use blogs as a teaching tool nearly as much as my English colleague at SHU, Dennis Jerz, does (see our campus blog portal for a peek at all that he administers). But I do routinely ask my student authors in the Writing Popular Fiction graduate program to keep a blog as a reading journal. Reading Reynard's article, I feel that "illusive grading practices" may be something I still need to work on: often, I just append evaluative comments on a student's blog entries without giving much thought into the >kind< of entries I'm evaluating. Reynard recommends making a rubric that outlines various "statement types" that students can bring to their blogging, such as: "Reflection statements (self positioning within the course concepts); Commentary statements (effective use of the course content in discussion and analysis); New idea statements (synthesis of ideas to a higher level); and Application statements (direct use of the new ideas in a real life setting)." I may borrow from this idea and design a handout for students that asks them to approach their journal entries -- which essentially are reading responses -- as different "types" of statements -- possibly asking them to do one of each. Another good idea, naturally, is to request students to tag entries along these lines, as warranted.

I also like Dennis Jerz' structured RRRR sequence -- a method for routinizing student blogging assignments in his Writing for the Internet course. It encourages students to interact with each other and class alike, and functions to support his challenging "Just in Time" teaching method.

Halloween is fast approaching, so horror literature is in the air. If you're teaching it, you might want to look for the "Writer's Talk" series on WCBE (Ohio's NPR station), which will be airing interviews with horror writers Michael Arnzen, Gary Braunbeck, Lucy Snyder, and Lawrence Connolly each Wednesday in October.

The topic is "The Business & Life of Writing Horror" and all of us had a blast together answering questions about this crazy genre of dread and terror, from how to write it, to what it means for today's culture. The Arnzen session airs tonight on WCBE (10/8/08) at 8pm, and I think it turned out really well.

If you miss it, don't worry:  you should be able to hear the podcast online, provided by Doug Dangler and the Ohio Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing. In fact, you can stream a copy of it on your computer right now here:

The full interview will all four horror writers will soon be available on OSU's CSTW website -- which you can also subscribe to on iTunes .

Kate Hursh (aka Kate Cielinski), Seton Hill U class of 2005 (& CMU class of '06)

Start with a brief bio that tells us first where you are now, then what your status was in college (e.g. "Creative Writing major, Volleyball player, Tetris fan, whatever.) Let your personality show.

I've justed started a new job; I'm supporting a group of engineers by utilizing my writing, coordinating, and teaching/training skills in a pioneering company in the nuclear energy field. After studying literature and creative writing in college, I went to grad school to pursue a master's degree in cultural studies. Grad school set me straight and I decided I didn't want the PhD I had once desired, so I returned to SHU to assist in running the writing center. Now I find myself oddly situated somewhere in the nuclear renaissance, and I'm enjoying the opportunity to soak up something new.

Tell us where you thought you'd be now, back when you were a college freshman.

I thought I'd be an art history professor. I switched my major to lit and writing when I had a taste of my freshman writing class. I learned that I liked writing about all kinds of things -- issues relating to education, gender, The Little Mermaid... In the end, I guess I didn't really love writing as much as I loved the subjects I was analyzing. This is probably why I ended up in cultural studies; I'm just fascinated by all kinds of STUFF, and I like thinking about how we, as producers and consumers of culture, relate to "stuff."

Describe your college experience in one word. Then elaborate in no more than five sentences.

Bizarre. I was fascinated by taboo topics (and the responses people have to them), so I often wrote about feces and menstruation. This has proven to be an obstacle when attempting to locate suitable writing samples for job interviews. I suppose that some people would find papers about gigantic poop-monsters to be offputting.

Describe one very specific lesson from the college classroom that you'll never forget. Give us concrete details. Tell us not only what it taught you, but also how and why it worked.

I was scared into becoming a better writer. In the second or third week of classes, my writing professor put a paper of mine on the overhead and tore it apart in front of the class. He said something like, "I'd give this paper an 'A' for its ideas, but an 'F' for its style." I wanted to crawl under the table. Even though my name had been covered on the overhead, I was so embarrassed to have followed a five paragraph essay format. It was such a very high school thing to do.

What do you know now that you wish someone would have taught you in school? How might that lesson best be taught?

I wish I had learned the importance of doing what I wanted to do. I'm attempting to re-career now that I've spent five years of my life pursuing a subject and career path that is painfully unappealing to me. As excited as I was in certain classes (those where I was granted permission to write about whatever I fancied), I hated the majority of my English classes. I abhored over 90% of the books and literature I read. That should have been a sign. Instead, I trudged on.

