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. […]
Science Education
Confronting Structural Sexism in #STEM: Pt 2
Because everyone who writes science blogs has written about this in the last few weeks, I'm joining the pack to give my 2 cents worth about the online attacks against those women in STEM who commented on the shirt worn by Dr. Matt Taylor of the ESA Rosetta Mission, while he was explaining the Philae probe's landing […]
Confronting Structural Sexism in #STEM: Pt 1
Women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Medicine) have made progress, but not as much as expected, as Dr. Mildred Dresshelhaus explains in her interview with Science. Direct sexual harassment aside (discussed in part 3 of this blog series), the structural sexism of #STEM has greatly concerned me for decades, and, I am unhappy to report, […]
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 […]
On recognizing the intrinsic multi-dimensional nature of Research & Teaching
Academic policy makers, administrators and many academics simply don't seem to get how to deal with the multi-variate nature of higher education. Despite having access to the tools and statistics to take account of all this, it is generally ignored. In my opinion, the recent attempts by HEQCO , the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, provide […]
More women ecologists: My peek into commercial academic publishing
Sad News over the Weekend: Update September 30 2015: I was very sad to hear on Sunday, that my chief editor and the lead author on Ecology: A Canadian Context 2nd Edition, Professor Bill Freedman had lost his battle with cancer. It's just under a year since Bill told me about his diagnosis. I've thought of […]
