The 2012 Election: What Academe Needs to Know

From The Chronicle of Higher Education

The 2012 general election will determine more than which candidates win federal and state offices. It will also determine who guides federal oversight of student aid, for-profit colleges, research, and more, with billions of taxpayer dollars in the balance. It will decide who presides over state support for colleges as most such public institutions struggle under repeated budget cuts.

As the final weeks of the campaign unfold, this page will host highlights of The Chronicle's will host a page with coverage of the general election as it relates to higher education.

Check back here for updates and at copies of The Chronicle of Higher Education in the library.

Students find e-texts "clumsy".

Several universities have recently tried a new model for delivering textbooks in hopes of saving students money: requiring purchase of e-textbooks and charging students a materials fee to cover the costs. A recent report on some of those pilot projects, however, shows that many students find the e-textbooks “clumsy” and prefer print.

The report is based on a survey conducted this spring of students and faculty at five universities where e-textbook projects were coordinated by Internet2, the high-speed networking group. Students praised the e-books for helping them save money but didn’t like reading on electronic devices. Many of them complained that the e-book platform was hard to navigate. In addition, most professors who responded said that they didn’t use the e-books’ collaborative features, which include the ability to share notes or create links within the text.

Source: Wired Campus August 23

New Website for Families

Looking for materials and resources to offer the families and community you serve? The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has a new website for you! The For Families site includes a wealth of information about children’s learning and development; a column by T. Berry Brazelton, MD, and Joshua Sparrow, MD.  Spread the word about this useful and engaging resource. For more information, visit families.naeyc.org.

Higgs Boson Humor

"A Higgs boson walks into a church. The priest orders It to leave immediately. The boson protests: "But how can you have mass without me?"
Source: from readers of New Scientist 21 July 2012

Maeve Binchy (1940-2012)

The Irish writer and journalist Maeve Binchy died yesterday in Dublin. She was an outstanding novelist, short story writer and columnist, who engaged millions of people all around the world with her fluent and accessible style. She was a great storyteller and a source of encouragement for young writers. She wrote 16 novels, two of which, The Lilac Bus and Echoes, were made into TV films while Circle of Friends, Tara Road and How About You were made into feature films. She wrote four collections of short stories, a play Deeply Regretted By and the novella Star Sullivan.

Binchy’s books in the Hoffman Family Library include:

Whitethorn Woods (2010)

Heart and Soul (2009)

Scarlet Feather (2008)

Night of Rain and Stars (2004)

Quentins (2002)

Tara Road (1998)

Gore Vidal (1926-2012)

"Gore Vidal, the American writer, media pundit, controversialist and politician manqué, who has died  yesterday, aged 86, was celebrated both for his caustic wit and his mandarin poise. His public career spanned seven decades and included 25 novels, numerous collections of essays on literature and politics, a volume of short stories, five Broadway plays, dozens of television plays and film scripts, and even three mystery novels written under the pseudonym Edgar Box. After 9/11 and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, he returned to center stage with a series of blistering pamphlets and public pronouncements that led even many of his friends to pounce on him. But Vidal never looked back."
(Quoted from the obituary in The Guardian)

Books by Vidal in the library include:
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (2002)
Empire (1988)
Myron (1974)

Famous Quotes:
" The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since."
"It  is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."
"All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself."
"Fifty percent of the people won't vote, and fifty percent  don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent."

FREE TRIAL OF DISSERTATIONS DATABASE!

AUGUST: 50 YEARS – 50th Anniversary of Jamaican Independence

 Free Trial of ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database

ProQuest will be sharing interesting starting points for research and teaching for major world anniversaries this year such as the 50th Anniversary of Jamaican Independence. The anniversary topic page will include a free trial to a related database, a teaching guide, a poster, and a training webinar for that database. Check with the library for further information.

ANYONE CAN NOW POST TO iTUNESU

Everyone can now use the iTunesU platform to deliver course material, Apple announced on Wednesday. Before, only professors at a university working with iTunesU—which collects free lectures from partner universities—could post audio and video clips, syllabi, and documents via the platform.

Typically, universities apply to form a partnership with iTunesU. After Apple verifies that the applicant is an academically accredited institution, professors can post course materials on the platform, either for public access or privately for a select group of students.