Very few people (regardless of age) know what they want out of life, but college students are particularly confused. They're bombarded with all these ideas about what and who they should be. Parents tell them what to do. Professors tell them what to do. P Diddy tells them what to do.

I could have possibly learned what I wanted to do by taking advantage of the career development office and internships. Career development offices can help students to explore options they did not know existed, and an internship is a much better way of trying a job on for size. When I advised students, I was constantly talking to them about the importance of exploring different majors and going to the campus career development office to tap into its useful resources.

What teaching method(s) were you subjected to that never made a dent on your learning?

Group learning was consistently awful and useless, especially in classes where professors relied on it as the sole method of teaching. All it really showed me was that most people are lazy and disrespectful, but I can't say that was a lesson I hadn't already learned.

What college experience did you find most displeasing at the time, but now recognize as an important contribution to your learning?

Presentations. I used to hate them, but I now realize the value they hold and all of the fantastic practice they gave me for leading my own classroom and capturing an audience's attention.

What habits -- good and bad -- did you pick up in school, that you still continue to apply?

Good habit: awesome research and critical thinking skills.

Bad habit: waiting for validation from others. I'm just beginning to act my own without any need for an 'A' paper or a pat on the back.

What do you miss about the college classroom, if anything?

I miss having the opportunity to be completely selfish. I was lucky that I could soak up the college experience without having to pay for my tuition or other bills (well, I did have to maintain my GPA in order to earn my scholarship). Although I regret that I didn't pursue a major that would ultimately satisfy me, I am so, so thankful that I had a chance to just be a student. I would do anything to once again be a fulltime student without any financial worries.

If there was one suggestion you would make to college teachers everywhere, what would it be?

Never make your own book a required text. Even if it's the best book ever written on the subject, don't do it. That leads to a classroom situation that is just too awkward. Spare your students. Spare yourself.

THANK YOU, Kate, for sharing such honest and useful insights. Thanks, too, for all you did to help others in the writing center. We miss you at SHU!

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Read more "Student Outcomes"!

"The Unlearning: Horror and Transformative Theory" by Michael A. Arnzen

Abstract:

Building on the foundational concepts of transformative learning theory, I argue that horror fiction strongly encourages perspective transformation by challenging student assumptions about both genre writing and educational experience. I informally describe a specific creative writing class period focusing on the motif of the scream in diverse horror texts, and I illustrate how students learn to transform what they already bring to the classroom by employing a variety of particular in-class writing exercises and literary discussions. Among these, transformative writing exercises—such as the revision of an existing text by Stephen King—are highlighted as instructional techniques. As cautionary literature, horror especially dramatizes strategies of fight versus flight. I reveal how students can learn by transforming their knowledge through disorientation that is particular to reading and writing in the horror genre.

I started thinking about the ideas in this article after writing a blog entry back in 2005 called "Shifting the Paradigm: Transformative Learning Theory" -- a response to an essay I read by Kelly McGonigal called "Teaching for Transformation."

McGonigal's article got me to rethink the role of the reflective essay assignments in my classes, and I soon found myself in the library, catching up on transformative learning theory by reading the works of Jack Mezirow and others who seek to change the worldviews of adult learners. The key role of the "activating event" in transformation got me thinking about how "cautionary" tales and other works in the horror genre often trigger anticipatory thinking that requires a revision of what one initially assumed to be true. After applying these lessons to a course I taught in horror fiction writing last year, I captured some of these ideas in a conference paper in March 2008 at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts...an early draft of this now-published version. I invite comments here or at the journal, which includes a number of good articles on fan studies and popular culture.

The idea was actually derived by the work itself (and I wouldn't be surprised if others have used the source material in the same way): 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, by artist Matt Madden (who maintains a related weblog, as well). The goal of Madden's 99 Ways, which was inspired by French writer Raymond Queneau's prose experiment, Exercises in Style, was to provide "as many variations as possible on a simple one-page non-story."

This is the template he provides on page one, which is followed by 98 graphic variations of the same sequence:

Madden calls this a "non-story" but it does have all the elements of a story, and these elements come to light when he draws and presents variations on the template: for example, one page (called "Subjective") has identical frames drawn from the point-of-view of the male character as he makes his way to the fridge; another (called "Upstairs"), depicts the same event in time, but shifts the viewpoint to the character above the spiral staircase who is responsible for calling down about the time. Many of the variations are radical and eye-poppingly ingenious, like the "Underground Comic" and the "Map" versions of the same template.

