the Triad

Negotiating Your Starting Salary: The Importance of That Extra Few Grand

One thing that many academics hitting the job market overlook is the importance of negotiating the initial offer made by the interested institutions. (Historically, women and people of color are much less likely to negotiate for that few extra grand.) What I want to stress is how important this becomes in the long run. Let’s [...]

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The Value of Not Accepting Late Work

I had an amazing thing happen this semester: every student turned in every assignment on time. I don’t think that happened due to the caliber of students or the time I was teaching the course, for those things didn’t make that big of a change in other dimensions of the course. The reason why it [...]

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Teaching Students to Write: Dealing with the Perennial Problem of the Pile of Crap

I’m currently designing my next course and I am faced with a problem that gets me every semester: what’s the best way to teach students how to write well while balancing that objective with many others? Many people in my department subscribe to the “look-Ma-no-hands” pedagogical principle, which asserts that the best way to learn [...]

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Yet another blog on time management?!

Okay, so there’s a plethora of blogs out there about personal productivity (I personally enjoy 43folders and LifeDev). However, their appeal is either based on programmers, as Merlin’s is, or is too general. I’ve often found myself asking, “How the !@#@! do I translate this good stuff into my academic world?” Generally, by the time [...]

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