Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Some General Thoughts for the Day

1. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools is out of control (SACS). My college is jumping through several hundred hoops so that we can be reaccredited. This includes some lame "culture of assessment" agenda that is forcing departments to write up mission statements with learning objectives and goals that can be assessed for each of our majors - because apparently the course syllabus and the assigning of a grade is not assessment, the creation of general education assessment committee that would insure that the gen. ed. courses are assessable - perhaps through review (and formal approval) of faculty syllabus by the administration, and who knows what other education school driven mandate.

2. I think a required "diversity training and Muslim-sensitivity training for faculty members" would be a painful experience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against sensitivity, but it sounds like a play to extend campus speech codes. And won't it just lead to other sensitivity training seminars like - "conservative-sensitivity training for English professors" or "Intelligent design-sensitivity training for Biologists"?

3. Why do students become most concerned with their grades during finals, when it is too late to do anything to significantly change the outcome of a semester of slacking-off?

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