Things that may discourage biking here: (1) snow, lots of it, for 6 months a year; (2) very narrow, poorly maintained roads; (3) lots and lots of drunken driving and numerous recent accidents that paralyzed or killed prominent local bike enthusiasts; (4) a local culture that hews strongly toward ATVs, motorcycles, and fast cars (and drunk driving . . . see #3).

Hi Scott. I try to bike to Temple U at least 2x a week from the start of daylight savings time until mid-Oct (I try to avoid riding in the dark – especially down Broad St. in Phila).

Temple U certainly tries to promote biking to campus. One thing they’ve done is invite a bike shop to have a satellite operation right on campus – just two days a week. But you can get your bike serviced while at work, buy a new bike, get supplies – and even order stuff they’ll bring to campus for you. 

The big obstacle is that if you want to ride your bike to Temple – and I agree with you – it’s mostly the students – you’ve got to be willing to ride on some heavily trafficked streets. And while Philly is trying to make the situation better there is still a long way to go – like having bike lanes on the most heavily traveled streets – the ones that can get you anywhere.

I’m from Minnesota. I haven’t been brave enough to bike there in the winter, but I know others do. I may take on that challenge someday. The West Bank at UMN is quite the bike haven, with a couple of big bike stores over there (where I got my Gary Fisher about 15 years ago, as a matter of fact) and some cafes that appeal to hard-core biker types.

I haven’t seen anything that suggests that the local higher ed institutions are doing much in that area. When it does happen it is mostly downtown – in the center city area. I’m less optimistic that the city will extend its “bike-friendly initiatives” further out to the edges of the city where lots of us bike commuters are coming from.

About the only thing encouraging biking on my campus is a “bad” parking situation.  Mind you, the parking situation is much better than it is at any university I’ve ever visited…our students don’t have to buy parking permits (instead there’s a per-credit flat fee, whether or not you drive to campus), and there’s usually a parking space available…as long as you don’t mind walking a quarter mile or so.  

I’m on the west side of the Cascades in WA, so there’s a fair amount of rain.  We have some “bike shelters” around campus (covered bike racks), and during the regular school year they see “good” use, as do most of the unsheltered racks.  But considering that we have maybe 40 bike parking spots for 16,000 students, I wouldn’t say we have a great bike culture…even if you account for the 10-20 employees like me who “park” our bikes in our offices.  

As far as road safety goes, both of our major cross streets have bike lanes.  Having been hit by a car on a bike (in Vegas), these are a huge part of the reason why I’m willing to do the last 8 mi of my 27 mi commute on bike.  

We also have a “Commute Trip Reduction” program here (http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/tdm/ctr) that’s designed to encourage employees to commute by alternative means.  But with ample cheap parking for cars (staff pay just $2 a month for a pass), and nothing that really passes for rush hour, there’s little incentive to do anything BUT drive alone.  I’m sure the “guaranteed ride home” (they’ll pay for a cab ride home up to 30 mi away in case of emergency) program has encouraged at least one employee from somewhere across the state to take the leap, but I’m also sure that most of us who bike/don’t drive alone would be doing it even without the program. 

I wish we had a better bike culture.  We’re just across the river from Portland State, but Portland’s “weirdness” hasn’t crossed the river yet…

After living in KY, FL, NC, TX and CA, there are some things that seem to encourage more “bike friendly” environments. Most importantly is simple road access, either bike lanes or actual bike paths. In Wilmington, NC, the city took former railroad lines and converted them to bike paths. That was a very popular idea (and relatively cheap), altho’ I haven’t been to NC for a decade or so.
-Another issue is sort of a chicken-and-egg scenario. If enough people bike, then the community seems to be more tolerant of biking, which leads more people to bike, which…etc., etc. So where do you start? Sounds like a build-it and they-will-come approach to me?
-Lastly, availability of affordable bikes that are not racing bikes or priced like racing bikes. And strategically located bike shops or depots that provide a fair and cost-effective service.
For me, I am 60 years old and would readily bike to work often, if the community attitude was more positive towards bikers. Maybe I should move to UC Davis?

