Category Archives: Swarthmore

The (Skilled) Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Posted on October 22, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Our Associate Provost is organizing a workshop to talk about how (or perhaps whether) we teach presentation and speaking skills in our courses. I’m planning to attend: I think it’s a really important issue. I worry a lot about many … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 5 Comments

From Gourmet to the Daily Gazette

Posted on October 8, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I was reminded for the first time in years of the existence of Gourmet magazine a few weeks ago when a foodie colleague of mine started talking about some recipes she’d made from it recently. I used to subscribe to … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Blogging, Food, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Swarthmore | 6 Comments

Course Zero

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Timothy Burke

There’s an interesting article at Inside Higher Education about the new breed of peer-to-peer style sites for collecting student notes and course materials, officially for the purposes of providing study aids. In reality, at least some of the sites in … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property, Swarthmore | 4 Comments

Student Blogging as Transparency and Education

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Timothy Burke

There’s an interesting piece in the NY Times today about colleges that encourage student blogging as a method of disseminating information about the culture of campus life to prospective students and other outsiders. MIT, unsurprisingly, is the institution with the … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Blogging, Swarthmore | 4 Comments

Simplicity vs. Sustainability

Posted on September 24, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Last week, I was at an event where there was some talk about Swarthmore trying to embrace sustainability and simplicity to a greater degree. Afterwards, I was trying to parse out why those two words provoke really different gut-level reactions … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Consumerism, Advertising, Commodities, Domestic Life, Swarthmore | 5 Comments

How to Read a Curriculum

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Timothy Burke

We already know that higher education applicants and their families have some difficulty decoding the information available about colleges and universities to find the institutions that they want to apply to. That’s the major reason that higher tuition prices in … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 15 Comments

Passages to Meritocracy

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Timothy Burke

If nothing else, Sunday’s New York Times story on pricey consultancies helping well-heeled students get into the selective university or college of their choice was memorable for the juxtaposition of a quote from Amy Gutmann, president of the University of … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 8 Comments

Blog Troubles

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Timothy Burke

I think we have everything fixed now here. Let me know if comments are still broken or links to entries here aren’t working.

Posted in Blogging, Swarthmore | Comments Off on Blog Troubles

Jump. Jump Now! (Or Later.) (Or Climb Down Slowly.)

Posted on June 11, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Elite colleges and universities chased each other to a budgetary precipice. Did peer institutions build a new building of some kind? You need one! Did they dramatically expand services to the student body? Do it too! Redesign the dining hall … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 13 Comments

What’s Distinctive About Africanist Historiography?

Posted on May 20, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Swarthmore has an elaborate system of Honors seminars. The basic premise of the system is that third and fourth year students participating in the system take four small, intensely focused double-credit seminars, three in a major subject, one in a … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Swarthmore | 6 Comments