The University of Chicago
The University of Chicago

Author: John W. Boyer

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2024-09-06

Total Pages: 785

ISBN-13: 0226835316

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An expanded narrative of the rich, unique history of the University of Chicago. One of the most influential institutions of higher learning in the world, the University of Chicago has a powerful and distinct identity, and its name is synonymous with intellectual rigor. With nearly 170,000 alumni living and working in more than one hundred and fifty countries, its impact is far-reaching and long-lasting. With The University of Chicago: A History, John W. Boyer, Dean of the College from 1992 to 2023, thoroughly engages with the history and the lived politics of the university. Boyer presents a history of a complex academic community, focusing on the nature of its academic culture and curricula, the experience of its students, its engagement with Chicago’s civic community, and the resources and conditions that have enabled the university to sustain itself through decades of change. He has mined the archives, exploring the school’s complex and sometimes controversial past to set myth and hearsay apart from fact. Boyer’s extensive research shows that the University of Chicago’s identity is profoundly interwoven with its history, and that history is unique in the annals of American higher education. After a little-known false start in the mid-nineteenth century, it achieved remarkable early successes, yet in the 1950s it faced a collapse of undergraduate enrollment, which proved fiscally debilitating for decades. Throughout, the university retained its fierce commitment to a distinctive, intense academic culture marked by intellectual merit and free debate, allowing it to rise to international acclaim. Today it maintains a strong obligation to serve the larger community through its connections to alumni, to the city of Chicago, and increasingly to its global community. Boyer’s tale is filled with larger-than-life characters—John D. Rockefeller, Robert Maynard Hutchins, and many other famous figures among them—and episodes that reveal the establishment and rise of today’s institution. Newly updated, this edition extends through the presidency of Robert Zimmer, whose long tenure was marked by significant developments and controversies over subjects as varied as free speech, medical inequity, and community relations.

The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching
The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching

Author: Terry McGlynn

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-11-09

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 022654253X

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Higher education is a strange beast. Teaching is a critical skill for scientists in academia, yet one that is barely touched upon in their professional training—despite being a substantial part of their career. This book is a practical guide for anyone teaching STEM-related academic disciplines at the college level, from graduate students teaching lab sections and newly appointed faculty to well-seasoned professors in want of fresh ideas. Terry McGlynn’s straightforward, no-nonsense approach avoids off-putting pedagogical jargon and enables instructors to become true ambassadors for science. For years, McGlynn has been addressing the need for practical and accessible advice for college science teachers through his popular blog Small Pond Science. Now he has gathered this advice as an easy read—one that can be ingested and put to use on short deadline. Readers will learn about topics ranging from creating a syllabus and developing grading rubrics to mastering online teaching and ensuring safety during lab and fieldwork. The book also offers advice on cultivating productive relationships with students, teaching assistants, and colleagues.

Fundamentalisms and the State
Fundamentalisms and the State

Author: Martin E. Marty

Publisher:

Published: 1993-03-15

Total Pages: 696

ISBN-13:

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This third volume of the Fundamentalism Project provides a systematic overview of the advances made by antisecular religious movements over the past twenty-five years. The distinguished contributors to this volume - economists, political scientists, religious historians, social anthropologists, and sociologists - focus on the impact these movements have had on national economies, political parties, constitutional issues, and international relations on five continents and within the religious traditions of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. Do fundamentalisms tend toward political activism, and how successful have they been in remaking political structures? To answer this question and others, the contributors discuss the anti-abortion movement in the U.S., the Islamic war of resistance in Afghanistan, and Shiite jurisprudence in Iran. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby conclude the volume with a synthetic statement of fundamentalist impact on polities, economies, and state security. The Fundamentalism Project is a monumental undertaking by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that involves an international group of scholars. Taken together, the volumes in this series will become a standard reference for educators and policy analysts for years to come.

The Thinking Student's Guide to College
The Thinking Student's Guide to College

Author: Andrew Roberts

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-09-15

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 0226721167

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Each fall, thousands of eager freshmen descend on college and university campuses expecting the best education imaginable: inspiring classes taught by top-ranked professors, academic advisors who will guide them to a prestigious job or graduate school, and an environment where learning flourishes outside the classroom as much as it does in lecture halls. Unfortunately, most of these freshmen soon learn that academic life is not what they imagined. Classes are taught by overworked graduate students and adjuncts rather than seasoned faculty members, undergrads receive minimal attention from advisors or administrators, and potentially valuable campus resources remain outside their grasp. Andrew Roberts’ Thinking Student’s Guide to College helps students take charge of their university experience by providing a blueprint they can follow to achieve their educational goals—whether at public or private schools, large research universities or small liberal arts colleges. An inside look penned by a professor at Northwestern University, this book offers concrete tips on choosing a college, selecting classes, deciding on a major, interacting with faculty, and applying to graduate school. Here, Roberts exposes the secrets of the ivory tower to reveal what motivates professors, where to find loopholes in university bureaucracy, and most importantly, how to get a personalized education. Based on interviews with faculty and cutting-edge educational research, The Thinking Student’s Guide to College is a necessary handbook for students striving to excel academically, creatively, and personally during their undergraduate years.

