I want to revisit the topic of ethics today because of a controversial story I’ve been following in the news; I was pretty shocked when I heard about this experiment, as was most of the scientific community. A scientist in China, Jiankui He, has claimed that he used CRISPR (a gene editing technique) to genetically […]
What do colleges owe students for the high price they’re paying? In recent years, colleges have sent the message: “Come here, get a degree, and you can earn a good living.” But is giving students some knowledge about their subject matter enough? How far into students’ lives should the university extend? Many American universities provide not only classes […]
Seth Godin poses a question in his TEDx talk that I have been mulling over all semester: what is school for? I think we can all agree that a school isn’t just a building to hold students for the day; although, as Parker Palmer points out in “A New Professional,” “the fact that we have schools does […]
After listening to the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast with Dr. Rajiv Jhangiani, I went looking for a definition of ‘open pedagogy.’ Though I wasn’t able to find one clear definition, it seems to me that the goals of open pedagogy are to engage students in their own learning, and to overcome barriers to education […]
There is no doubt that social media has changed the way people communicate. Although the most popular forms of social media may change, it is definitely here to stay. Institutions of higher education have caught on to the fact that they should be using social media to promote their brand and engage current students and […]
BMC Physiology is an open access journal that I explored. BioMed Central (BMC) is a part of Springer Nature, is one of the largest open access publishers, and publishes many journals in different fields. BMC Physiology specifically publishes peer-reviewed articles about physiological processes- from the cellular to organismal level. All articles published in this journal […]
When I began reading Sarah Deel’s “Finding my Teaching Voice,” the very first line, in which she says “when [she] began teaching… all [she] knew about teaching came from watching [her] own teachers over the 16 years [she’d] spent in school,” resonated with me. I feel that’s the same mindset that I’m in right now– […]
As I looked through the misconduct case summaries on the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) website, I couldn’t help but think “these are only the people who have been caught.” In the case of Ricky Malhotra, falsified/fabricated data had been used on 13 different documents in a period of over 5 years. In some cases, […]
As we watched Michael Wesch’s TEDx talk in class on Wednesday, I found myself relating to his students. With each statement presented in the video, I thought back to my time as an undergraduate student. I complete 49% of the readings assigned to me. Same. I buy hundred dollar textbooks that I never open. And […]
I will admit that I have never read any university’s mission statement until this week. I chose to compare the mission statements of two universities to which I have a personal connection: the College of William & Mary, where I completed my undergraduate degree, and Johns Hopkins University, where I was an employee. College of […]