Whatever You Make It.

innovantinc: Fordham University follows Contract Magazine’s...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:16:01 -0400

Fordham University follows Contract Magazine’s Higher Ed Interior Design Trend

In its March 2013 issue, Contract Magazine devoted its pages to the topic of Higher Education, stating that higher ed “has gone the way of modern office interiors. The traditional institutional aesthetic has been replaced with design-savvy environments… In other words, all the factors that correlate with how learning has changed globally.”

Fordham University recently followed suit as the new Gabelli School of Business opened its doors in the fall of 2012. Now a progressive learning environment, the space reflects the state of the art, technology and tools used in the modern workplace. In order to emulate some of the world’s largest financial institutions, Fordham selected Innovant to furnish the business school’s forty-seat trading room. Today, the trading room is popular with students and faculty alike.

To learn more about this installation, read the case study here.

Grant Snider

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:15:32 -0400

Grant Snider

Sketch artist experiment proves you are more beautiful than you...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:14:54 -0400

Sketch artist experiment proves you are more beautiful than you think

Some truths…

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 18:33:57 -0500

Some truths…

Asian-Americans in the Argument A college education aims to...

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 18:32:36 -0500

Asian-Americans in the Argument

A college education aims to guide students through unfamiliar territory — Arabic, Dante, organic chemistry — so what was once alien comes to feel a lot less so. But sometimes an issue starts so close to home that the educational goal is the inverse: to take what students think of as familiar and place it in a new and surprising light.

(read more)

: Six Paths to More Authentic Teaching

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 18:31:22 -0500

: Six Paths to More Authentic Teaching:

1. Being sincere, candid, or honest — When students look at the teacher, they see a genuine reflection of that teacher’s personal identity. They also hear from someone who speaks with candor and integrity.

2. Being true to oneself — The teacher is a self-aware person who has made a commitment…

Publicity Materials I wrote content for and oversaw the design...

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 18:31:01 -0500

Publicity Materials

I wrote content for and oversaw the design of a brochure used to promote The Big Read’s programs and events hosted by the Stone Center. The Stone Center was one of few organizations across the US that received The Big Read grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

This is great.

"…and the issue arises when individuals who have high expectations and hold high standards for..."

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 18:42:00 -0400

“…and the issue arises when individuals who have high expectations and hold high standards for anyone and everyone refuse to do the same for themselves.”

The field is coming along…

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 17:02:49 -0400

The field is coming along…

In Top 25 Programs, Presidents Lack Clear Oversight of Sports

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 01:20:12 -0400

By Brad Wolverton

Fed up with scandals at Pennsylvania State University and in other big-time athletic departments, college presidents have pushed for more control over NCAA decisions during the past year. But on their own campuses, many presidents lack clear authority over sports, a Chronicle analysis has found.

Of the presidents or chancellors who oversee the 25 biggest athletic departments, not a single one has contract language related to oversight of athletics. That includes Rodney A. Erickson, who was named president of Penn State following a breakdown in university leadership during the Jerry Sandusky sex-abuse scandal. Employment agreements for top officials at Ohio State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which have both faced major NCAA sanctions in the past year, do not spell out any specific powers.

More common in presidential contracts, The Chronicle found, were specific goals for fund raising and financial management. If athletics was mentioned at all, it was to spell out perks the presidents would receive, such as free lifetime tickets to games.

Campus chiefs are held accountable for sports in various ways, including through individual performance reviews or their institutions’ accreditation processes. But contract provisions are one of the measures governing boards use to assess presidential performance.

Governance experts say boards should do a better job of spelling out their leaders’ athletics responsibilities to protect institutions from conflicts with boosters and outside parties, and to guard against potential fallout from scandal.

Raymond D. Cotton, a higher-education lawyer who specializes in governance issues, believes trustees themselves should be more engaged in conversations about sports, and thinks they should revise presidential agreements to include specific language about athletics oversight: “It’s a responsibility we all have in a post-Penn State world.”

Among the highlights from The Chronicle‘s analysis:

* Some presidents believe their contracts should include more specific language about athletics oversight. “If you’re supposed to be paying attention to X, you’ve got a very strong incentive to pay attention to X because you want to keep your job,” said Ed Ray, president of Oregon State University, who has led the NCAA’s Executive Committee the past two years. “If that language isn’t there, it’s of your own volition whether you pay attention to something or not.”

* One president told The Chronicle he wouldn’t want detailed language about athletics in his contract because he doesn’t want to be held responsible for the behavior of students or others who are beyond his control.

* Legal experts say there could be downsides to clarifying leaders’ responsibilities. If institutions start spelling out specific duties and fail to name certain ones, that can get them in trouble, says Josephine R. (Jo) Potuto, a professor of law at the University of Nebraska and former chair of the NCAA’s Division I Committee on Infractions.

