November 2004

Academic Leader November 2004 full issue PDF
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Regulating Faculty Members’ Paid Outside Work
According to the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, the percentage of faculty members who engage in paid outside work increased to 33 percent in 1999 from 21 percent in 1993. Alexei G. Matveev, associate director of institutional effectiveness and assessment at Norfolk State University, proposes three possible explanations for this increase.

Faculty Perceptions, Reality of Grade Inflation Tell Two Different Stories
In a qualitative study that appears in a recently published book on the scholarship of teaching and learning work done at research universities, researchers conducted 25 in-depth interviews with faculty from different fields about grade inflation. When they analyzed the interviews, five themes emerged.

Transforming Graduate Students into Leaders Through Service Learning
By Jacqueline Moloney, Steven Dion, Charmaine Hickey, and Carolyn Siccama, University of Massachusetts-Lowell
Higher education is in need of transformative leaders who understand how to implement change through collaboration, according to Alexander and Helen Astin (2001) in a recent American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) Bulletin article. In this article, a professor of higher education and three graduate students hope to inspire greater use of service learning in graduate education by describing the equally powerful effects of this pedagogy in transforming graduate students into leaders.

Online Academic Advising
The computer science department at California State University-Dominguez Hills offers optional online academic advising to its students for their convenience and to reduce faculty workload.

Outside Evaluators Aid Faculty-Driven Program Assessment
Faculty at Fresno Pacific University, a church-related, liberal arts institution in California, have the freedom to make changes to their academic programs, provided they have data to justify their decisions. To provide that data, the university has developed a course-embedded, faculty-driven assessment model that includes external stakeholder measures.

Sandwich Information with Inspiration: A Paradigm for a More Effective Division Meeting
By William A. Marzano, Ed.D.
It is the start of another semester. You’re busy with finalizing assignments, monitoring enrollment and attending meetings. Your faculty members are busy with their final preparations. Amidst this chaos, you must conduct a division meeting.