          Cal Poly Pomona, on the outskirts of L.A. County. Like many outer cities of L.A. County, nearby cities are very auto-centric, not built to a scale that accommodates biking well. Large hills that surround the school may also be a deterrent. Pomona itself has one bike lane, that is only about 1/4 mile long. Due to a lack of funding, the roads around my school are especially terrible. As bikes continue to gain popularity, I have noticed a surge of growth in bikes on campus, despite the university’s official policy of not allowing bicycles on campus! As the school has been adding more bike racks, we have a situation where students are getting mixed messages. (bikes get locked all over campus, to trees, posts, a clear need for more bike racks or more strategically placed ones)
      Students hosted and organized a bike week on campus that brainstormed a vision for different ways our campus can accommodate cyclists. We are currently developing a program which will fix and rent out the bicycles that are abandoned every year after the mass exodus out of the dorms. Via facebook, Students are taking an active role organizing group rides however these remain mostly popular with the more athletic males of my school & a handful of idealistic Urban Planning students. Hopefully, the biking community will continue to prosper as more of the students & administration start to get involved & take an active role promoting bikes.         One major incentive is my schools’ recent pledge to be carbon neutral by 2030 and the development of a climate action plan that has a stated goal of decreasing the amount of automobile trips taken to campus.

About a decade ago Michigan State University decided to put into practice what is now called the “Complete Streets” philosophy for all future campus road projects.  We’re now 50% “complete” in having bike lanes on our roads including all the other amenities for other legal road users.  About 8 years ago some volunteers started the MSU Bike Project, which was essentially refurbishing abandoned or donated bikes and loaning them out to the campus community.  That project grew into a university-funded bike center http://www.bikes.msu.edu which opened up in 2006 and has since rented, repaired and sold thousands of bikes (both used and new).  As a result of all the above we’ve seen a steady drop in our accidents involving bicycles and other pedestrians, a reduction in abandoned bikes and a large increase in our overall bike population to approx. 20,000.  We received a bronze Bike Friendly University award http://news.msu.edu/story/9165/ this spring which caused us to look more carefully at what we can improve on and decided that better education and encourgement is in order to help our newer cyclists understand and practice safer cycling, so that’s our next big challenge that we’re tackling.

90% of the problem is the streets—I’d rather walk the 2
miles from home to school than bike it, because it’s safer to walk on sidewalks
than share the roads (which, in my case, includes 2 narrow, top-of-hill
bridges) with cars. Also, there’s a lot of on-street parking here, which can be
hazardous to bikers; a friend cracked two ribs when her bike collided with  a car door that the occupant had flung wide without
looking. The town surrounding the college has to provide the infrastructure to
get safely to campus, and unless it’s already a bike-friendly town, this
probably won’t be “in the budget” for quite a while.   

“…despite the university’s official policy of not allowing bicycles on campus!”

What!?!?!?!?

“We are currently developing a program which will fix and rent out the bicycles that are abandoned every year after the mass exodus out of the dorms.”

That’s interesting. That’s what I was referring to above.

If anyone knows of colleges that have worked with the local municipality to push biking, please post. Thanks, SB, for posting. 

The University of California, Santa Barbara was one of two campuses to receive gold level recognition from the League of American Bicyclists as BOTH a Bicycle Friendly Business and a Bicycle Friendly University.

The University of California, Santa Barbara has a mild climate, relatively flat-topography, 9 miles of Class I bicycle path, 3 bicycle underpasses, 8 bicycle roundabouts, Showers for bicycle commuters, 10,000 bicycle parking spaces and 40 bicycle lockers. Associated Student Bicycle Shop offers the use of tools and free lessons on how to fix a bicycle. Associated Student bicycle advocacy group. Over 10,000 students who live close to campus and a long-term parking permit ban for undergraduates who live within 2-miles of campus.

For more more information please see  http://tinyurl.com/ucsbBFU and http://tinyurl.com/ucsbBFB
UCSB Bicycle path map http://thebottomline.as.ucsb.edu/photo/?page_id=529
http://tap.ucsb.edu/bicycle.aspx
http://tps.ucsb.edu/newsTAP.aspx

Oh, yeah!  Forgot to mention that bikes are banned on my campus, too.  Folks are afraid of the pedestrians getting run over by the bikes…

The interim person usually won’t apply for the job, while the acting person is free to apply, so I’ve thought.

I was interim dept chair a semester after the quick promotion of our chair to a campus president position in another state left us with no other options. I crafted our annual budget, scheduled our classes, conducted performance reviews, oversaw admissions, and dealt with morale after four faculty were fired the previous semester. It was hell. Absolute. Hell.

