Tidbits from the NEJHE Beat …
Population studies. The population counts provided by the decennial U.S. census shape congressional and state legislative districts and offer a telling picture of America's and New England's changing demography. Delayed by the pandemic, the 2020 counts came close to the legal deadlines for redistricting in some states, raising concerns about whether there would...
Book Review
The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth; Jonathan Rauch; Brookings Institution Press; Washington D.C.; 2021.
Reviewed by George McCully
This is a prominent and timely book by a distinguished journalist on a subject of profound national significance, especially for our educational and scholarly professions as NEJHE has previously noted. Yet, despite its many admirab...
Higher ed has always operated in a very cyclical nature. If we look at historical movements on college campuses, including protests in favor of desegregation in the 1960s, higher ed has always been far more reactionary than proactive. For example, following the protest at the University of Missouri (Mizzou) in 2015, thousands of students at colleges and universities across the U.S protested in sol...
Should feds dictate rules on campus sexual misconduct?
The U.S. Department of Education is poised to reverse Trump-era rules governing claims of sexual misconduct on campus. One could forgive weary college counsel for a case of vertigo: The Trump rules themselves reversed the Obama rules, and Biden’s 2021 nominee to enforce the rules—Catherine Lhamon—held the same office at the Education ...
Open pedagogy projects take advantage of the internet to invite educators and students into a new relationship with both knowledge and one another. They are immensely rewarding and they require significant planning. In a time when educators and students have been thrown into a constant state of flux, taking on an open pedagogy project might seem a bit daunting. To help ease this process, we create...
A review of formal and informal processes in course selection ...
College students use both formal and informal processes when making decisions related to course selection. They often get course-registration advice through formal on-campus “institutional” resources and off-campus “non-institutional” resources.
In April 2016, a student in my Data and Decisions Analysis course at S...
In racing lingo, "DNF" stands for “Did Not Finish.” Unless getting to the finish line is a simple straight-line drag race, winning a race takes a lot more than horsepower and can be as dependent upon: brakes that allow the highest approach speeds to corners, suspension and downforce that keep the car on the track while navigating corners, and a support crew that can change tires and add gas fa...
In February 2012, a 17-year-old Black boy was shot dead in the streets of Florida by a neighbor who felt this boy looked suspicious. Carrying a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles, Trayvon Martin became yet another name added to the list of Black lives lost to racism. What surely shattered all hope, was that even after the facts of the case were reviewed, his killer was let free by the criminal ...
In 1966, Jimmy Ruffin sang “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?” This song resonates with us and many of our colleagues whose hearts were broken 55 years ago at our alma mater, Springfield College ...
Virtually every Black student at the college in those days felt unwelcomed. Not only was there a dearth of Black faculty, but there were also virtually no administrators of color and no suppor...
When I was in elementary school, history happened like this: The world was fighting, the Civil War happened, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and then everything was happy and free, and the U.S. was the place to be. Now obviously that is a gross exaggeration of the facts. But it’s not untrue about what we as role models, educators, parents and guardians chose to disclose to children about the hi...
Tidbits from the NEJHE Beat …
Population studies. The population counts provided by the decennial U.S. census shape congressional and state legislative districts and offer a telling picture of America's and New England's changing demography. Delayed by the pandemic, the 2020 counts came close to the legal deadlines for redistricting in some states, raising concerns about whether there would... 
Book Review
The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth; Jonathan Rauch; Brookings Institution Press; Washington D.C.; 2021.
Reviewed by George McCully
This is a prominent and timely book by a distinguished journalist on a subject of profound national significance, especially for our educational and scholarly professions as NEJHE has previously noted. Yet, despite its many admirab... 
Higher ed has always operated in a very cyclical nature. If we look at historical movements on college campuses, including protests in favor of desegregation in the 1960s, higher ed has always been far more reactionary than proactive. For example, following the protest at the University of Missouri (Mizzou) in 2015, thousands of students at colleges and universities across the U.S protested in sol... 
Should feds dictate rules on campus sexual misconduct?
The U.S. Department of Education is poised to reverse Trump-era rules governing claims of sexual misconduct on campus. One could forgive weary college counsel for a case of vertigo: The Trump rules themselves reversed the Obama rules, and Biden’s 2021 nominee to enforce the rules—Catherine Lhamon—held the same office at the Education ... 
Open pedagogy projects take advantage of the internet to invite educators and students into a new relationship with both knowledge and one another. They are immensely rewarding and they require significant planning. In a time when educators and students have been thrown into a constant state of flux, taking on an open pedagogy project might seem a bit daunting. To help ease this process, we create... 
A review of formal and informal processes in course selection ...
College students use both formal and informal processes when making decisions related to course selection. They often get course-registration advice through formal on-campus “institutional” resources and off-campus “non-institutional” resources.
In April 2016, a student in my Data and Decisions Analysis course at S... 
In racing lingo, "DNF" stands for “Did Not Finish.” Unless getting to the finish line is a simple straight-line drag race, winning a race takes a lot more than horsepower and can be as dependent upon: brakes that allow the highest approach speeds to corners, suspension and downforce that keep the car on the track while navigating corners, and a support crew that can change tires and add gas fa... 
In February 2012, a 17-year-old Black boy was shot dead in the streets of Florida by a neighbor who felt this boy looked suspicious. Carrying a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles, Trayvon Martin became yet another name added to the list of Black lives lost to racism. What surely shattered all hope, was that even after the facts of the case were reviewed, his killer was let free by the criminal ... 
In 1966, Jimmy Ruffin sang “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?” This song resonates with us and many of our colleagues whose hearts were broken 55 years ago at our alma mater, Springfield College ...
Virtually every Black student at the college in those days felt unwelcomed. Not only was there a dearth of Black faculty, but there were also virtually no administrators of color and no suppor... 
When I was in elementary school, history happened like this: The world was fighting, the Civil War happened, Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and then everything was happy and free, and the U.S. was the place to be. Now obviously that is a gross exaggeration of the facts. But it’s not untrue about what we as role models, educators, parents and guardians chose to disclose to children about the hi...