The job description for the “faculty internship” explicitly states the position is intended to groom people for (those crazy high-paying) adjunct jobs.

I wonder if the position is akin to Boise State’s Foundational Studies program, which pays grad students and professional staff a whopping $1,000 to teach class sections all semester.

Compare that teaching salary to these figures (already a year old).  I had no idea the Boise State football coach gets a quarter million dollars annually just for letting the university license his image. Clearly, I need to renegotiate my contract.

Looking at how big he’s getting also reminds me how long I’ve been blogging.

Dude is 51. Seriously. No one believes me.

It’s Fang’s birthday again.

April 20 is an inauspicious time to have a birthday, what with it being Hitler’s birthday (also the anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting and the Deepwater Horizon explosion) and with the anniversary of the “shot heard round the world” (Oklahoma City bombing, Branch Davidian conflagration) immediately preceding it.  (Let’s not even mention this week’s drama.) Something about the dates brings out the kooks and catastrophes.

Since we moved to Idaho, Fang has met his share of kooks and endured several minor, and a few not-so-minor, catastrophes. Because we moved here on my account, I feel culpable for much of what ails him these days, though of course some of it could be chalked up to aging.  (Few people make it to 51 without some aches and pains.)

Guitar practice is a persistent source of aches, pains, and a good deal of kookiness.

Could I say honestly he has been cheery in the face of various adversities?  No.  But I didn’t marry Fang for his light heart or devil-may-care attitude.

I didn’t marry him for his Rush fetish, either. I’ve stayed married to him despite his ability to bring any conversation around to Rush lyrics.

I married him because he is steadfast and (though he’d probably won’t believe it right now) resilient.  And I’ve kept him around because he’s a caring spouse and amazing dad.  He’s a chronicler of our lives and a creative soul.

Savor it, folks. It’s Fang. . .in nature!

He’s put up with so much these past couple of years, and as I pursue my academic career, I’m so grateful he’s been willing to play, as he terms it, the “descending spouse.”

I won’t be so cruel as to wish him another 51 years, because I know that’s the last thing he wants.  But I will say this: I wish him happier days and months immediately ahead.  (Let’s plan our escape, Sweetie!)

Nice form, Sweetie. The kicks were great, too.

Happy birthday, Fang.  Lucas and I are so very lucky to have you in our lives.

UPDATE:  Here’s the text of Lucas’s birthday card to Fang.  It’s too sweet not to share, y’know?

However, there’s a constellation of higher ed “innovations” that has me worried. A couple of these innovations, taken alone, might not be cause for concern, but because they’re emerging at the same moment, they’re troubling.

First, there’s the university’s adoption of minimum viable product development strategies, and all the tech-marketing rhetoric and thinking such strategies seem to require.

Second, there are MOOCs, the massively open online courses being peddled by universities and start-ups alike. (If you’re unfamiliar with the phenomenon, Jonathan Rees consistently writes the hardest-hitting posts about both the academic labor implications of MOOCs and their (utter lack of) impact on student learning.)

Third, there are badges, alternative forms of assessment that circumvent traditional academic accreditation.

Fourth, we have the New University of California, where there are no classes—only high-stakes exams.

Fifth, we have companies that students can hire to take tests, write assignments, or even complete entire classes on their behalf.  Students don’t have to take the courses for which they’re “earning” credit.

Finally, we have automated essay-grading software from EdX.  Faculty no longer need to grade the “work” of the “students” “enrolled” in their “classes.”

Anyone want to call the tech-induced time of death on faculty governance and authentic student learning?

[Update: Jonathan Rees has already called it, and he points out faculty autonomy and student learning aren't the only casualties.]

That stack amounts to about 570 pages.

Here’s what was sent home as appropriate reading for him from school this week:

It has three pages of text.

Lucas can spell apprentice and warriors and basilisk, but his spelling words this week include boy, toy, and joy.

Lucas is teaching himself multiplication; tonight he was filling out a multiplication table just for fun.

Here are the flashcards that came home with him today:

Surprise! He’s becoming increasingly resistant to homework.

Any advice from parents and/or teachers?  He loves to learn, but he has this stuff down.