With the change, any user, regardless of affiliation, can distribute content for up to 12 different courses. The courses must be private and limited to 50 students each. Professors must use the iTunesU app, which made its debut in January, to deliver the course, but students can access the content using the PC-compatible iTunes software. Why not try it for the Fall semester?

Source:
 "New Policy Lets Everyone Post to iTunesU" by Nancy Chen
Wired Campus July 27

CREATING AMERICAN MANUFACTURING

 Excerpts from article:

"This year marks the 150th anniversary of the first Morrill Land Grant Act, named after the Vermont senator, Justin Morrill, who was instrumental in its creation and passage. Not only is the region’s higher education community reminded of its great tradition and leadership, it is compelled by the need to continue to play a role in the nation’s economic recovery and to reconsider the vision of institutions in present and future prosperity.

In 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Act that established land-grant colleges whose mission was to promote learning in agriculture and mechanic arts. These colleges played a key role in enabling the U.S. to later lead in the mechanization of agriculture and the industrialization of the economy. Today, the challenge is even greater as America is competing against a wide array of nations seeking to win the race for global innovation advantage, including in manufacturing. A new cadre of “manufacturing universities” can be part of the solution.

In the 2000s, American manufacturing suffered its worst decade since at least World War II. One-third of manufacturing jobs disappeared and manufacturing output declined by over 10% as U.S. manufacturing became less competitive internationally. If the U.S. is to regain manufacturing jobs and, with it, overall economic vitality, the federal government will need to focus more on supporting manufacturing innovation. One way to do this is to enlist U.S. research universities."

Source: "Morrill at 150: Creating American Manufacturing" by Robert Atkinson

The New England Journal of Higher Education

July 25, 2012

ACCESS TO DISSERTATIONS

The library provides faculty and students with the full text of open access dissertations and theses free of charge. You can quickly and easily locate dissertations and theses relevant to your discipline, and view the complete text in PDF format.

The authors of these dissertations and theses have opted to publish as open access. Open Access Publishing is a new service offered by ProQuest's UMI Dissertation Publishing.  We expect to have many more open access dissertations and theses over time.

This is especially useful to faculty who are working on advanced degrees and for students in 300 and 400 level courses with research requirements. 

LIVE WEBCAST ON COPYRIGHT TOMORROW

Georgia State, Copyright, and Your Library

Live Webcast
July 25, 2012
2:00 p.m.
90 minutes
After four years, a judge has finally decided upon the merits of the copyright lawsuit between Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Sage Publications and Georgia State University.  Although the outcome legally affects only the northern third of Georgia,  this ruling affect the way we do business in your library.  In this webcast, librarians from the ACRL Copyright Committee will discuss the specific ruling of the Georgia State case, the affect that the case will have on future fair use analyses, the impact on library policies such as course reserves and interlibrary loan, distance learning, and the way we will work with academic publishers from now on.

Join us in Room 142.

VAUGHN MARTIN RECOMMENDS SPIDER-MAN!

Nothing says summer like epic movies to fill your mind with an entertaining respite between semesters. My personal favorite is a remaining of everyone’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. The Amazing Spider-Man is a reboot of the trilogy that Tobey Maguire made famous in 2002. Comic book enthusiast will enjoy how the storyline attempts to stay true to the Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man theme in the early 21^st century. The choreography of the evolving fighting scenes and web-slinging make Spider-Man ‘s moves look more fluid and believable of a seventeen year old.

Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of teenage outcast Peter Parker and the wise-cracking web-slinger is comical leaving you anxious awaiting his next line. Most die-hard Spider-Man fans will be delighted to see that Spider-Man’s love interest (played by the lovely Emma Stone) has shifted to the iconic Gwen Stacy instead of the more famous Mary Jane. Rhys Ifans plays a very likable villain as the determined and equally deranged Dr. Kurt Connors aka the Lizard.  

Great scenes, outstanding plot,  compelling villains, and witty banter earns my highest praise for everyone’s favorite wall crawling superhero movie.

VAUGHN MARTIN
Library Staff

STUDENT RETENTION AND SUCCESS SEMINAR

Making retention and student success part of your campus culture

Library Scheduled Web Seminar

July 31, 2 p.m.  Location: TBD

ALL WELCOME!

