UPDATED 25 July 2015. It's been 7 weeks since I originally posted this blog. In the interim, it's been a case of 2 steps forward, one step back. I've acquired a file with the York University Human Resources Health, Safety and a personal trainer. I've also been back to my family doctor (the umbrella/gatekeeper for institutional reporting on […]
Higher Education
The sky high Opportunity Cost of dealing with #HigherEd administration
The reason I am late by a week with this post, is that I spent a ton of time last week: 1. With inspiring high school students and great colleagues (at right). For the 2nd year, I judged the Toronto Envirothon at the Ontario Science Centre. 2. With inspiring university students: I edited the publishable research of my […]
Higher Education politics: from sustainability to strikes
One of my top undergrads: MT @flori_nicoleta: I hate the position York put their students & faculty in. What were they thinking? #CUPE3903 — Dawn Bazely (@dawnbazely) March 17, 2015 I had planned to blog about the March 7 Women In STEM event celebrating the Faculty of Science's 50th anniversary. I'll do that next time. Instead, […]
Academic Citizenship: my authored output in 2015 so far, is 15 references
John Morgan (@JMorganTHE) and Chris Havergal's (@CHavergalTHE) wide-ranging article in the Times Higher Education magazine describes the stresses and strains on the clear glue that holds the global higher education ecosystem together. All of the invisible work that we do beyond our research and teaching can be loosely termed "administration", or community-building, or academic citizenship. […]
Keeping on the bright side: High & Low points of my 2014 #HigherEd year in numbers
An Academic New Year's Resolution list: For 2015, 101 Big And Small Ways To Make A Difference In Academia http://t.co/DCBuVYWyLo — Conditional Accept (@conditionaccept) January 7, 2015 In my experience, what I do remains a mystery to most people both within and outside of Higher Education. When they were young, my daughters told me that […]
Confronting Structural Sexism in #STEM: Pt 3
Given the sexual harassment of female students that I directly witnessed when I was a student doing field work, I've been infuriated by the Jian Ghomeshi debacle with its victim blaming. Although the sexual harassment that I personally witnessed happened 30 years ago, it, too, still makes me cross. So, Clancy et al's 2014 PLOS ONE paper on what appears […]
Why I'm using Twitter as a teaching tool
Dawn Bazely at York University Teaching in Focus conference May 21-22 2015 from Dawn Bazely As a teen doing my homework with the tv on in the background, I would hear stuff like "you'll get square eyes", "don't be a couch potato" (image at left, from Wikipedia) and "it's the boob-tube". In other words, tv watching […]
Perspective on the rise of administrators and audit culture in Higher Education
Update: The books examining and exposing audit culture, the rise of the managerial class in higher education, just keep on coming, e.g .Derek Sayer's forthcoming Rank Hypocrisies. The main proponents of audit culture in higher education often seem to be former academics who've entered the one-way street of administration. They're unlikely to return to active teaching […]