In this age of slashed higher ed budgets that demand new efficiencies, it’s not surprising that universities seek technological solutions to their challenges. However, university leaders aren’t looking to tech entrepreneurs solely for course management systems or MOOC platforms; they’re also adopting the rhetoric and thinking of Silicon Valley.

In keeping with this tech fetishism, universities are developing new offerings in ways that mirror software launches more than they do traditional higher ed marketing. One popular approach to software development calls on programmers to create a “minimum viable product,” or MVP, which Eric Ries defines as:

That product which has just those features (and no more) that allows you to ship a product that resonates with early adopters, some of whom will pay you money or give you feedback.

What, then, constitutes a university’s minimum viable product?

It depends, I suppose, on whom the university sees as its customer.

I’d love to see a discussion about this in the comments of that post (and elsewhere, of course). Read more at The Blue Review blog.

Back at this blog’s former home, I blogged more frequently about depression than I have lately–so much so that for a while, The Clutter Museum was ranked #1 in Google for the phrase “depression in academia.”

Fortunately, I’m not dealing with those demons at the moment, but in the past couple of years, it’s become clear that another (usually very mild) disability is ascendant in me: asthma, bronchitis, and pneumonia.

I’m one of those people who tends to ignore my disabilities until they become visible to others.  Learning self-care (prevention and remediation) has been a long, hard road.

I began ignoring illness when I was young. I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about the thyroidy years, but when I was 11 years old and just starting horseback riding lessons, I began to feel really shaky and dizzy and just generally weak about midway through my lessons.  One riding instructor thought it was low blood sugar.  My pediatrician thought I might be allergic to horses (perish the thought!). Eventually, though, the pale, liver-spotted Dr. C turned his turkey-waddled head toward my father and noticed a pale scar extending across my dad’s throat. “Is there,” he asked, “a history of thyroid disease in your family?”

Why, yes, it ends up there is.

Thus began a long, long journey through several primary-care physicians and assorted specialists until I found a wild-haired little endocrinologist who wore a tweedy three-piece suit to his office in what was, to put it mildly, not the best part of Long Beach. Dr. B wrestled with my thyroid for years, trying everything—at one point having me take eight pills a day, spaced as evenly across the day as possible (a perfect prescription for a busy high school student, yes?)—before becoming exasperated by a series of inexplicable blood tests (“Were you hit by a truck?”).  He explained there were two doors ahead of me: Door number 1, he said, was surgery.  Door number 2, radiation.  He detailed the risks of each procedure.

I looked at the giant scar on my dad’s neck and opted for radiation.  We had recently had the talk I imagine all parents eventually have with chronically ill teenagers who still believe in their own invincibility, symptoms be damned.  Dad pointed out, rather bluntly, “You could die.”

Oh.

Furthermore, my parents made clear I couldn’t go to college until I was healthy.  I was seventeen.  Tick tock.

So soon I found myself greeted in a local hospital by a balding man in suspenders, bow tie, and lab coat, who announced, “Hi! I’m Dr. M.  I’ll be your nuclear radiologist for the day.”  I sat in a chair; an intern shielded me with a lead apron and wheeled a tray before me.  He picked up a lead vessel, unscrewed the lid, and placed a plastic bendy straw in it.  Everyone retreated to the doorway.  ”I’m told,” Dr. M said, “it tastes like bad tap water.”

I drank.  It did.

Dr. M told me not to “sweat, spit, or pee on anyone for three days.”  I was to use only plasticware at meals, stay 6 feet away from anyone under age 45 (3 feet from anyone over age 45), and flush twice.

Because the radioactive iodine I had just swallowed would, he explained, basically shoot all my thyroid hormones into my system at once, I could expect an elevated heart rate for a while.  He prescribed Inderal in anticipation.  Inderal gave me night terrors and hallucinations, neither of which I had experienced before.  (The night terrors continue to this day.)

Shortly after I drank the radioactive cocktail, my hair started falling out. My vision was already crappy, but I didn’t think it was bad enough that I needed to wear glasses all the time, so my first indication of the hair loss was a change in the carpet color in front of the mirror where I brushed my hair.  Fortunately, my I didn’t lose all my hair, though I could perform the fun parlor trick of grabbing a fingerful and yanking it out painlessly.  (Surprise: I didn’t date in high school.)

