Good Work If You Can Get It: How to Succeed in Academia


Jason Brennan - 2020
    But while almost all of new PhD students say they want to work in academia, most are destined for disappointment. The hard truth is that half will quit or fail to get their degree, and most graduates will never find a full-time academic job.In Good Work If You Can Get It, Jason Brennan combines personal experience with the latest higher education research to help you understand what graduate school and the academy are really like. This candid, pull-no-punches book answers questions big and small, including- Should I go to graduate school--and what will I do once I get there?- How much does a PhD cost--and should I pay for one?- What kinds of jobs are there after grad school, and who gets them? - What happens to the people who never get full-time professorships? - What does it take to be productive, to publish continually at a high level? - What does it take to teach many classes at once? - What does it take to succeed in graduate school? - How does "publish or perish" work? - How much do professors get paid?- What do search committees look for, and what turns them off? - How do I know which journals and book publishers matter? - How do I balance work and life?This realistic, data-driven look at university teaching and research will make your graduate and postgraduate experience a success. Good Work If You Can Get It is the guidebook anyone considering graduate school, already in grad school, starting as a new professor, or advising graduate students needs. Read it, and you will come away ready to hit the ground running.

American Higher Education In The Twenty First Century: Social, Political, And Economic Challenges


Philip G. Altbach - 1998
    Chapters also deal with key constituencies - students and faculty - in the context of a changing academic environment. While the contributors agree with critics who argue for ongoing reassessment of public institutions, they provide a more balanced perspective. They take issue with the crisis culture that has emerged among critics of current higher education practices, pointing out that higher education has faced challenges through its history. By illuminating the complex interplay between institutions and external forces, the book provides a key to guide the endeavors of faculty, students, and administrative leaders. Fully revised and updated, the second edition includes a new chapter on higher education markets.

Never Underestimate Your Teachers: Instructional Leadership for Excellence in Every Classroom


Robyn R. Jackson - 2013
    Jackson, author of the best-selling Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching.In this book for school leaders, Jackson presents a new model for understanding teaching as a combination of skill and will and explains the best ways to support individual teachers' ongoing professional development. Here, you'll learn how to meet your teachers where they are and help every one of them--from the raw novice to the savvy veteran, from the initiative-weary to the change-challenged to the already outstanding--develop the mindset and habits of master teachers. Real-life examples, practical tools, and strategies for managing time and energy demands will help you build your leadership capacity as you raise the level of instructional excellence throughout your school.To move your school forward, you must move the people in it. If you want a master teacher every classroom, you must commit to helping every teacher be a master teacher. That work begins here.

The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life


Parker J. Palmer - 1997
    It is for teachers who refuse to harden their hearts, because they love learners, learning, and the teaching life." - Parker J. Palmer [from the Introduction] Teachers choose their vocation for reasons of the heart, because they care deeply about their students and about their subject. But the demands of teaching cause too many educators to lose heart. Is it possible to take heart in teaching once more so that we can continue to do what good teachers always do -- give heart to our students?In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer takes teachers on an inner journey toward reconnecting with their vocation and their students -- and recovering their passion for one of the most difficult and important of human endeavors.

Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: A Cultural Approach


Jeffrey Jensen Arnett - 2009
    This book also takes into account the period of emerging adulthood (ages 18-25), an area sometimes neglected but of particular interest to many students who see themselves reflected in the research. Looking for additional resources to help you understand the material and succeed in this course? MyDevelopmentLab contains study tools such as flashcards, self tests, videos, as well as MyVirtulTeen which allows you to raise your own virtual teenager, focusing on the ages 10 through 18. MyDevelpmentLab is available at www.mydevelopmentlab.com.

Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School


Shamus Rahman Khan - 2010
    Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, has long been the exclusive domain of America’s wealthiest sons. But times have changed. Today, a new elite of boys and girls is being molded at St. Paul’s, one that reflects the hope of openness but also the persistence of inequality.In Privilege, Shamus Khan returns to his alma mater to provide an inside look at an institution that has been the private realm of the elite for the past 150 years. He shows that St. Paul’s students continue to learn what they always have — how to embody privilege. Yet, while students once leveraged the trappings of upper-class entitlement, family connections, and high culture, current St. Paul’s students learn to succeed in a more diverse environment. To be the future leaders of a more democratic world, they must be at ease with everything from highbrow art to everyday life — from Beowulf to Jaws — and view hierarchies as ladders to scale. Through deft portrayals of the relationships among students, faculty, and staff, Khan shows how members of the new elite face the opening of society while still preserving the advantages that allow them to rule.

What My Heart Wants to Tell


Verna Mae Slone - 1979
    So He sent us His very strongest men and women." So begins the heartwarming story of Verna Mae and her father, Isom B. "Kitteneye" Slone, an extraordinary personal family history set in the hills around Caney Creek in Knott County, Kentucky.

