New Books in Education

This features our first tag team on the podcast, with an engaging discussion with Jared “Jerry” Cohon, who served as President of CMU from 1997-2013, and Dr. Mark Kamlet, who was his provost. The two describe the key initiatives they led that built on the successful momentum of their predecessors, Richard Cyert and Robert Mehrabian, that enabled CMU to advance quickly from a regional technical school with a strong arts program to one of the world’s leading research universities. This begins with a discussion of the merger that formed CMU in 1967 between Carnegie Institute of Technology and the Mellon Institute. They share how with limited resources they were able to transform CMU from a predominantly Pittsburgh-based institution with some small satellite degree programs in the U.S. into one of the world’s most global universities, with campuses in Rwanda, Portugal, Qatar, Australia, and Silicon Valley. At the same time, they partnered with the University of Pittsburgh to help bring about the resurgence of their home city, transforming it from a reliance on heavy industry to an innovation hub focused on Eds & Meds, with CMU’s tech transfer office serving as the engine of growth for Pittsburgh’s emergence as a leader in Robotics, AI, driverless vehicles, and Computer Science. Cohon concludes: “My hope is when education scholars look back in 2050 to understand how CMU, with a fraction of Harvard’s endowment, was able to pass it as the world’s leading research university, it will be because we made the decision to bring CMU to students around the world, while Harvard decided they must continue to come to Cambridge, MA.” 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

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached 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. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at cgessler@gmail.com or dr.danamalone@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.In this episode you’ll hear about: the challenges Kaylah Marcello, a STEM graduate student at UC Davis, suddenly faced when she was having coffee with a friend in mid-March 2020 and her phone rang telling her that her son’s elementary school was closing down. She quickly realized she couldn’t work in the lab she was assigned to while homeschooling her son. Kaylah shares openly about her personal history, her mental health struggles, and why taking care of herself was crucial to taking care of her family and her own educational goals.Our guest is: Kaylah Marcello, a Microbiology PhD student at the University of California, Davis. Kaylah is researching cold tolerance genes that support photosynthesis in Antarctic cyanobacteria with Dr. Dawn Sumner. She has been a teaching assistant for in-person microbiology lab courses during the pandemic. Prior to pursuing a graduate education, she was a transfer student from the California Community College system to the UC system. She is passionate about science communication, educational outreach, mental health awareness and making academia more accessible to people who would otherwise not pursue it. She is a mother and an all-around science enthusiast, taking life one minute at a time.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender.Listeners to this episode might be interested in: Postpartum depression resources California community colleges Dr. Dawn Sumner Lab https://dysumner.faculty.ucdavis.edu/ Dr. Miriam Martin’s interview about her own graduate school experiences  Antarctic Cyanobacteria UC Davis COVID testing initiative Creating a support system in grad school Discussions about the Mind and Mindfulness  Dr. Christina Gessler is a historian of women, gender, and sexuality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Join Raj Balkaran as he talks with Dr. Kate Hartmann, Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Wyoming and Director of Buddhist Studies Online, a new educational platform providing coursework on the history, philosophy, and practices of Buddhism. Founded in 2021 by Seth Powell as a sister institute to Yogic Studies, Buddhist Studies Online provides accessible, affordable, and high-quality courses for the broader community interested in learning more about Buddhism in a non-sectarian way. It aims to bridge the gap between widespread interest in meditation and other aspects of Buddhist traditions and the all-too-often inaccessible research of the academy.Raj and Kate discuss the mission of BSO, the surprising role the NBN podcast played in BSO's origin story, and growing landscape of public-facing teaching and scholarship. How should scholars think about how to address multiple publics? How can they make their research and teaching available and meaningful to popular audiences while still being academically grounded and responsible? How do platforms like BSO fit into the larger landscape of lineage-based Buddhist teachers, mindfulness coaches, and orientalizing discourses about Asian religions? Kate and Raj draw on their respective experiences with BSO and the School of Indian Wisdom in this wide-ranging conversation about what it means to be a scholar in this exciting new era of the humanities.Plus, learn about Buddhist Studies Online's first course, BSO 101 | Intro to Buddhism: History, Philosophy, and Practice, which runs from May 3 to June 11, and get a sneak peek about future courses with Jay Garfield, Daniel Stuart, and Sonam Kachru!"Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Teach for America (TFA) continues to be the single largest preparation program for teachers in the United States. As that program grew in the US (attracting attention, support, and controversy in the process), it also expanded overseas with TFA-like programs (starting with TeachFirst in the UK) currently on the ground in over 50 countries.How has the internationalization of TFA gone in countries with different cultures and different educational systems than the American one in which the program originated? And what might “going global” mean as TFA transforms from a national to an international phenomenon?Three scholars who have been tracking TFA/TFAll trajectory join us today at New Books Network to discuss Examining Teach for All: International Perspectives on a Growing Global Network (Routledge, 2021) which brings together the work of over a dozen researchers examining TFAll programs around the world from a range of perspectives.You can learn more about the editors of Examining Teach for All at: Matthew A.M. Thomas, Emilee Rauschenberger, Katherine Crawford-GarrettJonathan Haber is an educational researcher and consultant working at the intersection of pedagogy, technology, and educational policy. His books include MOOCS and Critical Thinking from MIT Press and his LogicCheck project analyzes the reasoning behind the news of the day. You can read more about Jonathan’s work at http://www.jonathanhaber.