After blood tests every week for a year, we found the correct dose of synthetic hormone, and now I test annually.  Yes, my weight fluctuates—after all, I have no thyroid function to speak of—but eventually we found a maintenance dose that at least makes me feel human.

A hypothyroid, however, also can bring with it extra depression.  Wheeee!  Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I began to read about depression and realized, hey, maybe I should get that checked out, too.  By that point (age 25) I was dating Fang, and he made sure I saw a therapist.  She, in turn, made sure I saw a doctor who could prescribe some antidepressants.

Problem (sort of) solved.  My depression waxes and wanes, as dysthymia is wont to do.  I’m an exceptionally high-functioning depressive, and I’ve never missed a day of work because of it. Only once did I get so miserably behind on my responsibilities that I had to confess to a colleague I was struggling with depression.  Fortunately, our work together addressed UC Davis’s accommodation of students, faculty, and staff with disabilities, and she both studied disability and lived with one; her level of understanding and compassion was high, for which I am grateful.

So, the tally:

• Hyperthyroidism: eradicated.
• Depression: manageable.

That leaves the lungs.  Many of us who grew up in the Los Angeles basin in the 1970s and 1980s breathed in a wretched stew of exhaust and other chemicals, and—who knew?!—it ends up there are long-lasting effects.  I had chalked up my earlier failures to run ever faster (I topped out at a 6:58 mile in eighth grade) to my thryoid issues, but in eleventh grade, when I began playing French horn in three music ensembles at school, the chest pains began.  At first, because I hadn’t yet solved the hyperthyroidism (that would come the following summer), I thought the pain was related to the general fatigue the thyroid curse engendered.  The usual cardio tests ensued until during one exam, my physician lightly tapped my chest and I recoiled in pain.  ”Ah,” he said, “asthma!”

Going to college in Iowa didn’t help; forty percent of Iowans smoked, there weren’t a whole lot of smoke-free indoor spaces, and windows remained closed much of the year due to the cold or heat.  My lungs were not pleased.  That said, one summer there I took up running and regularly ran for 45 minutes to an hour, the longest I’d ever been able to run until that point.  I went home to Long Beach and followed my sister on an eight-mile run, but lost interest in running when winter set in (cold air is another asthma trigger).  Since leaving Iowa, there have been times I’ve tried to take up running, and I’ve followed many different plans along the lines of Couch to 5K, but I find I have to stop running just shy of one mile.

One mile!

I’ve talked to my physician about this, and her advice is to use the inhaler before I exercise.  So I do.  It makes very little difference.

Fortunately, I’m not looking to become a long-distance runner, but I admit I look at my friends’ marathon and half-marathon and 5K and 10K photos on Facebook, as well as their Runkeeper updates there, and I get a bit wistful.

And it’s difficult to establish a regular exercise routine when every head cold inevitably goes to my lungs and becomes bronchitis or—in a disappointing turn since I moved to Boise—pneumonia.  I can establish a good groove at the gym, and then bam! no workouts for months because: recuperation.  (I very rarely miss work due to these illnesses because I have an overdeveloped sense of commitment to my students and colleagues, but working out is out of the question.)

Now I’m sick again, and it’s going into my chest.  Today was a beautiful spring day, and I would have loved to spend it gardening, bicycling with Lucas, or hiking in the foothills before the rattlesnakes emerge.

Fang is, of course, frustrated beyond words.  Dealing with a regularly ill spouse is no fun, and he does a great job of gracefully taking over my share of housework and childcare.

But I’m realizing I’m falling into an old pattern of living with something (thyroid, depression, asthma) without sufficiently addressing it until I’ve suffered quite a bit.  I see reduced circumstances as normal, as inevitable.  In this case, however, I’ve talked to my doctors, and all the tests say my immune system is fine.  The doctors just say to rest.  And so I sit still.  And I get flabby. (Even lifting weights is tiring.) And it’s maddening.