On the first day of class, I used this book in class by showing students a variety of these variations using the document/overhead projector, and simply asking them what exactly made each page different and unique. It allowed me to briefly touch on core elements of the craft, like character (in one variation, everything is the same except for the man, who is drawn like a cartoon skunk), viewpoint (there's a lot of these in the book, including a monologue where the male character sits behind a desk and talks about what we see in the template), setting (a la "upstairs"), and conflict. The point that I think was successfully made in class was that every single choice a writer makes can radically change the story as a whole, and that a virtual infinity of choices are available to the writer, constrained only by a core structure of sequence that readers need to make sense of a series of events.

What perhaps was most difficult to show here was the "plot" of the template. While I did ask the class "What's the conflict here? What is the core problem, or struggle that the character goes through?" they were slow to respond. They deduced that the man was hungry and needed something from the fridge, but was frustratingly interrupted on his way. I asked them about that interruption: "We don't see who the source of the voice is... is it a live-in lover? A housewife? Who?" They seemed to agree it was his significant other. But then I asked them if it might very well be God. This question -- while perhaps stretching into absurdity -- allowed me to suggest that this story might be saying something universally human and profound, or epiphanic, even if that "theme" wasn't on the surface at all.

But all of this was a precursor to an actual writing assignment, which was really my intention. I asked students to take Madden's template (I photocopied it for educational use) and write a short-short story of significance based on it. I did NOT give them any more specifics than that, and a few students sent me curious e-mails about how far they could change things. I told them their imaginations were the only limit, but that any reader in class ought to be able to tell that this was a variation that might have "fit" in the same book as the one I showed them in class.

The following class period I asked a few students to share some of their stories orally with the class as a whole. A lot of fun was had. I noticed that many of them added something new on to the end of the comic strip, as if it were all a precursor to something else, or as if "revision" only meant "adding." But it was a fruitful and productive exercise, I think, and I think most creative writing exercises try to do something similar: to posit a prompt or template idea that students later can share, to reveal the variety of choices (stylistic and beyond) which reveal the variety of choices that are available to a writer, and the repetition-with-a-difference that compels our fascination with storytelling.

Writing about this reminds me of other classes I've taught that have used comix in similar ways. It's been a long time since I've done so, but I recall once using a Garfield comic strip in my basic writing course. I photocopied a 3 panel strip of Garfield doing a monologue while looking at -- and then away -- from a sunflower in a pot. I don't even remember what wry commentary Garfield was making -- all that mattered to me was the structure. I blotted out all the words in the thought balloons and then photocopied (and enlarged) the strip before distributing the strip to students. I asked them to "fill in the blanks" of the thought balloons with the main ideas of their paragraphs. I was trying to illustrate the way that paragraphs don't simply chain together a list, but move a thesis through a process of thought that changes as the paper progresses. I'm not sure how successful that was, but I remember that the students enjoyed working with the handout and were excited to share the results in small groups.

I hope to look into Raymond Queneau's work for more ideas. But at this point I am convinced that making structure visual is always a good idea. This is why we diagram sentences and outline essays and use organizational charts. The structures of graphic fiction can make this process both entertaining and educational, while appealing to visual learners. I intend to keep looking for more ways to integrate such matters into the classroom. Your own experiences are welcome -- leave a comment.

Though this number is higher nationally than it is on my own campus, I still don't find this rate of transfer surprising at all, because I've seen the increase in transferring firsthand. The NY Times article suggests that today's "Millennial" generation approach their curriculum just like they do their iPods, selecting courses like singles that they're loading up into their playlists, making increasingly granular choices regardless of "brand affiliation" (eg. a lack of commitment to one's "alma mater.") Admissions offices call the high churn rate of transfer courses "swirling" -- a term I associate with toilet bowl flushes rather than academics, but it's still an apt term. Swirling is what helicopter wings do and it can leave you dizzy and disoriented.