“A bad actor might say, ‘Here’s the list of things I’m supposed to do. You put this list together, and you didn’t say this. I don’t know who you wanted to do it but it wasn’t I,’” she said.

* Several campus chiefs suggested spelling out responsibilities in a less formal document, such as a “position responsibility statement” that must be reviewed annually by a board. That is what Betsy Hoffman, a professor of economics at Iowa State University and president emerita of the University of Colorado System, has done with deans and other people with whom she has worked.

In such a statement, she says, the board should name presidents or chancellors as the ultimate authority for maintaining a “safe” athletics program with “high integrity.” The document should give leaders the authority to hire and fire coaches and athletics officials to ensure the integrity of the department, she says.

And presidents or chancellors should be required to report any problems to the board. “It’s always assumed that presidents will do that, but maybe it needs to be spelled out,” she says.

The full story is available here.

Florida State U. Instructor Grades Students Based on ‘Klout’ Scores

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 01:18:48 -0400

By Angela Chen

In early 2010 Todd Bacile started hearing from companies about a new measure they were using to help decide whom to hire: the Klout score, a number that calculates a person’s online influence based on his or her presence across various social-media networks.

So when Mr. Bacile began teaching an electronic-marketing class at Florida State University last year, he created a Klout-based project worth 10 percent of the final grade. Klout.com calculates “influence” based on a user’s level of engagement on sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Facebook. It then assigns a score on a scale of 1 to 100, with the average score being 40.

In Mr. Bacile’s class, students were expected to post interesting content and to communicate with others on social networks. The idea was that Klout scores would increase as people began responding to the students’ content. Mr. Bacile then graded students based on their Klout scores at the end of the semester.

The instructor, a doctoral candidate in marketing, has received a fair share of criticism since blogging about his project this week. Critics say Klout scores, in addition to being rarely used in hiring decisions, are a flawed and unnecessary measure of influence.

Jeff Turner, a social-media commentator and president of the Web-development firm Zeek Interactive, wrote that Klout rankings don’t matter because influence cannot be quantified with an algorithm, especially one that the site purposefully does not reveal.

Tessa Revolinski, who just graduated from Florida State with a degree in marketing, took Mr. Bacile’s course this past spring. She entered with a Klout score of 55 and ended with a score of 58, the highest in the class. Ms. Revolinski says the project was useful for a marketing course, but agrees that the algorithm the site uses isn’t very accurate.

“It’s not a very consistent measure of online influence,” she says. Her score would often fluctuate, even when she maintained the same amount of content.

Mr. Bacile contends that the critics are misinterpreting the project’s purpose, which is not to “game the system” or promote Klout but to see if students apply the lessons they learn in class.

“In effect, Klout is a byproduct of what I want the students to learn and apply,” he wrote. ”I chose to use Klout because some ad agencies and marketing firms indicated that they assess a job applicant’s Klout score as a prescreening tool.”

He’s not alone in using Klout in the classroom. Professors at campuses including Northwestern University, New York University, and Southern New Hampshire University have told Mr. Bacile that they assign similar projects, he said.

But whether companies pay attention is a different matter: When Ms. Revolinski began applying for social-media jobs and entry-level marketing positions, not one person sought this particular number.

“I was surprised that no one asked for my Klout score, even though I did throw it out there,” she says. “Some people didn’t even know what it is.”

rhbinformed: Coherence and Customer Service

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 01:13:12 -0400

rhbinformed: Coherence and Customer Service:

Coherence and good customer service aren’t necessarily the same thing, but they should be considered in the same breath. The way you deliver service to your customers (and by customers, I mean anyone with whom you exchange—students, faculty, parents, donors, alumni, neighbors, legislators,…

OU applications up by nearly a third from last year, but...

Thu, 03 May 2012 20:18:41 -0400

OU applications up by nearly a third from last year, but increase won’t translate into corresponding enrollment hike

Ohio University has seen a 32 percent increase in the number of applications it has received so far this year compared to last year, according to figures provided by OU on Friday.

In 2011, OU received a total of 13,064 applications. In 2012, with the application deadline two months ago, that number has jumped to 17,281, a difference of 4,217. But officials say that this doesn’t mean there will be a 32 percent increase in enrollment. In fact, that’s hardly the case.

The 2011 freshman class stood at 3,900. Craig Cornell, vice provost for enrollment management, said Friday that the targeted number for the 2012 freshman class is 4,025, an increase of 125 students, or about 3.25 percent.

Read more from The Athens NEWS. | Image via The Athens NEWS.

How big does the applicant increase need to be for the university to increase their class size (and as a result, faculty size)?

For other posts about Ohio University, click here.

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Truth.