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Growing Up America: Youth and Politics Since 1945 (U Georgia Press, 2019) is a fascinating book that weaves together the burgeoning field of Childhood History, the post-World War II history of the United States, and the familiar concepts of political advocacy by younger citizens. Eckelmann Berghel, Fieldston, and Renfro, all historians, have brought together a rigorous and engaging work by other historians, legal scholars, and ethnic and indigenous studies experts, to which they have also contributed their own expertise. This book brings in the actual voices of children in the United States in the postwar period, highlighting their roles as political actors in their own right, and examining so many aspects of politics and culture as seen through the eyes of young people. The contributing authors of Growing Up America are knitting together, in their respective chapters of the book, children as agents, as actively engaged members of the society, and children as symbols, used in a whole host of different ways by different political actors and organizations.The book is divided into three sections that follow the chronological direction of recent American history, but that also focus on conceptual frameworks for each era under examination. The first part of the book is focused on the Cold War period and how children were integrated into both the symbolic and the political constructions of life during the Cold War. This section integrates the book’s first discussion of young people and science, as well as exploring the role that groups like the Boy Scouts played in building America’s Cold War empire. There is also research about the ways in which American girls and women, in particular, were supposed to look and act and how they were taught these qualities in school and how they were to shape the projected image of Americans. The second part of Growing Up America follows the arc of history through the Rights revolution that comes to dominate the political and cultural landscape in the U.S. (and elsewhere) in the 1960s and 1970s. This part of the book examines expected areas of youth involvement, but perhaps in unexpected ways, such as the many pre-adolescents who wrote to President Lyndon Johnson supporting the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The final section of the book examines the late 20th century political turn towards conservativism in American politics, and how this shift impacted and was experienced by children. Growing Up America brings in another chapter focusing on young people and science in this section, with a chapter on young women and STEM. The final chapter in this section evaluates the real and perceived vulnerability of childhood, especially in the racially segregated symbolism that was the milk carton campaign for missing children in the mid-1980s. Growing up America will be of great interest to scholars and students across a range of disciplines and areas of expertise, especially in the ways it draws on different arenas of politics and culture to explore youth engagement in the United States since 1945.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Today I talked to Helen Sword about Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write (Harvard UP, 2017). We talk about what not enough people talk about when the subject is writing.interviewer : "You offer the advice of forming a writing group, because writing groups are, well, just all-around terrific for helping people write as they want to."Helen Sword : "Exactly, and well, so I try not to be didactic about just about anything having to do with writing––I'm much more about, 'Here's a range of possibilities. Make a considered decision here,' rather than, 'I'm going to tell you what to do.' But if I were to give one piece of advice concerning the social dimensions of writing, I would say, 'Really, really strongly consider belonging to some kind of writing group.' And I define a writing group as being two or more people who meet more than once to talk about any aspect of writing. So, if you have somebody you meet with for coffee once a month, one other person, and all you do is you sit there and complain about your supervisor and how you wish that they were more sympathetic to your writing––That's already a writing group. So, it doesn't have to be some big kind of formal thing. It's opening yourself up to the social dimensions of writing and particularly to the idea of having supporters in your corner, having some cheerleaders, having some people you can talk to about writing who are not there to criticize you––who are there to help you." 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. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached 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. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at cgessler@gmail.com or dr.danamalone@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.In this episode you’ll hear about: mental wellness services on campus, asking for help, embracing who you are, and why you need support to succeed at your life.Our guest is: Elisabeth Gonella, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has worked in the mental health and spiritual counseling fields for over 25 years. The early years of her career were spent working primarily with adolescents in various institutional settings where she facilitated therapeutic wilderness programs, Gestalt based group therapy, expressive arts, and daily activities as a vehicle for self-reflection. She has received training in working with substance abuse and dually diagnosed clients in both in-patient and out-patient settings. Currently, Elisabeth is seeing clients in private practice and in a College Counseling and Psychological Services Department. Elisabeth develops curriculum for The Therapist Development Center assisting hundreds of interns to pass the MFT exams (both California and National). Since 2012, Elisabeth has served as an adjunct faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Elisabeth is a clinical member of both the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists and the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. She is also a graduate of Community Choir Leadership Training and facilitates Community Singing in Santa Barbara, California to promote well-being through music.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender.Listeners to this episode might be interested in: Elisabeth’s website Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore The Gift of Therapy by Irvin Yalom, MD The documentary film Finding Joe Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow, the Ted Talk:  The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work by Joseph Campbell Acacia Counseling and Wellness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

