Academic Assets
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A Penny for Your Thoughts
Our columnist replies to a year's worth of reader mail in these still-shaky times.
- 'Tis the Season to Confer
- Value, Price, and Fees
- Get Flexible
- Defining Benefits
- Extra Credit
- Cents and Conscience
- Investing Made Simple
- Is TIAA-CREF Safe?
- Home Sweet Loan
An Academic in America
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The Big Lie About the 'Life of the Mind'
Most departments will never willingly provide information on graduate-student attrition, debt, and placement.
- Dodging the Anvil
- Teaching in the Plague Year
- Preserving the Future of the Natural-History Museum
- Online Learning: Reaching Out to the Skeptics
- A Laboratory of Collaborative Learning
- What to Advise Unemployed Graduates
- Growing Where You Are
- Hell's Classroom
- Just Don't Go, Part 2
The Adjunct Track
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Sticks and Stones, or Titles and Truth?
Contingent faculty members live in the gap between what they are called and what they do.
- The Silence of the Grads
- Help Is on the Way
- My Foray Into Adjunct Life
- The New Faculty Wife
- Let's Talk Equity — Later
- Mad About Numbers
Balancing Act
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Still Earning Less
Simply opening the door to higher education has not allowed women to achieve gender equity in the work force.
- Title IX Includes Maternal Discrimination
- Why So Few Doctoral-Student Parents?
- Superprofessor Meets Supermom
- How the 'Snow-Woman Effect' Slows Women's Progress
- Is Tenure a Trap for Women?
- The Family Track
- Role Models and Mentors
- Men and Mothering
- A Bad Reputation
Beyond the Ivory Tower
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A Hobby Becomes a Career
A graduate student in medical history and public health leaves her Ph.D. program to lead an urban squash program.
- From Biologist to Life Coach
- Quasi-Academic Careers
- From Academic to Radio Producer
- Every Ph.D. Needs a Plan B
- The Writing Business
- Adjusting to Corporate Culture
Career Talk
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Dealing With a Difficult Adviser
What are your options when your mentor is failing as a mentor?
- Taking Your Questions
- The CV Doctor Is Back
- The CV Doctor Returns
- Should I Get Another Degree?
- Using the Summer to Explore Career Options
- Switching Sides, Part 4
- Switching Sides, Part 3
- How to Do an Informational Interview
- On the Market in a Recession
Catalyst
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The Conference Poster Child
Many scientists have strong preferences about whether to give a talk or present a poster.
- Pulse of the Professoriate
- A Scientist's Guide to Academic Etiquette
- Speaking of Speaking
- Summers Off … From My Paycheck
- Changing the Trajectory of Your Academic Career
- Planet of the Professors
First Person
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Life After Tenure Denial
An assistant professor rebuilds his career and prepares to go up for tenure a second time.
- Academic Bait-and-Switch, Part 5
- Dear Hot Prospect
- An Academic Bestiary for the Intrepid Job Seeker
- The Grinch Who Stole the Semester
- My Own Personal 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Policy
- Academic Bait-and-Switch, Part 4
- The Dreaded Peer-Teaching Observation
- Living in a Different World
- Mental Illness in Academe
From the Archives
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My Left Tackle
Though it can be bruising, having the fluff knocked out of your writing is not a bad thing.
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Cattle Call
About to serve on a search committee at a community college? Here are two common complaints to avoid.
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Unemployment and the Toil of Sisyphus
A history Ph.D. wonders if she's taken up her own proverbial boulder by continuing to seek a tenure-track job.
The Fund Raiser
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What's on One Fund Raiser's Mind in 2010?
Donors want flexibility, both in making new commitments and paying off old ones.
- Considering a Job in Fund Raising?
- The Professor as Fund Raiser
- Why Stewardship Is Critical Now, and Always
- The Three R's
- Advancing Knowledge
- Fund Raising in a Recession
- Moving On in Turbulent Times
- Incompetence Reshuffled
- Changing the World
Heads Up
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Changes
Lots of relationships evolve when you become chair of a department.
- It Is Who You Know, and Who Knows You
- The Limits of Academic Freedom
- Fight Your Own Battles
- The Unkindest Cut of All
- Growing Pains
- Exactly What Is 'Shared Governance'?
- The Burden of Confidentiality
- How to Join the Dark Side
- Why Rules Matter
Moving Up
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The Right Kind of Nothing
The best administrators have an enormous sense of responsibility and a small need for control.
- The Candidate and His Earring
- The Burden of Too Much Information
- Reflections of a Failed Dean
- Mind the Gap
- Your Next Few Leaders
- When the Dean Dies
- Tackling the Leadership Scarcity
- Is It What You Know? Or Who You Know?
- An Economist's Tools of the Trade
Ms. Mentor
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Saving Academic Integrity or Your Career?
An adjunct seeks advice about how to handle a suspected plagiarist who just so happens to be married to the department chair.
- My Adviser Is Full of Spite
- Great Man, Awful Speech
- I Hate Myself When I'm Teaching
- What's Yours and What's Mine?
- A Novel Form of Revenge
- Do I Have to Praise Him?
- I'm OK, He's Sleazy
- Don't E-Mail Me This Way
- Should I Tattle on My Boss?
On Course
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Podcasting
A professor assigns students to create podcasts and learns a few lessons himself.
- Doughnuts and Candy for the Kids
- Calling an Audible
- Speaking Truth to Papers
- Teaching Resolutions for the New Year
- Lessons From a Freshman Year
- Nudging Higher Education
- How Do We Inspire Them?
- Choosing and Using Textbooks
- Classroom Research
On Message
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On the Market in PR
What college and university employers are looking for in public-relations officers.
- The Productive PR Office
- Understanding the 'Public' in Public Relations
- Who Is on the Other End of Facebook?
- Getting Professors to Meet Their Deadlines
- Navigating New (Media) Frontiers
- One Voice, Many Audiences
P&T Confidential
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Overdoing It in the Hiring Process
How being overenthused and overprepared for a job interview can harm your chances.
- Avoiding a 'Nuclear Veto' in Hiring
- Job-Searching on the Job
- Should You Switch Tenure Tracks?
- Facebooking for the Tenure Track
Page Proof
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Cover Stories
How do you get a cover design for your book that doesn't make you cringe?
- Floating Deadlines
- 'Your Review Was Brutal'
- Fashion Lessons for Graduate Students
- Kindling Changes for the Reader and the Writer
- 'I Just Wrote This Last Night'
- Writing Like a Doctor
- Reading Like a Graduate Student
- Interpreting Editorese
- The Response Dilemma
A President's Fifth Year
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Porch Culture in Academe
What is the cure for institutional and disciplinary isolation?
A President's Fourth Year
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We're All in This Together
How the frigid economic climate is creating a certain human warmth on our campuses.
- How to Avoid Becoming a One-Hit Wonder
The Two-Year Track
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The Discount Professorship
Is it worth it to go into heavy debt to earn a Ph.D. at a prestigious institution?
- Are You Ready for Your Close-Up?
- Too Much Experience?
- How to Make Your Application Stand Out
- What New Department Chairs Should Know
- The 5 Characteristics of Successful New Faculty Members
- Feeling Fake in the Classroom


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