An outstanding essay...

on solitude and leadership by William Deresiewicz. 

Hat tip:  GC

Mythbusters stunt goes awry...

and sends cannonball through nearby homes.  Fortunately nobody was injured, and be sure to watch the video at the link.  Should make for an interesting episode when it airs.

UPDATE:  More here with another video.

It's final exam week...

at the university so I thought I'd bring out this animated graphic in commiseration for my students:

Study hard and good luck!  And at the end of the week, when it's all over, just like banging your head against a wall, it will feel good when it stops.

Have a terrific winter break and I'll see you next year.

Engineering majors...

hit the books more than business majors do.

I know. Shocking.

/end sarcasm

Why science majors...

change their minds (it’s just so darn hard).  Indeed, science curricula are difficult and challenging, and demand an innate curiosity and aptitude from those that pursue them successfully.

Reminds me of this.

Curiosity is critical...

to academic performance.

Yes. Absolutely.

Work week at the YBRA...

took me back in time to my six week stay at the historic field station during my field camp experience in summer 1978.  Little has changed in the vista seen from its mountainside locale above Red Lodge, Montana, where you can observe nearly vertically-dipping Paleozoic strata that define the Beartooth Front (click to enlarge):

I spent the last four days in various repair tasks, first of which was scraping and painting one of the two study halls.  Here's a shot of JR working away while I supervise, take pictures, and offer encouragement:

I probably repaired (closed) more than three dozen squirrel holes chewed into the sides of the many cabins scattered throughout the camp.  I had to patiently wait for this fellow to leave before I screened off the hole, but I needed a break anyway:

The last day was spent assisting JR in replacing the old wooden and warped front door to the main lodge with a more robust metal door better able to endure the winter elements (and bears):

On the last day I found our 1978 class picture in a dusty photo album in the main lodge.  That's me, third from right, first row, with Professor John Utgaard at the far right in the back row:

It was a certainly a terrific summer in 1978, and a terrific last week visiting with old friends and making new ones, and even taking in the pig races in neighboring Bear Creek one night!

Grade distributions in my courses...

strongly contradict this finding of a recent study:

"A’s represent 43% of all letter grades, an increase of 28 percentage points since 1960 and 12 percentage points since 1988. D’s and F’s total typically less than 10% of all letter grades."  

Read more:   Where A Is Ordinary: The Evolution of American College and University Grading, 1940–2009.

Is the higher ed bubble...

getting ready to burst?  Debt fears drive US youth away from college.

The annual tuition at EWU has escalated by 14%, 14%, 11% and 11% during the last two, and next two years, respectively.  Clearly this is not a sustainable trajectory, and the clients are beginning to catch on.

Sartorial advice for the professoriate...

Professors Should Dress Like Professionals.

Um, OK, but I tend to dress casually but neatly, or at least I try.  But perhaps I should break out the tweed jacket, bow-tie and pipe?

Buzz off...

if you're a well qualified in-state student wanting admission to the University of Washington:  Why straight-A's may not get you into UW this year.  Key bit:

"In the face of continuing state budget cuts, academic leaders at the University of Washington in February made a painful decision to cut the number of Washington students the school will admit this fall and increase the number of out-of-state and international students, who pay nearly three times as much in tuition and fees."

Hey, UW has to support the nearly $700k salary of its president somehow.

As I've written before, I believe higher education is the next bubble to pop.  Accelerating inflation of tuition, increasing debt burdens on students, coupled with little prospect of well-paying jobs at graduation.  It's not sustainable.

The next bubble?

Universities On The Brink

An explanation of some students' behavior...

during class: Naps Help Memories Transfer To Brain’s Hard Drive.  It's part of the learning process.

Perhaps I need to regularly incorporate this strategy in my daily office schedule?

Gravity has its uses...

A Guide to Grading Exams

Administrative bloat at American universities...

is responsible for the high costs of higher education.  Pull quote:

"Leading public universities were also already administrative-heavy in 1993, but the rate of growth in administrative employment was even higher than the growth in educators, leaving these institutions even more administrator heavy in 2007 (see Figure 6 and Table A1). Full-time employment in the instructional, research and service category grew by 9.8 percent between 1993 and 2007, but the number of full-time administrators grew at nearly four times that rate - 39.0 percent. It now takes 39.0 percent more full-time administrators to manage the same number of students than it did in 1993."

That certainly is the history at EWU during the last 20 years (although I can't say the percentage growth is the exactly the same as that reported in the article, but it is on par based on institutional data I examined several years ago.)

Kindergarten is the most important year...

of your life according to a new study.  Here's a bite from the abstract:

"Kindergarten test scores are highly correlated with outcomes such as earnings at age 27, college attendance, home ownership, and retirement savings."

Hmm.  Maybe I could have been more successful if I had only studied harder during the first year of my education.  Though I do remember seeing a geode and a dinosaur track in a sandstone slab in second grade, and that clearly left a mark on me.

What I'm reading...

right now: Landscape of Desire by Greg Gordon. It's a mix of the pedagogical and geological.

Hat tip: RT.

I am saddened to learn...

that M. Gordon "Reds" Wolman, an eminent geomorphologist, has passed away this week.

As a graduate student studying fluvial geomorphology I read many of his publications, as well as the classic book Fluvial Processes in Geomorphology that he co-authored in 1964. His obituary indicates he taught for 51 years (!) at Johns Hopkins University, and until last year, he was still accompanying students on local field trips. His contributions and devotion to the geosciences rank him among only a very few peers.

Tenured earth science faculty...

at Florida State University are being laid off. Hmm.

UPDATE: After some thought it seems to me the administration has to declare fiscal exigency, or there are issues of moral turpitude involved, to take this action. Neither is mentioned in the article, and why are "junior faculty" referred to as tenured (sometimes it happens)? So perhaps these are "tenure track" faculty?

How do you learn?

Find out by taking the learning styles quiz, and use the results to hone your studying strategies.

Me? I'm a visual learner, doing best with reading and seeing images/diagrams, remembering things by sight.

Hat tip: CN.