Campus Talks by Times Higher Education

THE Campus: Career advice, LGBTQ+ in the academy and public speaking tips

A career in academia comes with a lot of components – some good and some not so good. In this episode we’re talking about topics that might seem like their on the periphery of the core elements of an academic career, but they’re crucial to your credibility among colleagues and your sense of well-being.

Ray Crossman, president of Adler University in Chicago, shares his experience of being an out president and encourages others to be their true self on the job, warts and all. He's also got advice on upskilling through mentors and explains how university mission statements give subtle cues to LGBTQ+ academics on how supported they would feel on campus.

Brian Bloch is a presentation and communication teacher associated with the University of Münster. Here he gives pointers on voice, body language, and English pronunciation. And he’ll give a conclusive answer to how to pronounce one of London’s most difficult-to-say tube stations.

Read more career advice from your peers on THE Campus: How to progress in your academic career

THE Campus: What makes a good higher education leader?

Universities have been around for a millennium, however their modern iteration - and the people who lead them - are somewhat different to their medieval European ancestors. Over the centuries, institutions have dealt with a multitude of difficulties but the current combination of a global pandemic, economic downturn, populist politics and a climate crisis seems particularly challenging. So what sort of leader does the moment call for? And how are senior figures in higher education responding to the issues of the day?

Leadership expert Jon McNaughton, an associate professor and associate department chair in Texas Tech University’s College of Education, joins the podcast to explain how the job of university president has changed over the decades, what type of leadership is required right now and how to know when to step away. Joy Johnson, president and vice-chancellor at Simon Fraser University, shares what it's like being a rare female leader and how she approaches housing shortages and the politics around recruiting international students.

 

Find out more about Jon's work here. 

 

THE Campus: An interview with Ruth Simmons, president of Prairie View A&M

Ruth Simmons was the first African American president of Brown University which she led for 11 years. Before that she was president at Smith College where she set up the first engineering programme at a women’s institution. She was recently called out of retirement to lead Prairie View A&M an historically black institution in southeast Texas. As she approaches the end of her tenure there, THE Campus editor Sara Custer interviewed her for THE Campus Live US.

Here she speaks about her pioneering work to research Brown’s historical links to slavery, the future of affirmative action, legacy admissions and how to get more people that look like her into university leadership. 

THE Campus: Breaking down barriers with research and student-led campaigns

How can faculty and staff address the real issues, however forbidden, that make students feel isolated and voiceless? When teams research difficult topics, how can they establish two-way, equitable participation with their community?

Members of the teams that won the Times Higher Education 2021 Awards for Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community and Outstanding Contribution to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion join us in this episode to discuss working with taboo and difficult topics. Anna Walas, faculty research impact officer and honorary research fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the  University of Nottingham, talks about her team’s research into gender-based violence. And Lindsay Morgan, a placement officer for the School of Arts & Creative Industries at Edinburgh Napier University and co-producer of Bleeding Soar, tells us about the campaign to increase awareness of period poverty around the world.

 

Related links:

Website for the Bleedin' Soar campaign

Website for the The Language of Hate Crime project

"Talking about taboos: how to create an open atmosphere for discussing difficult subjects" by Lindsay Morgan

"In this together: developing meaningful community engagement" by Anna Wales

Resources from 2022 Times Higher Education Awards nominees 

 

THE Campus: Is AI in higher education worth the hype?

Artificial intelligence has a lot of potential for higher education. It can automate onerous repetitive tasks for teachers, help researchers leapfrog mountains of data crunching and make higher education more accessible and personalised for students. But AI also presents risks, including biases that can become embedded into algorithms and a lack of transparency around data use.

Though we may be a long way from understanding exactly how higher education can harness AI and machine learning’s great potential in a safe way, this episode's guests say that continuing to test and explore it is the only way to make progress.

Join THE Campus editor Sara Custer and senior content curator Miranda Prynne as they speak with Ashok Goel, a professor of computer science and human-centered computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the developer of the first automated teaching assistant, as well as John Wu an assistant astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute and an associate research scientist at Johns Hopkins University.

 

Find resources from your peers exploring the benefits and costs of AI in higher education on THE Campus.  

THE Campus: Teaching 101 advice from your peers

Even the most experienced faculty member could benefit from teaching advice from their peers. In this episode of the THE Campus podcast, we feature short tips from university educators around the world to create a mini teaching community in podcast form. And we speak with David Dodick, a sessional lecturer at University of California, Berkeley and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, about the the arts and humanities employability myth and common mistakes he's seen university lecturers make.  

