New Books in Higher Education

President Botstein shares insights from his remarkable career which started as the youngest college president in the U.S. at just 23, when he joined the experimental Franconia College in New Hampshire and has continued through 46 years as the visionary leader of Bard College. He describes in detail 4 major innovations he has launched at Bard: 1) the Early College network in 7 cities across the U.S., 2) the Bard Prison Initiative, 3) the Open Society University Network of dual degree liberal arts programs around the world that culminated in a $500 million matching gift from George Soros, and 4) the development of Bard as a leader in music education and performance, including a Conservatory, a Frank Gehry-designed performing arts center, and Orchestra Now, a Master’s program that trains world-class musicians. He describes the differences along with some commonalities between being a top conductor, for the American Symphony, the Jerusalem Symphony and many leading orchestras, and a successful college president.David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the New Books Network, we love university presses. So we're happy to tell you about University Press Week, the annual celebration of UPs and their important work. Today I talked to Lisa Bayer, the director of the University of Georgia Press and the president of the Association of University Presses. We discuss a lot of things--open access, business models, libraries, peer review, careers in UP publishing--all knit together by a theme, that being how UPs keep up with everything that is going on, scholarly-communications-wise. Enjoy. Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Part II of this interview, TCS Education Founder Michael Horowitz discusses the evolution of the TCS system from its origins in Chicago to a national system that now includes students from all 50 states pursuing a wide range of undergraduate and professional degrees. He provides multiple examples of the benefits of TCS’s model of “radical cooperation”, while also discussing why there have been so few imitators despite their openness about sharing the model.David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is an epidemic of bad thinking in the world today. An alarming number of people are embracing crazy, even dangerous ideas. They believe that vaccinations cause autism. They reject the scientific consensus on climate change as a “hoax.” And they blame the spread of COVID-19 on the 5G network or a Chinese cabal. Worse, bad thinking drives bad acting—it even inspired a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol. In this book, Steven Nadler and Lawrence Shapiro argue that the best antidote for bad thinking is the wisdom, insights, and practical skills of philosophy. When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People: How Philosophy Can Save Us from Ourselves (Princeton UP, 2021) provides an engaging tour through the basic principles of logic, argument, evidence, and probability that can make all of us more reasonable and responsible citizens.When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People shows how we can more readily spot and avoid flawed arguments and unreliable information; determine whether evidence supports or contradicts an idea; distinguish between merely believing something and knowing it; and much more. In doing so, the book reveals how epistemology, which addresses the nature of belief and knowledge, and ethics, the study of moral principles that should govern our behavior, can reduce bad thinking. Moreover, the book shows why philosophy’s millennia-old advice about how to lead a good, rational, and examined life is essential for escaping our current predicament.In a world in which irrationality has exploded to deadly effect, When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People is a timely and essential guide for a return to reason.Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Digital games for learning are now commonplace, used in settings that range from K–12 education to advanced medical training. In Making Games for Impact (MIT Press, 2021), Kurt Squire examines the ways that games make an impact on learning, investigating how designers and developers incorporate authentic social impact goals, build a team, and work with experts in order to make games that are effective and marketable. Because there is no one design process for making games for impact—specific processes arise in response to local needs and conditions—Squire presents a series of case studies that range from a small, playable game created by a few programmers and an artist to a multimillion-dollar project with funders, outside experts, and external constraints.These cases, drawn from the Games + Learning + Society Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, show designers tackling such key issues as choosing platforms, using data analytics to guide development, and designing for new markets. Although not a how-to guide, the book offers developers, researchers, and students real-world lessons in greenlighting a project, scaling up design teams, game-based assessment, and more. The final chapter examines the commercial development of an impact game in detail, describing the creation of an astronomy game, At Play in the Cosmos, that ships with an introductory college textbook. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode feature an interview with Michael Alexander, one of the most innovative small university presidents in the U.S. He discusses a number of the innovations during his 15-year tenure at Lasell University located in the suburbs of Boston, MA: Lasell Village, a very successful retirement community where residents sign up to be full-time students for the rest of their lives, Lasell Works and a new program that lowers the costs of obtaining a degree for students who agree to spend their whole sophomore year learning online while working off campus. Alexander is also one of the co-founders of the Low-Cost Models Consortium that is fostering collaboration among private colleges and industry to find ways to significantly reduce the debt for students to complete their degrees. David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jean Hopman’s book Surviving Emotional Work for Teachers: Improving Wellbeing and Professional Learning Through Reflexive Practice (Routledge, 2020), is a guide to improving teachers' wellbeing and practice through support of their emotional workload. The book argues that teachers should be given a formal opportunity to debrief on challenging events, allowing them to reflect on and reframe these experiences in a way that informs future practice to prevent the emotional fatigue that can lead teachers to leave the field altogether.Each chapter opens with a teacher's story, acknowledging the emotional layers present in the scenario and what learnings can be drawn from it. This is valuable reading for teachers at all stages of their career, whether preparing for the complex work ahead or making sense of past and current experiences. This book offers a reflexive process that teachers and schools can implement to facilitate the useful exploration of their emotion, a process vital for the overall wellbeing of any school.Dr Jean Hopman works in Initial Teacher Education at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. Her doctoral work explored the emotional aspects of teaching by exploring the underlying layers of a teacher's role. She initially completed a Bachelor of Primary and Secondary Education and a Graduate Diploma in Child Psychotherapy Studies. Since 2000 she has taught and counselled in diverse educational settings, including government schools, private schools, international schools, alternative education settings and universities.Discount for listeners: Save 30% on Surviving Emotional Work for Teachers when you purchase here by entering PBC30at the checkout. Offer valid until the 31 October, 2021. Alice Garner is historian, teacher and performer with a PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Dr. Liz Faber’s long road from completed PhD to dream job Why academia said she was a failure The financial reasons she worked two academic jobs at once The importance of speaking out about pay-scale and departmental inequities Putting kindness in the classroom Why you have to define your own success Our guest is: Dr. Liz W Faber, an Assistant Professor of English & Communication at Dean College. Her teaching and research interests include multimodal communication, science communication, representations of AI in science fiction, computer history, and gender/sexuality studies. She is the author of The Computer's Voice: From Star Trek to Siri (U. Minnesota Press, 2020) and the guest editor for the Popular Culture Studies Journal special issue on robots and labor. She can be found on Twitter (@lizwfab) or at her website (lizwfaber.com).Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the co-producer of the Academic Life podcasts.Listeners to this episode might be interested in: "Faculty Talk about Teaching at a Community College" by Dianne Finley and Sherry Kinslow Academic Ableism by Jay Dolmage (U Michigan Press, 2017) More than Machines? by Laura Voss (Columbia U Press, 2021) Carleigh Brower’s work The Computer's Voice: From Star Trek to Siri by Liz Faber (U. Minnesota Press, 2020)  Articles on robots and labor, ed by Dr. Liz Faber Popular Culture Studies Journal https://mpcaaca.org/the- NEA article on the need for change  Inside Higher Ed examines contingent faculty wages  The Daily Beast finds making coffee pays more than being an adjunct You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you podcasts. Wish we’d bring on a particular expert? DM on Twitter @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Book workshops produce great books, but too few scholars have access to the resources needed to organize and execute one, especially scholars at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Asian American and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges and Universities. The 2021 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Seattle, launched a new initiative, The Minority-Serving Institution Virtual Book Workshop Project, to provide book workshops for scholars (tenured, untenured, VAP, term appointments) at Minority-Serving Institutions.In the podcast, the co-directors of the Project discuss the importance of supporting MSI faculty, how to successfully apply, and what other authors, editors, and administrators can do to make this project a success.Niambi M. Carter, Associate Professor of Political Science at Howard University, published American While Black: African Americans, Immigration, and the Limits of Citizenship (Oxford 2019) and listeners may remember her New Books in Political Science podcast.Heath Brown, Associate Professor of Public Policy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice City University of New York (and former host of New Books Political Science), published Homeschooling the Right: How Conservative Education Activism Erodes the State (Columbia 2021) and Lilly Goren interviewed him for NBPS.Minority-Serving Institution Virtual Book Workshop | Deadline: January 14, 2022 | Apply Now!Susan Liebell is Dirk Warren '50 Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Daniel Peris, the host of the “Keep Calm and Carry On Investing” podcast, and David Finegold have a wide-ranging discussion of economics and governance questions inherent in K-12 and higher education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices