New Books in Education

Nathan Long shares insights from his career leading successful growth strategies for two small private universities. Saybrook University was formed in the 1970s by some of the leading scholars and practitioners in the field of humanist psychology and was an early pioneer in online/hybrid and residential conference education. Long discusses the many benefits to Saybrook of being part of the TCS Education System (see earlier interview with TCS founder Michael Horowitz), one of the few national, non-profit systems of higher education.David Finegold is the president of Chatham University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, a bill purportedly meant to revive U.S. dominance in research and development. “We used to rank number one in the world in research and development; now we rank number nine,” Biden said at the signing ceremony. “China was number eight decades ago; now they are number two.”And a recent study from Japan’s science ministry reported that China now leads the world not just in quantity of scientific research, but in quality too.The success of the U.S.--and perhaps China, into the future–is due to the “research university”, an academic institution that offers professors the freedom to study and research, and students the freedom to learn, leading to high-quality academic output. Those universities are the subject of Professor William Kirby’s Empires of Ideas: Creating the Modern University from Germany to America to China (Harvard University Press, 2022).In this interview, Professor Kirby and I talk about the research university: Humboldt, Harvard, Berkeley, Tsinghua, Nanjing, and the University of Hong Kong. We also discuss what it means for China, and Chinese institutions, to play a bigger role in world academia. How might that change things?William C. Kirby is Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration and T. M. Chang Professor of China Studies at Harvard University, as well as Chair of the Harvard China Fund and Faculty Chair of the Harvard Center Shanghai. His many books include Can China Lead? Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth (Harvard Business Review Press: 2014)You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Empires of Ideas. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Why Aaron Basko thinks we are looking at student success backwards. How asking alums why they stayed at a school often tells us more about student needs than asking the students who are withdrawing why they leave. What the “Big Six” for student success is. What two things to evaluate as you decide which college or university will be the right “fit” for you. His advice to parents and incoming students. Our guest is: Aaron Basko, who currently serves as Associate Vice President for Enrollment Services at the University of Lynchburg, in Lynchburg Virginia. With 25 years of experience serving as an enrollment growth specialist and student success strategist for multiple institutions, Aaron has been part of the leadership team that engineered historic growth comebacks at three different colleges and universities. Aaron specializes in creating cross-functional teams for strategic enrollment planning and retention success. A thought leader and author, Aaron has written for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, The Times Higher Education, and the State Department’s Fulbright blog. As a 2015 Fulbright International Education Administrator and capacity building specialist, Aaron also assists institutions with student mobility and international partnership initiatives. Aaron loves to create “a-ha moments” and to help institutions clarify the distinctive voice that will resonate with the right students.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who holds a PhD in American history. She is the co-producer of the Academic Life.Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: Aaron Basko’s article in Inside Higher Ed on how to attract more liberal arts college students to campus : Liberal arts colleges need new strategies (opinion) “Have We Gotten Student Success Completely Backwards?” and Aaron’s other articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education: Aaron Basko (chronicle.com) This discussion about the college admissions process. Get Real and Get In: How to Get Into the College of Your Dreams by Being Your Authentic Self, by Aviva Legatt This conversation about navigating the ups and downs of student life:  How To Human: An Incomplete Manual for Living in a Messed-Up World, by Alice Connor How to College: What to Know Before You Go (and When You’re There), by Andrea Malkin Brenner and Lara Hope Schwartz This conversation about rejection-recovery and dealing with mistakes 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 on everything from how to finish that project to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Here on the Academic Life channel, we embrace a broad definition of what it means to be an academic and to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

You Are Your Own Best Teacher!: Sparking the Imagination and Intellect of Tweens (Essential Books, 2022) provides a variety of teachable antidotes to the punishing forces bearing down on youngsters from harmful marketing, the insidious grip of 'virtual reality' and the tyranny of peer groups. Apprehensive parents and burdened teachers will delight in the lessons of this book for Tweens (9-12 year olds). Tweens, who are whipsawed by relentless distractions, profit-driven manipulations and oncoming addictions, are guided toward elevating their own sense of significance, protection and realizable achievements. Claire Nader introduces the young to Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass and Helen Keller to illustrate their profound awareness and discipline. Claire Nader is a social scientist and activist.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

According to A Problem of Fit: How the Complexity of College Pricing Hurts Students—and Universities (U Chicago Press, 2022) a college education doesn't come with a sticker price and perhaps, he argues, it should. Millions of Americans miss out on the economic benefits of a college education because of concerns around the costs. Financial aid systems offer limited help and produce uneven distributions. In the United States today, the systems meant to improve access to education have in fact added a new layer of deterrence. In A Problem of Fit Levine examines the role of financial aid systems in facilitating (and discouraging) access to college. If markets require prices in order to function optimally, then the American higher-education system--rife as it is with hidden and variable costs--amounts to a market failure. It's a problem of price transparency, not just affordability. Ensuring that students understand exactly what college will cost, including financial aid, could lift the lid on not only college attendance for more people, but for greater representation across demographics and institutions. As he illustrates, our conversations around affordability and free tuition miss a larger truth: that the opacity of our current college-financing systems is a primary driver of inequities in education and society. A Problem of Fit offers a bold, trenchant new argument for an educational reform that is well within reaPhillip B. Levine is the Katharine Coman and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of five books devoted to statistics, the analysis of social policy, and its effect on individual behavior.Tom Discenna is Professor of Communication at Oakland University whose work examines issues of academic labor and communicative labor more broadly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

An incisive case study of changemaking in action, Stuck Improving: Racial Equity and School Leadership (Harvard Education Press, 2021) analyzes the complex process of racial equity reform within K-12 schools. Scholar Decoteau J. Irby emphasizes that racial equity is dynamic, shifting as our emerging racial consciousness evolves and as racism asserts itself anew. Those who accept the challenge of reform find themselves "stuck improving," caught in a perpetual dilemma of both making progress and finding ever more progress to be made. Rather than dismissing stuckness as failure, Irby embraces it as an inextricable part of the improvement process.Irby brings readers into a large suburban high school as school leaders strive to redress racial inequities among the school's increasingly diverse student population. Over a five-year period, he witnesses both progress and setbacks in the leaders' attempts to provide an educational environment that is intellectually, socioemotionally, and culturally affirming.Looking beyond this single school, Irby pinpoints the factors that are essential to the work of equity reform in education. He argues that lasting transformation relies most urgently on the cultivation of organizational conditions that render structural racism impossible to preserve. Irby emphasizes how schools must strengthen and leverage personal, relational, and organizational capacities in order to sustain meaningful change.Stuck Improving offers a clear-eyed accounting of school-improvement practices, including data-driven instructional approaches, teacher cultural competency, and inquiry-based leadership strategies. This timely work contributes both to the practical efforts of equity-minded school leaders and to a deeper understanding of what the work of racial equity improvement truly entails. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: The Open Learning Initiative (OLIve) operating out of Central European University. The importance of language related to students experiencing displacement. How our guests center theory-informed practice in their work. Three proposals for opening up the university to promote transformative experiences. Advice to others in the field initiating programs for displaced students. Our guests are: Dr. Ian M. Cook and Dr. Prem Kumar Rajaram, two of the three editors of Opening Up the University: Teaching and Learning with Refugees. Dr. Celine Cantat is also an editor on the volume. Ian M. Cook is Director of Studies at the Open Learning Initiative (OLIve), Budapest located at Central European University (CEU). An anthropologist by training, his work focuses on urban India, environmental justice, access to higher education, and podcasting. He strives to make scholarly practice more collaborative and multimodal. He is part of the Allegra Lab editorial collective.Dr. Prem Kumar Rajaram is Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University and Head of the OLIve unit at the same university. He works on issues to do with race, capitalism, and displacement in historical and contemporary perspective.Our host is: Dr. Dana M. Malone, a higher education scholar and practitioner energized by facilitating meaningful conversations and educational experiences. She specializes in college student relationships, gender, sexuality, and religious identities as well as student success and assessment planning.Listeners to this episode may also be interested in: Our featured book: Opening Up the University: Teaching and Learning with Refugees Refugee Education Initiatives Higher Education Supporting Refugees in Europe Refugees and Higher Education: Trans-national Perspectives on Access, Equity, and Internationalization 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 on everything from how to finish that project to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Here on the Academic Life channel, we embrace a broad definition of what it means to be an academic and to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Picture a typical computer geek. Likely white, male, and someone you’d say has a “natural instinct” for technology. Yet, after six years teaching technology classes to first-generation, low-income middle school students in Oakland, California, Cassidy Puckett has seen firsthand that being good with technology is not something people are born with—it’s something they learn. In Redefining Geek: Bias and the Five Hidden Habits of Tech-Savvy Teens (U Chicago Press, 2022), she overturns the stereotypes around the digitally savvy and identifies the habits that can help everyone cultivate their inner geek.Drawing on observations and interviews with a diverse group of students around the country, Puckett zeroes in on five technology learning habits that enable tech-savvy teens to learn new technologies: a willingness to try and fail, management of frustration and boredom, use of models, and the abilities to use design logic and identify efficiencies. In Redefining Geek, she shows how to measure and build these habits, and she demonstrates how many teens historically marginalized in STEM are already using these habits and would benefit from recognition for their talent, access to further learning opportunities, and support in career pathways. She argues that if we can develop, recognize, and reward these technological learning habits in all kids—especially girls and historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups—we can address many educational inequities and disparities in STEM.Revealing how being good with technology is not about natural ability but habit and persistence, Redefining Geek speaks to the ongoing conversation on equity in technology education and argues for a more inclusive technology learning experience for all students.Joao Souto-Maior is PhD Candidate in Sociology of Education at the New York University.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

In Community College Mathematics: Past, Present, and Future (CRC Press, 2022), Brian Cafarella addresses the key questions: How can we build a future model for community college gatekeeper math classes that is both successful and sustainable? Additionally, how can we learn from the past and the present to build such a model? From the 1970’s to the pandemic in the early 2020’s, the book uses interviews with 30 community college faculty members from seven community colleges to explore math curricula as well as trends, initiatives, teaching practices, and mandates that have impacted community college mathematics.Brian Cafarella is a professor in mathematics at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio. He has taught a variety of courses ranging from developmental math through pre-calculus. Brian is a past recipient of the Roeche Award for teaching excellence and a past recipient of the Ohio Magazine Award for excellence in education.Marc Goulet is Professor in mathematics and Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: How both of today’s guests became involved in higher education in prison. Why this work is personal to them. Funding and representation issues in higher education in prison. The complexities of supporting students who are incarcerated without supporting the carceral system. And a discussion of the Journal of Higher Education in Prison. Our guest is: Dr. Erin Corbett, who earned her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, where her dissertation examined the relationship between educational attainment level and post-release employment outcomes for formerly incarcerated people in Connecticut. While pursuing her doctorate, Erin launched a nonprofit that provides not-for-credit, postsecondary level courses in three correctional facilities in Connecticut. She has also taught in correctional facilities in Rhode Island with College Unbound, and guest lectured to incarcerated students in the Iowa through the University of Iowa Liberal Arts Beyond Bars (UI LABB) program. Erin was the Assistant Director for Applied Research at the Institute for Higher Education Policy focusing on federal policy related to the intersection of higher education policy and policy related to educational access for justice-impacted people; and she was the Director of Policy at the Katal Center for Health, Equity, and Justice before transitioning to working with SCEA full time and consulting.Our guest is: Dr. Breea Willingham, incoming Associate Professor of Criminology at UNC Wilmington. Dr. Willingham earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Willingham’s research examines the intersections of race, gender, higher education, and the injustice system. She is particularly interested in examining Black women’s pathways to incarceration, their experiences with higher education in prison, and providing a platform for Black women impacted by the injustice system to tell their stories. Influenced by her experiences as a sister and aunt of two men serving life sentences, Dr. Willingham’s research also focuses on the societal ramifications of mass incarceration, especially its impact on families. Her work on incarcerated fathers and their children, Black women’s prison narratives, teaching in women’s prisons, and Black women and police violence has been published in academic journals and edited collections. In 2020, Dr. Willingham was appointed Managing Editor of the Journal for Higher Education in Prison, a peer-reviewed journal that publishes on the topics and issues in higher education in prison.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the co-creator of the Academic Life.Listeners to this episode might also be interested in: The Journal of Higher Education in Prison The Alliance for Higher Education in Prison Ear Hustle, a podcast hosted by persons who are incarcerated at San Quentin  A conversation about the Emerson Prison Initiative Dr. Erin Corbett on Beyond Prisons Abolition. Feminism. Now. edited by Angela Davis et al. Punishment and Society, by Breea Willingham Privilege and Punishment, by Matthew Clair No Mercy Here, by Sarah Haley You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you experts about everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Here on the Academic Life channel, we embrace a broad definition of what it means to be an academic and to lead an academic life. We view education as a transformative human endeavor and are inspired by today’s knowledge-producers working inside and outside the academy. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DMs us on Twitter: @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education