The Art of Teaching


Jay Parini - 2004
    In The Art of Teaching, writer and critic Jay Parini looks back over his own decades of trials, errors, and triumphs, in an intimate memoir that brims with humor, encouragement, and hard-won wisdom about the teacher's craft. Here is a godsend for instructors of all levels, offering valuable insight into the many challenges that educators face, from establishing a persona in the classroom, to fostering relationships with students, to balancing teaching load with academic writing and research. Insight abounds. Parini shows, for instance, that there is nothing natural about teaching. The classroom is a form of theater, and the teacher must play various roles. A good teacher may look natural, but that's the product of endless practice. The book also considers such topics as the manner of dress that teachers adopt (and what this says about them as teachers), the delicate question of politics in the classroom, the untapped value of emeritus professors, and the vital importance of a settled, disciplined life for a teacher and a writer. Parini grounds all of this in personal stories of his own career in the academy, tracing his path from unfocused student--a self-confessed tough nut to crack--to passionate writer, scholar, and teacher, one who frankly admits making many mistakes over the years. Every year, thousands of newly minted college teachers embark on their careers, most with scant training in their chosen profession. The Art of Teaching is a perfect book for these young educators as well as anyone who wants to learn more about this difficult but rewarding profession.

Suicide: A Study in Sociology


Émile Durkheim - 1897
    Written by one of the world’s most influential sociologists, this classic argues that suicide primarily results from a lack of integration of the individual into society. Suicide provides readers with an understanding of the impetus for suicide and its psychological impact on the victim, family, and society.

Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy


Maggie Berg - 2013
    Yet the corporatisation of the contemporary university has sped up the clock, demanding increased speed and efficiency from faculty regardless of the consequences for education and scholarship.In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter this erosion of humanistic education. Focusing on the individual faculty member and his or her own professional practice, Berg and Seeber present both an analysis of the culture of speed in the academy and ways of alleviating stress while improving teaching, research, and collegiality. The Slow Professor will be a must-read for anyone in academia concerned about the frantic pace of contemporary university life.

In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development


Carol Gilligan - 1982
    Published decades ago, it made women's voices heard, in their own right, with their own integrity, for virtually the 1st time in social scientific theorizing about women. Its impact was immediate & continues in the academic world & beyond. Translated into 16 languages, with over 750,000 copies sold. In a Different Voice has inspired new research, new educational initiatives & political debate--& helped many women & men to see themselves & each other in a different light. Gilligan believes that psychology has persistently & systematically misunderstood women: their motives, their moral commitments, the course of their psychological growth & their special view of what is important in life. Here she sets out to correct psychology's misperceptions & refocus its view of female personality. The result is a tour de force, which may reshape much of what psychology now has to say about female experience.AcknowledgmentsIntroductionWoman's place in man's life cycleImages of relationship Concepts of self & moralityCrisis & transition Women's rights & women's judgmentVisions of maturityReferencesIndex of Study ParticipantsGeneral Index

A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League


Ron Suskind - 1998
    At Ballou, Cedric has almost no friends. He eats lunch in a classroom most days, plowing through the extra work he has asked for, knowing that he’s really competing with kids from other, harder schools. Cedric Jennings’s driving ambition–which is fully supported by his forceful mother–is to attend a top-flight college.In September 1995, after years of near superhuman dedication, he realizes that ambition when he begins as a freshman at Brown University. In this updated edition, A Hope in the Unseen chronicles Cedric’s odyssey during his last two years of high school, follows him through his difficult first year at Brown, and now tells the story of his subsequent successes in college and the world of work.

The Birth of a Nation: Nat Turner and the Making of a Movement


Nate Parker - 2016
     Breathing new life into a story that has been rife with controversy and prejudice for over two centuries, the film follows the rise of the visionary Virginian slave, Nat Turner. Hired out by his owner to preach to and placate slaves on drought-plagued plantations, Turner eventually transforms into an inspired, impassioned, and fierce anti-slavery leader. Beautifully illustrated with stills from the movie and original illustrations, the book also features an essay by writer/director, Nate Parker, contributions by members of the cast and crew, and commentary by educator Brian Favors and historians Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Daina Ramey Berry who place Nat Turner and the rebellion he led into historical context. The Birth of a Nation reframes the way we think about slavery and resistance as it explores the passion, determination, and faith that inspired Nat Turner to sacrifice everything for freedom.

Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education


Noliwe Rooks - 2017
    Now, in an era characterized by levels of school segregation the country has not seen since the mid-twentieth century, cultural critic and American studies professor Noliwe Rooks provides a trenchant analysis of our separate and unequal schools and argues that profiting from our nation's failure to provide a high-quality education to all children has become a very big business.Cutting School deftly traces the financing of segregated education in America, from reconstruction through Brown v. Board of Education up to the current controversies around school choice, teacher quality, the school-to-prison pipeline, and more, to elucidate the course we are on today: the wholesale privatization of our schools. Rooks's incisive critique breaks down the fraught landscape of "segrenomics," showing how experimental solutions to the so-called achievement gaps--including charters, vouchers, and cyber schools--rely on, profit from, and ultimately exacerbate disturbingly high levels of racial and economic segregation under the guise of providing equal opportunity.Rooks chronicles the making and unmaking of public education and the disastrous impact of funneling public dollars to private for-profit and nonprofit operations. As the infrastructure crumbles, a number of major U.S. cities are poised to permanently dismantle their public school systems--the very foundation of our multicultural democracy. Yet Rooks finds hope and promise in the inspired individuals and powerful movements fighting to save urban schools.A comprehensive, compelling account of what's truly at stake in the relentless push to deregulate and privatize, Cutting School is a cri de coeur for all of us to resist educational apartheid in America.