Guidelines // Browsing posts in Guidelines
Accreditation
American accreditation procedures are unusual, to say the least. Rather than federal government oversight—which we’re all supposed to say would be horrible, and indeed perhaps it would be—basic accreditation falls to regional associations, essentially governed by a mixture of federal rules, fears of possible federal rules, and membership stipulations. Membership is from the participating universities ...
Will the Real George Mason…
The past decade plus has been a dynamic period for George Mason. We’ve grown, added programs, added facilities, etc. There is every reason to take pride in the varied achievements and the basis they provide for the future. It’s also important to note that in many ways we’ve been trying, in this same period, to ...
Background Checks
I know I opined on this recently but thought an update would be in order, and I welcome further reactions. It’s not necessarily a huge issue, but a tough one. We are under increasing pressure to administer background checks to all newly-hired faculty (currently we only do selected, as in fields involving younger children or ...
Death in the Family
I write today about a problem I hadn’t pondered before, not common, but potentially quite important to those involved when it does surface: A student recently raised an interesting issue. Last semester he suffered a death in his family and missed a test in one class. The professor involved insisted on seeing a death certificate ...
Regulatory Excess
Last year we faced a crescendo of faculty concerns about excessive, unnecessary or unexplained regulations. Focus was particularly on human subjects review, which has since been substantially modified. But there was a general sense that things were spinning out of control. So we came up with a statement about proper procedures: try, whenever possible, to ...
Background Checks
Discussion of further moves toward background checks for faculty and others is once again on active agenda at various institutions including George Mason. Any campus crisis now escalates attention, and there’s no easy way to avoid response. A few years ago when the discussion last actively surfaced, we generated a compromise approach with background checks ...
Assessing
By coincidence I’ve had the chance within a two-day span to discuss assessment both with a student group, the President-Provost Student Advisory Committee, and with a higher-ed class being taught by one of our leading assessment staff members. Students were intelligently concerned about how we do and use course and teacher evaluations. They wondered why ...
Weather Reports
This is something of an annual message, just timed differently because of last week’s torrential rains. We received a lot of hate-mail because we did not close down. Many accusations of repeated scorn of human safety etc. Needless to say, the accusations are unpleasant, though they spring often from unsettling driving experiences. And it is ...
Sidelight on Academic Leadership
Training in leadership is much in vogue now. Mason is running the first of several “leadership legacy” programs, assembling people, mostly already in managerial roles in part, for further discussion. I greeted the group last week and was impressed simply by the caliber of those involved, from both academic and staff backgrounds. They’ll learn a ...
Teaching Administrators
One of the nice features of the ad that attracted me to apply for the Provost position at Mason, lo these many years ago, was a stipulation that a successful candidate would continue teaching. I’m sure I could have talked my way out of this, but I didn’t want to and am very glad the ...
Recent Posts
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Changing the World
This is an adaptation of some brief graduation remarks I recently offered,...
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Good Things
Ends of semester are always a bit tense, particularly in the spring....
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When It's Time to Leave Academic Administration
What follows involves a delicate topic, probably insufficiently discussed because of its...
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