So sharpen your pencils and make sure your laptop is charged – prepare to get schooled on how to teach.

Find more teaching resources in our THE Campus spotlight "Teaching 101: advice for university educators"

 

This episode is sponsored by Routledge. THE Campus listeners can use code THE20 before 22 October 2022 to get *20 per cent off* all orders. 

 

THE Campus: How can universities help tackle misinformation?

Education is often offered as a solution to tackling misinformation, particularly training in critical thinking and analytical skills. But what does that actually look like in the day to day running of a university? Or for the average higher education instructor not specialised in fields like media, politics or social sciences? And is there more that institutions could be doing to inform public policy and technology companies to help get ahead of the disinformation wave? 

Phil Napoli the senior associate dean for faculty and research at the Sanford School of Public Policy and the director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy at Duke University shares his ideas about how universities can support local journalism and researchers can work with third parties to impact public policy. 

And Simge Andi, a lecturer in quantitative Political Science at the University of Exeter, talks about her research into why people are vulnerable to misinformation and what she's learned from studying elections in Turkey. 

This episode is sponsored by The Wall Street Journal. Visit wsj.com/timeshighereducation to learn more about integrating WSJ into your classes.

And for more advice from your peers on what universities can do to fight fake news, check out our THE Campus spotlight: The role of higher education in separating fact from fiction.

 

THE Campus: What makes research and teaching interesting?

Whether teaching or writing up research, there is a strong incentive for academics to try and make their work as interesting as possible. If people are intrigued by what they’re doing, it is likely to have a greater impact. But since everyone has their own unique take on what is or is not interesting, this can seem an impossible task.

So, we spoke to three academics to find out if there are any universal characteristics that academics could try to develop in their work that will successfully pique people’s interest.

Kurt Gray, associate professor in psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and director of the Deepest Beliefs Lab and Center for the Science of Moral Understanding, shares a beginners guide to what makes something interesting.

Manuel Goyanes, assistant professor in the Department of Media and Communication at Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M), discusses the qualities likely to generate greater interest in research.

Emily Corwin-Renner, research scientist at the University of Tübingen’s Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, shares insight and strategies to help teachers hold the attention of their students.

Further reading:

Find dozens of helpful resources on how to make your teaching more interesting on THE Campus.

Manuel Goyanes’s 2018 study “Against dullness: on what it means to be interesting in communication research: Information” published in Information, Communication & Society

THE Campus: What Freeman Hrabowski wants you to know about inclusivity in HE

During his 30-year tenure, Freeman Hrabowski, the outgoing president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, has transformed UMBC from a small branch of the University System of Maryland into one of the leading producers of Black STEM graduates in the country.

 

In this interview, Freeman talks about how to have the difficult conversations that identify where students needs are not being met. How UMBC uses granular data to identify students who might be falling behind, and how inclusivity work is the tide that raises all boats so everyone benefits.

 

Find more resources about how to champion inclusion on your campus on THE Campus

 

Freeman's first book:

The Empowered University by Freeman Hrabowski III with Philip J. Rous And Peter H. Henderson

 

Research quoted in the intro:

“A critical exploration of inclusion policies of elite UK universities”  by George Koutsouris, Lauren Stentiford, Brahm Norwich, in British Educational Research Journal

 

THE Campus: Pointers on writing and publishing for academics

We’ve asked academics, authors, publishers and postdocs to share with us their advice for how to improve your academic writing and chances of getting published. 

 

They cover everything from tips to establish a consistent writing practice like Jack London and how to find the hook in your work, to why your article might be rejected and how to bring in voices beyond just those writing in standard North American or British English. 

 

 

Hear pointers from: 

 

John Weldon, an associate professor and head of curriculum in Victoria University’s First Year College

 

Dorsa Amir, a postdoc in the department of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley

 

Tara Brabazon, a professor of cultural studies at Flinders University

Daniel Martin, a publisher at Elsevier, a fiction author and creative writing teacher at Delft University

 

Joe Moran, a professor of English and cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University

 

Marnie Jo Petray, an associate professor and graduate coordinator of TESOL at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania

 

Stone Meredith, a teacher of college-level composition, literature and philosophy courses at Colorado State University Global

 

Anne Wilson, a consultant fellow at the Royal Literary Fund 

 

Avi Staiman, CEO at Academic Language Experts

 

Gaillynn Clements, a visiting assistant professor in linguistics at Duke University

 

Read We must end linguistic discrimination in academic publishing by Avi, Marnie Jo and Gaillynn

 

And find more tips for success in academic publishing on THE Campus