Academically Adrift
Academically Adrift

Author: Richard Arum

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-01-15

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0226028577

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In spite of soaring tuition costs, more and more students go to college every year. A bachelor’s degree is now required for entry into a growing number of professions. And some parents begin planning for the expense of sending their kids to college when they’re born. Almost everyone strives to go, but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed by Academically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there? For a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s answer to that question is a definitive no. Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college. As troubling as their findings are, Arum and Roksa argue that for many faculty and administrators they will come as no surprise—instead, they are the expected result of a student body distracted by socializing or working and an institutional culture that puts undergraduate learning close to the bottom of the priority list. Academically Adrift holds sobering lessons for students, faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents—all of whom are implicated in promoting or at least ignoring contemporary campus culture. Higher education faces crises on a number of fronts, but Arum and Roksa’s report that colleges are failing at their most basic mission will demand the attention of us all.

Declaring Financial Exigency in Higher Education
Declaring Financial Exigency in Higher Education

Author: Satasha L. Green

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781536134704

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States have long provided substantial funding for public higher education, but changes in recent years have resulted in a decrease in their contributions. In many cases, states have justified this decrease with equalizing funding across institutions; this notion of being more equal is practiced more than at any other time in at least the previous two decades (Mortenson, 2012). More and more public colleges and universities are finding themselves with less state appropriations despite the steadily growing student demand for higher education since the mid-1970s (Mortenson, 2012). Financial exigency is an unforeseen fiscal situation, the degree to which compels a public college or university with reduced or eliminated stated funding to reevaluate programs, services and organizational structure, in order to reposition the institution to continue its mission within the changing economic environment. According to Land and Thompson (2018), a financial crisis is not unique to institutions of higher education. Any organization can experience a financial crisis; if there are not enough liquid funds to supply the demand of products and services, a financial crisis will occur. However, financial exigency is unique to higher education. Before declaring financial exigency, an institution must understand the process as well as the implications for this classification with state and federal agencies, accrediting bodies, students, faculty, staff, alumni and the surrounding communities. Therefore, if an institution has declared financial exigency there are serious implications for its recovery and survival. As more and more states significantly reduce and in some cases eliminate funding to public higher education, many state public institutions will have to do the unthinkable and declare financial exigency. To help colleges and universities that are contemplating declaring financial exigency, Declaring Financial Exigency In Higher Education: How Do You Recover? describes the experiences and strategies used by institutions that have declared and recovered from financial challenges. This book is in no way the answer to preventing or recovering from financial exigency; it is intended to share the stories, voices, experiences, and strategies used by others who have faced financial challenges. More specifically, this book provides background information on financial exigency, legal and compliance obligations during exigency, and lessons learned and recommendations for practice regarding preparing for, declaring and recovering from financial exigency. The authors of this book address several important topics critical to successful strategic planning and recovery from financial exigency.

School, Society, and State
School, Society, and State

Author: Tracy L. Steffes

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2012-05-15

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0226772098

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This book examines the connections between public school reform in the early twentieth century and American political development from 1890 to 1940.

The Magical State
The Magical State

Author: Fernando Coronil

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1997-11-10

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 9780226116013

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In 1935, after the death of dictator General Juan Vicente Gómez, Venezuela consolidated its position as the world's major oil exporter and began to establish what today is South America's longest-lasting democratic regime. Endowed with the power of state oil wealth, successive presidents appeared as transcendent figures who could magically transform Venezuela into a modern nation. During the 1974-78 oil boom, dazzling development projects promised finally to effect this transformation. Yet now the state must struggle to appease its foreign creditors, counter a declining economy, and contain a discontented citizenry. In critical dialogue with contemporary social theory, Fernando Coronil examines key transformations in Venezuela's polity, culture, and economy, recasting theories of development and highlighting the relevance of these processes for other postcolonial nations. The result is a timely and compelling historical ethnography of political power at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary reflections on modernity and the state.