Part of what made it so was the lack of support. I had no idea how the previous chair determined some costs for the budget, had never done performance reviews, and was abruptly locked out of admissions processes even though they partly determined concurrent budgetting. Finance was the worst, but HR and admissions were also unpredictably either helpful or totally unresponsive.

There were two things that allowed me to survive it. The first was the support of two people – my associate chair (partner in crime or co-misery, depending on how you look at it) who kept me sane, and the VPAA who added weight when I needed it to get answers or get things done.

My advice? If you interim, do it only with the regular and meaningful support of a heavyweight above you who will get you access to people and processes to assure your success. Otherwise, your “newbie-ness” will mean you are unable to apply the right pressure and leverage to get things done. They may or may not be the person who also helps you keep your perspective, but you need one of them too.

The second… well, the second thing that got me through was a pair of black leather biker boots I started wearing to work. Most of the time you couldn’t tell that’s what I was wearing, but Shakespeare had it right when he said the clothes oft make the man.

I’ve applied to teaching as well as top management posts for Georgetown university in Qatar & Washington more than once.Furthermore,I’ve e- mailed this university about ignoring my proposals,but got no reply!!!.

I’m not sure what the point is here.  If you meet all required qualifications, by all means, apply!  But if you don’t meet any or some of the _preferred_ requirements, then of course, apply!  What is the question here?

I think I was led astray by that scenario at the beginning: “Oops, I don’t have this qualification … or that one. I’d better not waste anyone’s time by pursuing this.”  To which I agreed that the comment was right–this person should not waste anyone’s time. 

Also, I do wonder, too, how you’ve come to the belief that women ignore positions for which they do not meet all qualifications (and this with the clarification of preferred qualifications, not required).  I would love it if you, or anyone at TCHE, would take on an article exploring that if the trend does exist!

Apply, but rethink your resume as well. When you’re sending a resume in snail mail, you want it to look pretty. But in the 21st century, more and more resumes are required to be electronic. There’s a benefit to the company (actually, the recruiter): They use software to filter out irrelevant resumes as well as to filter in relevant ones. The latter get interviews. So what makes a resume relevant?

Aha! That’s the million dollar question and the answer reveals there is a benefit for those who know how the software works. The almost impossibly simple answer came from a job seminar at the California Employment Development Dept. given by a vet representative. I would not be posting this unless I had had some success as a result of what I learned.

Here’s the two-pronged approach: (1) Make your electronic resume as long and detailed as you need to. Why?  Because (2) the software used by recruiters picks up on the number of times the KEY WORDS in the job description show up in your submitted electronic resume. Yes. Simple as that. The software doesn’t care how long your resume is. The really important thing is that you re-do your resume so that THE WAY YOU DESCRIBE YOUR EXPERIENCE *MATCHES* THE WAY THEY DESCRIBE THE JOB!  Clearly, that doesn’t mean making stuff up; but it does mean you employ the same KEY WORDS as the job description does. For example, if your resume says instructor or professor and the job description says teacher, then use teacher, the word in the job description. Don’t want to use the same word multiple times? Forget your thesaurus. Synonyms sound better to you, but this approach impresses the computer software and the results get into the recruiters box. That gets you interviews. Break down your experiences into repeatable sections. So rather than saying, “Same duties as above,” cut and paste those duties from above and put them in the new section. This repeats those all-important key words and gets you more points in the scoring scheme of the software. Don’t write a better resume than the recruiter (even if you can): Write the resume the software is looking for on behalf of the recruiter. Write to the job description. Happy resume editing and good luck.

For those privates that compete mostly against state colleges, the report might suggest that they have come to the end of the perceived cost-difference mitigation that provided by discounting.  Those institutions would be well-served to analyze the dynamics of their applicant pool, and determine where it seemed to work and where it fell short.  This report provides a call to action, and that action is good institutional research to show the challenges and oppportunities presented to each individual college.

Education is going down the same bad road that healthcare went down when it comes to pricing its services.  “Tuition discounting” is the equivalent of “cost shifting” in healthcare and just as opaque and manipulative to the paying customer.  Discounting means giving certain students a price break while others pay the full sticker price for their education.  This practice is inherently unfair to the families of these students as it obfuscates the true cost of attendance.  Higher ed, along with healthcare, should abandon these practices.