Thu, 03 May 2012 20:16:47 -0400

Truth.

The Inferiority of Blackness as a Subject

Thu, 03 May 2012 20:16:09 -0400

The Inferiority of Blackness as a Subject:

A necessary response to Naomi Schaefer Riley’s racist (and poorly written) article in the Chronicle for Higher Education on the irrelevance of Black Studies.

“Schaefer Riley went after, arguably, the most powerless group of people in all of academe: doctoral students who lack the political cover of tenure, institutional support, or extensive professional networks. She attacked junior scholars who have done nothing but tried to fulfill the requirements of their degree program and who had the audacity to be recognized for doing so in academia’s largest publication. Their crime is not being fucking* invisible.

For that, for daring to be seen and heard Schaefer Riley eviscerates the hard work of doctoral students.

And she does not even afford them the respect of critiquing their actual scholarship. That is beneath her. She attacks the very veracity of their right to choose what scholarship they will do. In effect, she attacks their right to be agents in their own academic careers.

She eschews their dissertation titles as laughable. She pokes fun at their subject matter. She all but calls them stupid.

And The Chronicle of Higher Education let her.”

AGGIE MUSTER: The History Aggies gathered together on June 26,...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 17:01:52 -0400

AGGIE MUSTER: The History

Aggies gathered together on June 26, 1883 to live over again their college days, the victories and defeats won and lost upon the drill field and classroom. Eventually the annual gathering evolved into a celebration of Texas Independence on San Jacinto Day – April 21st. Over time the tradition has changed, but its very essence has remained “If there is an A&M man in one hundred miles of you, you are expected to get together, eat a little, and live over the days you spent at the A&M College of Texas.” Muster is celebrated in more than four hundred places worldwide, with the largest ceremony on the Texas A&M campus in College Station. Aggie Muster as we know it today is credited to E. E. McQuillen ’20, who served as the Executive Secretary of The Association of Former Students. It is fitting that he was honored to serve as the first Campus Muster speaker.

The committee was recognized as a student organization in 1950. Like the tradition itself, the committee has transcended the eras and events throughout its history and remained true to the timeless ideals of Muster. The Muster Committee is responsible for organizing and planning every aspect of the tradition, from speaker to barbeque, awareness to the Roll Call – this committee continues the livelihood of this great tradition year after year. The committee falls under the discretion of the Student Government Association. The 2010 Muster Committee is composed of twenty three committee members, six sub-chairs, and one chair. Their tasks vary among the five subcommittees: Awareness, Programs, Roll Call and Families, Speaker Selection, and Special Operations.

Muster is a time to look to the past, present, and future…not only to grieve but to reflect and to celebrate the lives that connect us to one another. A gesture so simple in nature yet so lasting in spirit, Muster is the lasting impression every Aggie leaves with us; it reminds us of the greatness that lies within these walls, of the loyalty we possess, of the connection that binds us, and of the idea that every Aggie has a place of importance – whether they are present in flesh or spirit.

Take 5 with Richie: Social Media and Student Affairs

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:55:55 -0400

Take 5 with Richie: Social Media and Student Affairs:

So every few weeks our Hall Director staff get together for a Professional Development session. This week happened to be presentations from those that attended NASPA or ACPA.

A lot of great programs were (re)presented today and one that stuck with me the most was one by the folks at UNC Pembroke…

There is a little truth around this one. lol

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:55:16 -0400

There is a little truth around this one. lol

"In a society that encourages its members to pursue the career paths that promise the greatest..."

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:53:24 -0400

“

In a society that encourages its members to pursue the career paths that promise the greatest personal or financial rewards, people will, given a choice, learn only what they need to know for success. They will have no incentive to acquire the knowledge and skills important for life as an informed citizen, or as a reflective and culturally literate human being. College exposes future citizens to material that enlightens and empowers them, whatever careers they end up choosing.

In performing this function, college also socializes. It takes people with disparate backgrounds and beliefs and brings them into line with mainstream norms of reason and taste. Independence of mind is tolerated in college, and even honored, but students have to master the accepted ways of doing things before they are permitted to deviate.

”

- Debating the Value of College in America : The New Yorker

I have always been incredibly interested in the potential of...

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:55:45 -0400

I have always been incredibly interested in the potential of social media, and more specifically as a marketing tool. After my last coop in the Enrollment Management and Student Affairs office at Northeastern where part of my job was the run all NUAdmissions social media campaigns, I have become particularly interested in how universities are utilizing social media. It has become increasingly popular for admissions recruitment, student engagement, alumni outreach, and has even started showing up in the classroom. I happened to be browsing www.dailyinfographic.com (one of my favorite forms of procrastination) when I came across this one. Naturally I was interested and read through it. It felt somewhat appropriate to post on a Tumblr dedicated to classwork!