In the past year, I’ve begun to really feel the effects of aging: the stiffness, the pull of gravity, the graying hair.  (I’m 37.)  I want to move, to get fit—I want to keep up with Lucas—but every effort meets with failure.  I need to find a new way of thinking about my physical abilities going forward, one that encompasses a different kind of health and fitness than I see in my Facebook feed and in every damn mainstream media outlet.

Comment zen: I’m not looking for medical or fitness advice right now; please don’t give me any.  If you know of resources that address how to deal psychologically with changing physical circumstances, however, I’m all ears.

Three anecdotes:

• Last spring break, we visited Disneyland for the first time.  As we drove into the parking structure, Lucas asked, “Can anyone come to Disneyland?” (Anyone who can afford it, my mother replied.)  ”Even black kids?” he asked.
• Recently, Lucas pointed out he had “a black kid” in his class.  I’m guessing she’s of Asian or Pacific Islander descent.
• Today, Lucas saw some black and Latino men setting up the fencing for the upcoming Long Beach Grand Prix, and he asked why some people decided to “become workers.”  Well, I explained, there are all kinds of workers in the world, and some people are skilled at building, while others prefer to work outside. “But if they work outside for a long time,” Lucas said, “they become black.”

That sound you hear is me beating my forehead with the copy of Colonize This sitting on my desk. (Mercifully, it’s a paperback.)

At home, we watch documentaries on human evolution and civil rights.  We talk all the time about race, ethnicity, and culture.  We read multicultural literature.  We listen to all kinds of music. I even have written—and, soon, I hope, will return to writing—plenty of blog posts on multicultural books and toys.  I think about this stuff a lot. Short of hauling my seven-year-old back to California, I’m not sure what to do, as I’m loathe to intrude on the few safe spaces people of color do have in Idaho (e.g. churches).  Nor do I want introduce Lucas primarily to people of color who are refugees (perhaps Boise’s most visible people of color), as I don’t want him thinking that all people of color have come to rely on the generosity of white communities for their livelihoods.

What to do?  What to do?  (Gentle) advice welcome.

Image by PavanGpd, and used under a Creative Commons license.

Boise State University announced Monday that it is building a “business garden” in the form of a new college in the capital city in hopes of “growing” a better business community in Idaho.

President Bob Kustra made the announcement of BSU’s new Venture College Monday afternoon in front of business leaders and students who are hoping to be accepted.

The idea is to allow students an opportunity to compete for start-up funds for their business idea, and then have local business executives help them get that idea off that ground and into the market.

The goal is to launch a new business from a non-traditional college model.

You’d think the university administration might have mentioned this development to, you know, faculty.  And yet I spoke with a passel of humanities and social sciences faculty today, and no one had heard of it prior to this morning.

The website for the new “college” offers a little more information:

Venture College prepares students to launch businesses. This new, non-credit program is open to all full-time students in any major. Students who successfully complete the program receive the Boise State University Venture College Badge. [...]

Is Venture College for you?  Led by business executives, Venture College offers students a customized education plan, individual coaching by experts, internships and invaluable experience to launch their own businesses or nonprofits. Be a part of like-minded, focused group of friends making a difference!

What will you receive? You will be eligible to compete for limited start-up funding.  You will get real world experience. Some students will actually launch their businesses while still students.  All will gain skills valuable to employers.

What’s the commitment? Venture College is a two-semester program. It’s flexible and self-paced, but you must be able to participate in a colloquium each Friday from noon to 2 p.m. Students should plan on about spending 10-15 hours a week on Venture College pursuits.

The leadership of Venture College—an entrepreneur, a former CEO, and a former venture capitalist—will, we are told, report to the VP of Research and Economic Development, who reports directly to the university’s president.  The college “has the highest level of university commitment.” Venture College is free to students enrolled full-time at Boise State.

I might not have the exact same objections to this new, erm, venture that some of my readers have. Indeed, I find parts of the “Why Venture College?” page quite persuasive, its use of buzzwords aside.  (I was surprised not to see “strategic dynamism” appear on that page.)

