New Kid on the Hallway and Dean Dad discuss what high-level administrators ought to look like. The discussions were sparked by a recent First Person column by Kathryn Ryan, a pseudonymous 36-year-old ex-dean who wrote about her search for a new administrative position and her decision to eliminate “all those pesky dates [from my CV] that might allow people to guess my age.”
While New Kid says she’s all for judging candidates based on their background/experience, not their age, she also admits, “I have a hard time wrapping my mind around working somewhere with a 36-year-old dean.” Read the whole post.
Meanwhile, Dean Dad, who is himself a 30-something-year-old dean, says he’s troubled by the commonly held expectation in academe that leaders must have “gray hair and an AARP card to know something about management.” Read the whole post.
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2 Responses to A Different Kind of Ageism?
blendedlibrarian - July 19, 2011 at 7:52 pm
Thanks for the mention Brian. Glad you decided to explore Academically Adrift. The problem may go even deeper than whether Internet exposure has fundamentally changed the way students think, read and write – or whether it has made them even more creative and likely to probe for the answers that further their own understanding and allow them to build their own knowledge – rather than having someone spoon feed it to them. What I’m hearing here is that student learning depends greatly on the learning experience the educator designs. It it participative? Is it interactive? Is there opportunity for creative exploration? Is it all lecture and textbook? In a few weeks I’ll have an essay published over at IHE on WHY faculty should look into designing a learning experience for their courses. I hope you’ll give it a read and let me know what you think.
ranganathan - July 20, 2011 at 11:16 am
Many professors I know do the kinds of things you suggest, as do I when I teach a regularly scheduled course. Interestingly enough, lots of students are very resistant to more active learning techniques. They will often complain in their course evaluations that I made them ‘do’ things. They clamor for PowerPoints and lectures, followed by tests of regurgitation. Even though that’s not a particularly effective way of learning, students see that as ‘college class.’ This approach also seems to be how they went through K-12 under NCLB. When you add in the pressure to get excellent student evaluations (see Texas for some scary plans in that area) and students who come in less prepared each year- I think the problem goes well beyond ineffective instruction. Higher ed needs a revolution.