From the announcement of University Business:

“At Carroll University in Wisconsin, retention is at the top of the priority list. Join us at this web seminar to find out how Carroll University's leaders made retention a day-to-day priority and created a campus-wide culture of student success. Find out how the human element is aided with a highly customized retention technology platform by Jenzabar, which helps determine the unique factors that influence retention at Carroll.

The case study from Carroll University will include:

Actual examples of cases where at-risk students were identified and helped.

Changes in retention rates that resulted from the initiative.

How FinishLine, Jenzabar's retention management solution, contributes to the success of the program.”

(The library is using  principles from the Standards for Libraries in Higher Education in establishing  goals for 2012-13. We are concentrating on how the library contributes to student recruitment, retention, time to degree, and academic success. we hope this seminar will be helpful.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The belief that human beings and human societies should be ruled by the demands of the marketplace is utopian folly. There is nothing in human history or human nature that supports the idea that sacrificing everything before the free market leads to a social good. And yet we have permitted this utopian belief system to determine how we structure our economy, labor, education, culture, and our relations with foreign nations, as well as how we treat the ecosystem on which we depend."
Chris Hedges
Days of Destruction Days of Revolt

This book is available in the Hoffman Family Library.

A few entries ago, we included Project Gutenberg's self-publishing program. It is becoming clear that self-publishing is transforming the book industry, On Thursday last week,  Pearson announced that it had acquired self-publishing vendor Author Solutions Inc.for $116,000,000. The purchase of Author Solutions—which has 1,600 employees, has published 150,000 authors, nearly 200,000 titles and reported just under $100 million in revenues last year—and its integration into Penguin operations marks a new era for the self-publishing category going forward.

 Formed in 2007, ASI is now the world’s leading provider of professional self-publishing services. It has enabled 150,000 authors to publish, market and distribute more than 190,000 books in print and electronic formats and benefits from several powerful growth trends including user-generated content, eBooks and digital publishing and marketing technologies.

Do you have the great American novel manuscript stashed away somewhere? Your time has come.

STEM Master Techer Corps

Last week the Obama Administration took a step in the right direction and announced a plan to create a national Science, Math, Technology, and Engineering (STEM) Master Teacher Corps. With $100 million m in start-up funding from the federal Teacher Inentive Fund, the program will begin in 50 locations across the country, each with 50 STEM educators. Pending Congressional approval of additional funding, the Administration believes the program can expand over the next four years to include 10,000 STEM teachers. STEM master teachers would make a multi-year commitment to the STEM master teacher corps and would receive an annual stipend.

First Women's Rights Conference Anniversary

 HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, WOMEN VOTERS!

On July 19-20, 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott spearheaded the first women's rights convention in American History.  Over 300 women and men came to Seneca Falls, New York to protest the mistreatment of women in social, economic, political, and religious life.  This marked the first public call for women's right to vote.

At the end of the conference 68 women and 32 men of the 300 attendees signed the Declaration of Sentiments.  This document was drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who used the Declaration Independence as her guide and listed eighteen "injuries and usurpations... on the part of man toward woman" (same number of charges the colonists leveled against the King of England) 

Those who attended the conference were vilified and mocked by the press who described the conference as "the most shocking and unnatural event ever recorded in the history of womanity." Yet, thanks to the countless numbers who have worked to preserve the history of the women's rights movement, Seneca Falls, NY is now the site of the  Women's Rights National Historical Park 

To honor democracy and the amazing legacy of the women's rights movement, be sure to register and vote!

Have a child and Change Your Brain

In today's encore excerpt - a new and growing body of research is revealing that there are marked and generally positive physiological changes that occur in a mother's brain as a result of giving birth to a child. Experiments and observations on human mothers and laboratory rats provide the evidence:

"Research suggests that motherhood enhances certain types of cognition, improves resistance to stress and sharpens some kinds of memory. On the face of it, the fact that the nervous system manages to transform a new mother from a self-centered organism into an other-focused caregiver is actually quite impressive. All it takes is for new neurons to sprout, certain brain structures to blossom in size and waves of powerful hormones to batter the pregnant woman's physiology. The result is a different and in some ways better brain -- or at least one capable of juggling the challenges of everyday life while maintaining a laserlike focus on the baby.

Who knew?

Excerpt from the following source:

Author: Craig Howard Kinsley and Elizabeth Meyer  
Title: "Maternal Mentality"
Publisher: Scientific American Mind
Date: July/August 2011
Pages: 25-29