Other parts are not so persuasive, in part because much of the “why” page is vague, or it outright contradicts other efforts of the university:

• “Boise State is. . .challenging traditional educational strategies and piloting new methods for superior, relevant education.” Then why is the college offering lecture capture and Blackboard to the rest of the university?
• “Venture College will provide self-paced, on demand access to knowledge, intensive mentoring and an opportunity to compete for resources needed to start a business.”  Self-paced and on demand suggest the program will be largely online, aside from two-hour colloquia on Friday afternoons.  Who is developing and delivering the online content?  (I also am concerned that students who are working to put themselves through school or who have family to care for won’t be able to commit to 10-15 extracurricular hours each week for two semesters.  This seems like an opportunity only relatively young, unburdened, privileged students might be able to pursue.)
• A badge is not, to put it mildly, a college.

I appreciate that the university is trying new models and is acknowledging, albeit indirectly, that there aren’t jobs in Idaho for many of our graduates—at least not well-paying ones, as Idaho has the highest percentage of minimum-wage workers of any state. (Three-quarters of the jobs created in Idaho last year were service-sector jobs, which are more likely than most to pay the minimum wage.)  Students do indeed need to develop what the university terms the “4 Cs” of 21st-century skills: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity.

My question is this: Doesn’t a liberal arts education promote the development of exactly these characteristics? I know I emphasize all four of these in my humanities classroom.  And I’m not just emphasizing these in an abstract way.  In fact, the assignment I handed out to my Master of Applied Historical Research (public history) students last night asks students to demonstrate they possess all these skills.  I’m asking students to write a proposal for the development of a mobile app that would be of use to public history professionals.  (You can download the assignment if you’re curious.)  Following this assignment, students will draft a grant application or—perhaps, I haven’t decided—create a slide-deck and pitch for venture capitalists or a foundation to fund the development of the app.

Undoubtedly this assignment will horrify some of you.  And it’s a far cry from the advice I heard at my first NCPH conference a few years ago that the introductory graduate course in public history should cover the basics of museum exhibition development, archival management, and historic preservation practice.  Museum stuff is close to my heart, so I do introduce current issues in the field, and I also provide students with an overview of challenges in historic preservation, but from there, my curriculum deviates sharply from the traditional seminar. If you view the syllabus for the course, you’ll see I have recommended Grantwriting for Dummies and I require students to read The $100 Startup because, regardless of whether they want to start their own consulting firms (and some students do indeed have that goal), students need to think creatively, resourcefully, and entrepreneurially, even if they’re employed by state agency or a nonprofit.

Why has my teaching and mentoring taken this turn? There aren’t many good jobs for public historians in Idaho; the best places to work are already populated by young, bright people who plan to stick around for a while, and many of the state’s museums and historical organizations are atrophying rather than moving forward; my first-year students already have figured out they don’t want to work for them.  My students want to be freelance grantwriters, historical consultants, documentary filmmakers, and museum technologists, and it’s my job to help them along on their individual journeys. Hence my interest in introducing them to MVPs rather than the MRM5.

Frankly, I also am not certain for how long I can tolerate living on a faculty salary that is lower than average, and I’m increasingly aware my spouse labors in a dying industry. Some might argue that traditional higher ed and tenure-line jobs are also going the way of hoop skirt makers. So I’ve spent the past several years studying entrepreneurship, keeping abreast of advances in technology, staying informed about developments in a couple of industries that interest me and in which I suspect I could consult successfully, and generally trying to be ready to “innovate” myself into an entirely new venture on very short notice. (Do I love my job and do I want tenure? Yes. Do I think my current career track is sustainable for the 25-30 years until my retirement? Nope!)

My main objection to Venture College, then, is that my university’s leadership doesn’t acknowledge, and perhaps doesn’t even realize, that faculty are already innovating, already teaching students to be innovative, creative, collaborative, and entrepreneurial—and not just through very “real-world” projects like the one I assigned, but through a carefully crafted combination of readings, viewings, discussions, activities, writing assignments, and presentations.  You know: a liberal arts education with an eye toward 21st-century ways of engaging with the world.

First, there’s a post for the Western Museums Association blog on developing museum professionals in the Intermountain West.

Second, I’m soft-launching the Boise Wiki next week by giving a talk about it. I’ll post more about the wiki once I’ve figured out what I’m going to say at the presentation.  :)