The Fora: A Higher Education Community

More of the same.

Good morning!

QB yesterday with 1LH for canna and nanny. Genius with both pangrams today.

LB: I had the "official" brushwork-kempt. No 2fer yet today—congratulations, ciao_yall, for finding one so quickly!

Congratulations to your daughter, ab_grp! And ciao_yall, that sounds like a great trip.

No northern lights here, either—we had dense cloud cover both nights. However, people in northern parts of the state were posting spectacular photos on Facebook.

Happy puzzling!

VERY short version of my ongoing vent: the bone in my left foot that I broke 13 months ago is not, in fact, healed, per a CAT scan. A "really bad" surgery is in my future, with minimally 10 weeks of strict, no-fudging non-weight bearing to follow (and likely longer, based on my diabetes and slow healing history).

When the surgeon says it's "really bad" and tells me "don't be surprised if we have to redo it one or more times" (not to scare me, but to let me know what to expect) I know it's not going to be a great summer. Waiting now to hear from his nurse to get scheduled, sometime in July at the earliest. . . .

No garden for me this year, aside from sowing some flower seeds into the raised beds over the next couple of days, and planting my hanging baskets. I'm the gardener, not ALHS, and it's not fair to make a lot of work for him. Also, he's extremely anemic after his second knee replacement, and the 3-week quest to get him an iron infusion is still ongoing (another whole vent in itself).

Right now, I'm trying not to think about any of it as much as possible, and to get my ducks in a row so all the things I won't be able to do can get done ahead of time.  Mainly, I just absolutely HATE the NWB orders (though of course I understand why). This will be my third go-round in as many years. And I swear this ortho boot has grown onto my leg; I'd imagine I'll still be in it until at least Christmas time.

Trying to find bright spots:  (1) it's outpatient surgery, about 2 hours; (2) they'll take the bone graft from my heel, not my hip (so only 1 incision to worry about); and (3) think of all the crocheting I can get done while sitting on my fat butt all summer and fall.  :-/

TL; DR version:  getting old sucks. (And I'm "only" 63.)

Quote from: selecter on May 12, 2024, 06:21:17 AMWhat publicly available info can show administrative bloat? I can imagine trying to glean it form IPEDS, or maybe from the top end of a form 990, but don't know what could get at it with accuracy.

There is data on The Chronicle for the pay and number of non-instructional employees, data on CUPA-HR (if you have a login), individual institutional websites often post data due to sunshine laws, and I'm sure my undergrad alma mater isn't the only place where the student newspaper publishes the salary of every single employee every year. I just had a bit of time on my hands and went searching for data. Is it 100% accurate? Probably not, but it's there if you look for it and can give a good idea of the number of administrators at a given institution. Just using the overall category of 'non-instructional employees' on the Chronicle's site shows that Penn State has a LOT more of those than my grad school alma mater so I wonder what all those people are doing and how necessary they all are?

Quote from: spork on May 11, 2024, 04:43:15 PMThis is a non-issue:

"All assignments are available from Day 1 of the semester. Plan ahead."

"There are five exams. Lowest exam score is dropped from the calculation of the course grade. There are no make-up exams."

My state university's religious accommodation policy does not allow us to force students to use a dropped score if they are missing an exam/major assignment due date/ etc for a religious observance. We have to find a way for them to earn the points through some generally equal mechanism that accommodates their religious observance. To be fair, this can include taking an exam a bit early (I have accommodated a student who didn't want to take an early evening exam while fasting during Ramadan by allowing her to take it at 7:00 am the next day right after eating).
 

They get up to three religious observances per semester, and we can't even ask what they are for. The only useful part of the policy is they have to inform us of all requested observances by the end of the second week of class.

The policy was created in response to state level legislation.

What publicly available info can show administrative bloat? I can imagine trying to glean it form IPEDS, or maybe from the top end of a form 990, but don't know what could get at it with accuracy.

Morning!

No Northern Lights for us - apparently they were visible here but we are in town with a lot of light pollution so didn't notice them.

QBw2LL, last word cancan. LB brushwork-kempt which I found annoying because that's not really a word. Quick 2fer this morning.

ab_grp Congratulations! I think it's sweet that he asked.

cathwen We are starting and ending in Lisbon to use up some tickets we bought for a trip back in June 2020. From Lisbon to Bordeaux for family, then Montlucon, Annecy, Geneva to see my cousin and back to Lisbon.

And then, back to work!

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on May 11, 2024, 05:35:32 PMCNN: Dozens of professors among those arrested in campus protests

If profs could have been restricted to only "supporting" student protesters on the "other" side; i.e. ones who they didn't agree with politically, (so it was just about the principle of free speech), I'd wager you could count them on one hand. With fingers to spare.

Quote from: Langue_doc on April 06, 2024, 07:45:34 AM

Quote from: fleabite on April 05, 2024, 05:56:36 AMI had a good look at sparrows when they gathered around me to prospect for crumbs as I was eating a snack. I looked up their identities after I got home (I didn't have a camera with me). One of the group, very attractive, was a male house sparrow just taking on its breeding plumage. The others were, I think, non-breeding/immature males, but I didn't think to check the bill color. Sparrows are so omnipresent where I live (and zip about so rapidly) that it never occurred to me to try and distinguish among them before.

Depending on where you live, some of these could be song sparrows or even their white-throated counterparts.

Thanks for the reply, which I just saw. There are many of the tan-type of white-throated sparrow in my area, but what I saw were definitely house sparrows. They struck my eye because the markings were unfamiliar to me.

AmListHist: I hope all four eggs in the robin's nest hatch!

I recommend the 9/11 Report. I recognize that reading in full would not be in the scope of your course, but it is very well written, and I remember thinking that the chapter on the reasons for the attack was excellent. As it was a bipartisan report, it might be particularly acceptable to students who do happen to be engaged politically on one side or another.

Let There Be Water: Israel's Solution for a Water-Starved World, by Seth M. Siegel, is a very accessible read about how Israel turned desert lands into fertile land, as well as the other technologies that it uses to conserve water that could be copied around the world. I think that students would enjoy it, particularly those who are environmentally minded.

I've heard good things about Start-up Nation (also about Israel) but haven't read it.

Editing this to add that I also wanted to recommend The Ghost Plane: https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Plane-Rendition-Torture-Program/dp/031236024X. I think most students will be shocked by the actions taken by the US in the Middle East, but it could help them to care about voting and politics.