I often staff the "transfer orientation" that our campus hosts during the summer, when incoming transfer students sign up for their first courses... and I have to tell you, as much as I enjoy transfer students (because they usually bring fresh perspectives into the classroom), it's often a nightmarish webwork of complexity trying to figure out what courses a student still "needs" to graduate, despite the useful and helpful audits of our registrars. The sum (diploma) always means more to these students than the variables (courses) that add up to it, and -- coupled with financial pressures that are only rising over the years -- for too many students a "survivalist" mindset drives their learning: many students just want to cobble together a schedule so they can finish their long-suffering and have a degree. Perhaps the way colleges sell themselves contributes to the problem. If a degree is something that can be acquired if enough "stamps" are earned, then it doesn't matter where you get those stamps.

But it is a bit out of the ordinary to earn a degree from one college -- an institutional endorsement of one's educational status -- while still having a transcript that quilts together several different colleges that made their imprint on the student in some fashion outside of the penumbra of the college giving the degree. Do these students feel attachment to their degree-granting institution as "alums" as much as traditional four year students do? Institutional identity evaporates beneath this to some degree, rending the early colleges that the student transferred out of as functionaries toward the final degree. I can imagine some minor forms of blowback that students wouldn't anticipate (e.g., imagine an employer who is a Yale alum reviewing a student's transcripts during the hiring process: Would they see the transfer out of Yale as troubling? Do they see a high "swirl" rate as a sign that a potential employee lacks commitment?)

There are also ways in which "swirling" renders a college's self-assessment problematic. If a school is surveying student attitudes or performance at various grade levels, comparing and contrasting and looking for statistical growth from freshman to senior year, what do the numbers mean if such a high percentage of those seniors have only been in residence for a year or two? Or that the freshman won't be around very long? How do retention committees and officers understand these numbers and marshal policies based on them? Even within any given academic major, swirling problematizes program review and if upper division courses have prerequisites that are built on assumptions about how those prereqs are taught locally, rather than universally, then most assumptions regarding progressive learning are essentially undermined.

Indeed, although it is nothing new (and often common among Adult and non-traditional learners) swirling requires a reformulation of not only what we mean by "traditional students" but what we mean by "progressive learning" across any given student's career. I think teachers concerned with such issues may find a review of Transformative Learning theory a worthwhile endeavor in this regard.

Mike Rubino, Seton Hill U class of 2007

Start with a brief bio that tells us first where you are now, then what your status was in college (e.g. "Creative Writing major, Volleyball player, Tetris fan, whatever.) Let your personality show.

I am currently a graphic designer for a commercial and political strategy firm in Pittsburgh. I graduated from SHU with a B.F.A in graphic design with a minor in creative writing. While at Seton Hill I was a "Renaissance Man," bouncing between graphic design, fine arts, theater, creative writing, and politics with the occasional pause to watch some "MacGyver" on DVD and write some blogs.

Tell us where you thought you'd be now, back when you were a college freshman.

I'm pretty much exactly where I expected to be. I knew when I enrolled that I wanted to work in the world of graphic design, and I discovered during my junior year that I wanted to work for the company that currently employs me. Maybe it's strange that I was able to plan ahead and attain my goals with only minor hiccups; that either means that I'm boring or I'm blessed.

Describe your college experience in one word. Then elaborate in no more than five sentences.

Unique. My field of study, extracurricular activities, and friendships yielded experiences that few others could expect from a small liberal arts school. As a cartoonist and writer for the school paper, as well as a campus blogger, I was able to reach a large number of people on campus without ever actually meeting them. My interest in English and theater allowed me to expand my education into new areas and consequently integrate these ideas into my graphic design degree with the help of independent studies and self-designed courses. I was also able to meet amazing people that I hope to be friends with the rest of my life.

Describe one very specific lesson from the college classroom that you'll never forget. Give us concrete details. Tell us not only what it taught you, but also how and why it worked.

In my freshman drawing course with Phil Rostek (a course that almost all art majors take, and everyone loves), he began the first day of class with the odd exercise of having us draw with the lights off. Students stand by their easel with a raw stick of charcoal in hand and a piece of blank newsprint in front of them. Phil turns out the lights and everyone begins to draw. It was an odd sensation to say the least; however it was also the first indication that I was in a new environment, I was out of high school and in this strange and unnerving place called "college." The exercise was fun and messy, but in the grand scheme of things it served as a reminder of the new sort of learning environment I had entered into.

What do you know now that you wish someone would have taught you in school? How might that lesson best be taught?

Personal finances. Now that I have a full time job, my parents have been working extra hard to teach me about investments, savings, and creating a nest egg for my future. It isn't likely that upcoming generations will have Social Security when they retire, so it's important for students to learn formally how to save money, invest, and budget their income (even if college kids don't actually make enough money to put the knowledge into immediate action).