President Jeff Docking shares insights from his book, Crisis in Higher Education: A Plan to Save Liberal Arts Colleges in America (Michigan State University Press, 2015), and how he implemented the Admissions Growth Model to transform the fortunes of Adrian College in Michigan. By focusing on building first-class extra and co-curricular programs that offer the +1 element to attract and retain students, he shows how Adrian has been able to grow from fewer than 900 students when he arrived, with a structural budget deficit and large deferred maintenance, to a thriving and revitalized campus of over 2,000 students that has been a vital driver of job and economic growth for the surrounding community. Today this includes 50 DIII and club sports teams – ranging from lacrosse and six ice hockey teams to bass fishing – along with a marching band, orchestra and other thriving clubs and student organizations. He also shares the genesis and growth of a second transformation to help improve the long-term prospects of liberal arts colleges – the Low-Cost Models Consortium.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

Math circles defy simple narratives. The model was introduced a century ago, and is taking off in the present day thanks in part to its congruence with cutting-edge research in mathematics education. It is a modern approach to teaching—or facilitation—that resonates and finds mutual reinforcement with traditional practices and cultural preservation efforts. A wide range of math circle resources have become available for interested instructors, including the MSRI Math Circles Library, now in its 14th year of publication by the AMS.I was excited to talk with three editors and contributors to a recent volume in the series, Inspiring Mathematics: Lessons from the Navajo Nation Math Circles (American Mathematical, 2019). Drs. Dave Auckly, Amanda Serenevy, and Henry Fowler have been instrumental to the Navajo Nation Math Circles Project, along with co-editors Tatiana Shubin and Bob Klein and a broader contact and support network. Their book showcases scripts developed and facilitated in Navajo Nation, including an introduction to modular arithmetic through bean bag tossing, prefix sorting in the guise of pancake flipping, and a tactile use of limiting behavior to folding a necktie. We discussed the origin and expansion of math circles, their potential to indigenous mathematics educators and students, and the content of and stories behind a selection of the scripts.Dr. Fowler's foreword and the editors' introduction situate the math circles movement and the Navajo Nation Math Circles Project in history, geography, and culture. Each script begins with a (minimal!) list of the necessary materials and a student handout that invites explorations with them. A short survey of connections to deeper mathematics precedes each handout, and each is followed by an extensive teacher's guide with (illustrative) solutions and presentation suggestions. The scripts vary in complexity and are suitable for student- and teacher-focused math circles. I hope the text becomes widely adopted for science-based and culturally conscious mathematics education and helps introduce others like myself to the greater math circles project.Suggested companion works:-James Tanton-The Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival-Gordon Hamilton and Lora Saarnio, MathPickle-Robert Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan, Out of the Labyrinth: Setting Mathematics Free-Rachel and Rodi Steinig, Math RenaissanceDave Auckly is a research mathematician at Kansas State University and Co-founder and Director of the Navajo Nation Math Circles Project. Amanda Serenevy is Co-founder and Director of the Riverbend Community Math Center. Henry Fowler is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Navajo Technical University and Co-director of the Navajo Nation Math Circles Project. Cory Brunson is a Research Assistant Professor at the Laboratory for Systems Medicine at the University of Florida. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Itay Snir's book Education and Thinking in Continental Philosophy (Springer, 2020) draws on five philosophers from the continental tradition – Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Rancière – in order to “think about thinking” and offer new and surprising answers to the question: How can we educate students to think creatively and critically? Despite their differences, all of these philosophers challenge the modern understanding of thinking, and offer original, radical perspectives on it. In very different ways, each rejects the modern approach to thinking, as well as the reduction of proper thought to rationality, situating thinking in sociohistorical reality and relating it to political action. Thinking, they argue, is not a natural, automatic activity, and the need to think has become all the more important as political reality seems to exhibit less thinking, or to even celebrate thoughtlessness. Bringing these continental conceptions of thinking to bear on the urgent need to educate young people to think against the current, this book makes a significant contribution to educational theory and political philosophy, one that is particularly relevant in today’s anti-intellectual climate. (The podcast focuses especially on Adorno's thoughts about thinking.)Kai Wortman is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Education, University of Tübingen, interested in philosophy of education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education