Fourteen years ago, as a Victor E. Cameron professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University in Houston, Richard G. Baraniuk was frustrated that he couldn't find the ideal book for his class. He knew there were tens of dozens of other professors out there with the same concern, so rather than write a […]
The very thought of drone aircraft makes many people uneasy. After all, drones carrying out attacks on terrorist groups and conducting police surveillance have been in the headlines recently. Now, they are showing up on college and university campuses but, to paraphrase Obi Wan Kenobi, "These are not the drones you are looking for." Researchers […]
While details of President Obama's college affordability proposals are not fully known, what is clear is that higher education is going under the microscope to prove its value. Add to that a growing chorus of pundits who believe that a liberal arts education is a waste of time and a relic of the past. But […]
How many members of your faculty would enjoy teaching the same courses, day in and day out, throughout a 30-, 40- or even 50-year career? Not many. Staying motivated and intellectually challenged is not always possible at schools where promotions or lateral career moves are rare. Faculty may find themselves disengaged, even downright bored, teaching […]
The challenges for executives operating state-wide higher education Systems and the flagship research universities within those Systems have grown more baffling with each passing year. From UMass and UNC to LSU, Wisconsin, and Oregon, we hear regularly about frustrated and embroiled leadership. Public Systems have always been subject to strains, both within themselves and beyond, […]
In the epic Hunger Games trilogy, Katniss learns that to survive, it is not enough to know where to be—it is just as important to know where not to be. For higher education, this means knowing what programs to curtail, and what markets to stay out of. Many institutions need to reduce their reliance on […]
I live in a world of lectures, faculty meetings and final exams. For my environmental science students and me at Widener University in Chester, Pa., however, it's also a world of hands-on research on a butterfly farm in Costa Rica, or experiential learning in the rainforests of Peru. This world didn't include university food service […]
A personal web domain, paid for by the university until graduation, is now part of the package for first-year students at one Virginia liberal arts school. Since this past fall, incoming freshmen at the 5,000-student University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg have been offered their own domain to create a personal website where they can […]
Despite the hype surrounding the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend, the reality is that BYOD has been around on college campuses for nearly a decade. Spurred by tech-savvy students who demanded internet access to their personal devices, forward-thinking administrations recognized early on that providing network access and resources to these students could improve the educational experience, while […]
As a frontline supervisor in Facilities Management, I often think about succession planning in our various organizations across the globe. I ask myself a lot of questions like; what would happen if our director won a million dollars or was offered that ultimate dream job? What would happen if our management team decided to relocate […]