What teaching method(s) were you subjected to that never made a dent on your learning?

The most ineffective teaching method I have encountered is the "group project." This isn't because I'm anti-social or fear cooperation; rather, I found that group work slowed me down and diluted the learning process. First, students that I knew rarely wanted to be in a group (and if the kids get to choose their groups, then you are faced with the "picked last in dodgeball" scenario). It's like playing on a team that no one wants to be on. Secondly, students who are self-motivated leaders find themselves at odds with other members of the group, and, in my opinion, have to stunt their own advancements in order to keep the "learning field" level. Lastly, group projects, presentations, and discussions rarely felt appropriate when they were instituted in the lesson plan. They weren't present in every course I enrolled in, but oftentimes I found that their inclusion was because people assumed groups were necessary, rather than actually adding to the learning experience.

Of course, the idea behind the group project is noble: that they prepare you for a team-oriented working environment commonly found in the real world; but in my work experience so far, my collaborative efforts (which hinge on seniority and hierarchy) have been very different from the classroom.

What college experience did you find most displeasing at the time, but now recognize as an important contribution to your learning?

Doing fake interviews. In a couple of the core courses, students are asked to sit through a mock interview to go over their resume and test their job-grabbin' skills. At the time, I sort of rolled my eyes at the idea, and wasn't thrilled about going through the motions of an interview. Looking back, however, the practice interview in my core courses, like Senior Seminar, was a huge help. It taught me instinctual skills that I had to actually use at an interview six months after graduating.

I'm sure there are plenty of other exercises and lessons I went through in college that I didn't enjoy but ended up needing... but my advice to students would be to sit through them and try your best to absorb everything, because you never know when it'll come in handy.

What habits -- good and bad -- did you pick up in school, that you still continue to apply?

1. Drinking upwards of 4 cups of coffee a day
2. Listening to Charles Mingus when I really want to get something done
3. Constantly employing the phrase "I could blog that" in my head

You can decide if any or all of those are bad.

What do you miss about the college classroom, if anything?

It was nice having a syllabus to tell me about what I'll be talking about and doing each day. It provided me with a gameplan, a learning track that I could see in its entirety and prepare for. It's a shame the real world isn't like that.

If there was one suggestion you would make to college teachers everywhere, what would it be?

If you're going to make students buy a book that costs over $50, you'd better use every chapter in that thing.

THANK YOU, Mike! You offer some fantastic advice in here for students and teachers alike.

***
Read more "Student Outcomes"!

They also might enhance or catalyze learning. Making decisions about campus technology always means trying to weigh symbolic value against actual use value. We have to predict whether students and faculty will actually use the technology we budget for, and whether it really will benefit the learner or the learning environment. Obviously, we have to be careful how money is spent, but also a little skeptical of whiz-bang pop trends, because they are quickly surmounted by new technologies as it so rapidly evolves. Today's clickers are tomorrow's eight track tapes. And as teachers and administrators age, they try to leap across the generation gap and sometimes land in the wrong place, alienating students despite their good intentions.

In the margins of the NY Times article, a reader opinion from "Paul" is pulled out that cries, "Are we training thinkers in our colleges or gadget users?" I understand the feeling behind this. But I think this false dualism is beyond the point, because our thinkers in the classroom are already gadget users; our gadget users already are thinkers. The challenge of the modern teacher is to synthesize these tools with the way people think (just as we might teach penmanship in early education, so that students can use the technology of the ink pen). These are tools that students use in their everyday lives, and they'll be expected to use them well in the workplace after college.

I received this article as I was revising my syllabi for the term (that begins on Monday), and it caused me to reflect a little bit on how I treat portable electronic devices in the classroom. We're not giving away iPhones at our college, and I'm not changing my classroom into a "gizmo training" place, but the campus is evolving into a more wireless-friendly space. Between classes, I see virtually every student in the hallway working on their cell phones or portable game systems. The culture has shifted, but education and much of the subject matter we teach remains timeless.

It's easy to be reactionary or even live in denial. I'm as guilty as anyone. I have been brash about not allowing these elements to become distractions in my classroom, often demanding students to focus on the class and not their gizmos. In the past, I've order students to turn their cell phones to silent ring mode, and I have almost always told any students I see working with devices to shut them off. I have never really articulated my policies about this, other than orally when I spot an offense (say, a student starts texting during another student's presentation), simply because it seemed like common sense and common courtesy for people not to interrupt or ignore one another during a classroom activity or lecture.

The rules of common courtesy have changed. I've decided that things have changed so much that the time has come to put a policy in writing in my syllabus, so students understand where I'm coming from. My motive is not to punish, but to highlight the propriety of social communication. I want to recognize and support student use of technology as a tool for learning, while also combating the rising problem of blaring ring tones during lectures/discussions, or the distracted student who can't stop playing with his game or web browser during class time.

In some ways, there's no difference between a student texting and a student flipping through a magazine in the back row of a class, but there are times when we use technology to multitask and this is where the issue gets thorny and complex. What if we're discussing Foucault's "Panopticism" in the classroom and a student wants to quickly do some web research on a referenced person in the article, like Jeremy Bentham? I wouldn't want to ban such ambitious impulses to learn more, so long as it pertained to the subject at hand or contributed to the collaborative learning of the class.

What I'm really concerned about is multitasking that puts personal interest above the class interest, and the fetishism of technology that reinforces gizmo play for its own sake. My hope is that I can help students consciously rethink their gizmos as tools for learning and research and communication, and to respect the social space and dynamic of the classroom.

My new policy is an attempt to prevent what is known as "backgrounding" in the classroom while respecting the existence and purpose of these portable devices. I'd be interested to hear what readers of this blog think about this policy statement, whether in the form of editorial suggestions or by mentioning problems I might not foresee.

Policy on Personal Electronic Devices

Our classroom is a haven from the distractions of everyday life, giving us a place to focus attentively, in collaboration, on learning. Listening to each other is imperative and enables focused concentration. "Multitasking" inhibits learning and disrupts communication; unexpected beeps and surprising ring tones distract us all. Thus, while you are permitted to bring personal devices (cell phones, PDAs, laptops, sound recorders, and other electronic devices) to class, they must only serve class needs (e.g., typing on a laptop for an in-class writing assignment; using an iPhone to record lectures). My policy on this matter can be summed up in one phrase: "class in the foreground." If you ever appear to be "backgrounding" the class you will receive an absence for the day, and may be expelled from the room and not permitted to make up missed in-class work. Examples of "backgrounding" the class in a punishable way include: answering or making a cell phone call; texting or IMing; checking or writing e-mail; surfing the web; wearing headphones; logging into MySpace, Facebook, your SHU blog, or other social network; reading an ebook or any printed matter not related to class content (e.g. a magazine); and handheld gaming. Please set your cell phones to "silent" mode before class begins. I reserve the right to ban electronic devices entirely if I feel they are distracting you or your classmates from proper study.

I'll post an update if warranted. If you have comments or want to share your own experiences of such issues, please post.

Here's a short excerpt:

Arnzen also credits his success with taking creative risks. “This is another way of saying I don’t mind embarrassing myself,” he said. “Genres rely on conventions and expectations, so many writers err on the side of repeating what’s been done before.” Arnzen said he’s “always thrown caution to the wind and tried to be as weird and experimental as I can. I try not to censor myself too much.” Horror itself can be taken too seriously at times. Arnzen balances this seriousness with humor. “I don’t hold back the humor. To me, a lot of the appeal of horror is its absurdity,” he said. “I find much of what I’ve read or seen in horror quite laughable.”

Anyone who writes instructional books will find the TAA organization a useful hub of information. Their introductory membership rates are reasonable. Check them out.

You can also compare ALL the candidates positions on education (and other key issues) across the board at ontheissues.org.

But reading the sample chapter on students and labor, "Students are Already Workers," (.pdf file) really got me thinking about my students, as I plan for the classes in the year ahead:

The reality of the undergraduate workforce is very different from the representation of teen partiers on a perpetual spring break, as popularized by television (Girls Gone Wild), UPS propaganda (“they’re staying up until dawn anyway”), and Time: “Meet the ‘twixters,’ [twenty-somethings] who live off their parents, bounce from job to job and hop from mate to mate. They’re not lazy—they just won’t grow up” (Grossman; for more, see Bartlett).

There are more than 15 million students currently enrolled in higher ed (with an average age of around twenty-six). Tens of millions of persons have recently left higher education, nearly as many without degrees as with them. Like graduate employees, undergraduates now work longer hours in school, spend more years in school, and can take several years to find stable employment after obtaining their degrees. Undergraduates and recent school leavers, whether degree holders or not, now commonly live with their parents well beyond the age of legal adulthood, often into their late twenties. Like graduate employees, undergraduates increasingly find that their period of “study” is, in fact, a period of employment as cheap labor. The production of cheap workers is facilitated by an ever-expanding notion of “youth.” A University of Chicago survey conducted in 2003 found that the majority of Americans now think that adulthood begins around twenty-six, an age not coincidentally identical with the average age of the undergraduate student population (Tom Smith).

The idea that college instructors are teaching students to be "pre-professionals" before they enter the workforce is becoming an anachronism. Students are working more and more...whether in work study or in jobs to support their degree. More and more they come to my office door, asking for extensions or accommodations that can work around their employer's schedules. More and more, I see students in campus offices, doing much of the grunt work. I go out to a local restaurant or a downtown bar, I see my students...but they're not eating or partying; they're taking my orders or pouring my drinks.

So what? one might wonder. What's the harm? Students work, just like everyone else. I have conflicting feelings. For one thing, college can and maybe should be a temporary sanctuary away from the work world. But as someone who also worked in a "real world" job throughout college (and who signed up for the GI Bill and spent a few years in military service just to afford to attend college to begin with), I've always felt that these struggles are beneficial, ultimately, because they can teach a person the ethics required to survive in the workforce, like disciplined time management and the art of delayed gratification (e.g. work now, pay later). We "pay to work" when we go to college, in the interest of not only learning skills and information, but also earning the social capital it takes to raise one's status.

But clearly economic benefits should not be the sole outcome of a college degree. Everyone recognizes -- students most of all -- that there's a bit of exploitation that goes on in the minimum wage labor class, but its treated like a natural form of paying one's dues to raise oneself up economically -- and this is the "script" that parents and culture-at-large often hand students. I hadn't really considered how this script might be a symptom of a larger form of class exploitation, or a symptom of a rising "age of adulthood" that for the most part (as Bousquet argues) serves the interest of corporate employers. As teachers, when we see student workers through the lens of our own similar past work experiences, and treat it as "paying one's dues," then, as Bousquet suggests, we might also be guilty of "reinforc[ing] commitments to inequality" systemically, even as we assume that we might be liberating students via their education.

But even beyond the political economy of all this, the increase in student commitment to working for survival (let alone experience) results in a reprioritization of the role of learning in a life-well-lived. Too often, the classroom is an atomized part of a "workweek" schedule that is understood to be, simply, more work just like everything else that is not overtly part of leisure culture. It's up to teachers to transform that workspace, but it can be difficult.

The problem isn't just that students are overburdened with work and oppressed by the class system -- they also tend to deprioritize learning in order to just survive through the grind of the day. When students arrive in the classroom wearing their work or athletic uniforms, it always signals to me that their outside lives are competing for their time and attention. They are overscheduled. The agenda for the day becomes marching orders, and the mind can only process so much. And some students are not shy at all about reminding everyone in the room that that this class meeting is just a brief pit-stop on the race from point A to point B. It is my job to make that pit-stop a meaningful place that doesn't just fuel them up with knowledge and send them back on the track; instead, the pit-stop needs to be a temporary but FULL stop -- a place where both the track and the rules of the race are better understood -- if not revised altogether. Sometimes school can be a place where maps are discovered that leads one into the more exciting and rewarding territories off-road altogether.

Metaphorical ideals aside, I hope to overtly raise issues of economic class in my courses in the year ahead, if only to heighten student awareness about their cultural identity and to learn how I can better accomodate student needs while remaining committed to a liberal arts mission and not some other economic interest. In creative writing courses, I have assigned the theme of work broadly and have always been amazed with what students have to say about it when given free reign to explore their relationship to the workforce. Perhaps I'll even assign this chapter from Bousquet's book for a discussion or research. For me, one of the main goals as a teacher is consciousness-raising. Bousquet frames the questions at issue in this debate in a way that might lead to some productive discussions:

For me, the basis of solidarity and hope will always be the collective experience of workplace exploitation and the widespread desire to be productive for society rather than for capital. So when we ask, "Why has higher education gotten more expensive?" we need to bypass the technocratic and "necessitarian" account of events, in which all answers at least implicitly bring the concept of necessity beyond human agency to bear ("costs 'had to' rise because..."). Instead, we need to identify the agencies of inequality and ask, "To whom is the arrangement of student debt and student labor most useful?"

The answer to that final question, unsuprisingly, is never "to the student."