Summer reading programs for first-year students should be focused on the needs of those students. This book moves away from the paradigm of using general audience novels for summer reading programs. It is a high-impact book written by experienced first-year educators for this specific student audience. The content articulates to students how a college education can improve quality of their life. The goals of liberal learning, diversity education, and humanity are integrated by educating students about the narrowness of ethnocentric and egocentric perspectives, broadening one's vision to embrace diverse perspectives, and deepening self-awareness. Primary purposes: Motivational New students will be inspired and excited about their upcoming college experience. They will learn how college will be distinctively different from their prior compulsory educational experiences, and how it has the potential to improve the quality of their lives in multiple ways. Contextual It provides new students with an overarching ""big picture"" context that helps them make sense of their upcoming college experience. It will enable them to ""see the forest before they get lost in the trees."" Preparatory New students will be ready to ""hit the ground running"" when they first step foot on campus. It provides them with high-impact strategies that can have a direct and immediate effect on their success during the critical first term of college.

Research findings has shown that there are developmental issues and concerns regarding the development of university students in Hong Kong. First, there were behavioural and lifestyle problems of university students, including alcohol consumption, internet addiction, cyber-pornography, irregular sleep patterns, and interpersonal violence. Second, phenomena of mental health problems of university students, such as suicidal ideation, depression, and anxiety problems were observed. Third, some university students showed problems in setting personal goals, low self-confidence and preoccupation with materialistic values. Finally, egocentrism and lack of civic engagement was not uncommon amongst university students. How should we nurture university students? Against this background, a subject entitled "Tomorrow's Leaders" was developed at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong, China. The term "tomorrow's leaders" was used because we believe that every student is (and can be) a leader and development of positive youth development attributes is an important step. In this book you will find chapters describing this pilot project to nurture positive development and leadership among Chinese university students in Hong Kong.

This book builds on the tradition of concern for university innovation that has characterised higher education throughout the world. It recognises the university needs for continuous development of students and faculty. It involves recommendations applicable to classroom teaching, thus providing a bridge between research and practice. It helps readers meet some university challenges and build effective universities for present times. For all those reasons, we believe that this book is right. The need for renewed focus on innovation in higher education stems from several sources. First, some social and educational agencies are expressing dissatisfaction with the performance of the general higher education system. Although we do not agree with the criticism, many universities around the world assume their responsibility for launching research projects, and programs for promoting quality in teaching and learning within their faculty and community. Second, the world in which universities operate is changing noticeably. Colleges and universities are experiencing basic changes in student admission and placement. In the nearest future the student body will be over 25 years of age. Students will need methodologies to access learning materials and participate in online actions and communications over the Internet at their own convenience. The third reason for a special attention on university innovations comprises market competition in society. Students are annually evaluating the value of any university degree based upon their perceptions on quality in flexible teaching, resources and new educational technologies, campus and classroom learning environments, services and fees. Students are demanding more than a piece of paper as a premium placed on a college degree. They envisage universities must provide the major guide and best way for finding jobs and career progress. Fourth, colleges and universities are encouraging the development of long-distance education and massive open online courses. Government agencies foster competition among institutions, in order to provide powerful mental tools to help students to master tough subjects. Besides, private higher education institutions are emerging and competing for students with those of the public sector. Finally, some books outline improvement processes needed by faculty members to undertake curriculum and teaching innovations. However, very few claim to describe the teaching competencies needed by university faculty who work in higher education classroom settings. Furthermore, universities offering innovation programs and courses use those competencies to identify learning change and teacher and student progress toward curriculum development.

In this in-depth and detailed history, Timothy J. Williams reveals that antebellum southern higher education did more than train future secessionists and proslavery ideologues. It also fostered a growing world of intellectualism flexible enough to marry the era's middle-class value system to the honor-bound worldview of the southern gentry. By focusing on the students' perspective and drawing from a rich trove of their letters, diaries, essays, speeches, and memoirs, Williams narrates the under examined story of education and manhood at the University of North Carolina, the nation's first public university. Every aspect of student life is considered, from the formal classroom and the vibrant curriculum of private literary societies to students' personal relationships with each other, their families, young women, and college slaves. In each of these areas, Williams sheds new light on the cultural and intellectual history of young southern men, and in the process dispels commonly held misunderstandings of southern history. Williams's fresh perspective reveals that students of this era produced a distinctly southern form of intellectual masculinity and maturity that laid the foundation for the formulation of the post-Civil War South.

This book arises out of the work of the Emerging researcher programme at the University of Cape Town and builds on the publication entitled The emerging researcher: Nurturing passion, developing skills, producing output, co-authored by John W. de Gruchy and Lyn Holness (UCT Press: 2007). Designed as a tool for emerging researchers and their mentors, this new volume provides strategies for research growth in areas such as understanding the relationship between teaching and research; obtaining higher degrees; producing peer-reviewed research output; generating and managing research funding; effective research planning; engaging in interdisciplinary research; and postgraduate supervision. The book addresses three primary readerships. It speaks first to institutions, and the imperative for institutional support in promoting research among junior staff members, sometimes requiring a shift in mindset and a prioritising of resources in order to be competitive as higher education institutions on the national and global platform. Second, it addresses those responsible for the task of mentoring new, young or inexperienced academics in developing their research capacity and igniting enthusiasm. Third, it is directed to emerging researchers themselves, identifying the skills required to produce sustained, quality research, and discussing strategies to do so. The book will have relevance for those across the spectrum denoted by the term 'emerging' - from those new to academia to those whose development as researchers has for some reason been thwarted, and those who are approaching the stage of being recognised as established researchers. In response to the demand for the first book from researchers in the broader African context, the new book takes into account topics and challenges that are relevant across the sub-Saharan continent.

The second half of the twentieth century saw the University of Pennsylvania grow in size as well as in stature. On its way to becoming one of the world's most celebrated research universities, Penn exemplified the role of urban renewal in the postwar redevelopment and expansion of urban universities, and the indispensable part these institutions played in the remaking of American cities. Yet urban renewal is only one aspect of this history. Drawing from Philadelphia's extensive archives as well as the University's own historical records and publications, John L. Puckett and Mark Frazier Lloyd examine Penn's rise to eminence amid the social, moral, and economic forces that transformed major public and private institutions across the nation. Becoming Penn recounts the shared history of university politics and urban policy as the campus grappled with twentieth-century racial tensions, gender inequality, labor conflicts, and economic retrenchment. Examining key policies and initiatives of the administrations led by presidents Gaylord Harnwell, Martin Meyerson, Sheldon Hackney, and Judith Rodin, Puckett and Lloyd revisit the actors, organizations, and controversies that shaped campus life in this turbulent era. Illustrated with archival photographs of the campus and West Philadelphia neighborhood throughout the late twentieth century, Becoming Penn provides a sweeping portrait of one university's growth and impact within the broader social history of American higher education.

Over the past century, higher education in the United States has developed an increasingly powerful corporate ethos, as institutions compete for students, faculty, and funding. This book examines how the liberal democratic principles driving higher education often conflict with market pressures to credential students and offer knowledge that has a clear exchange value. Eric Gould, who has been both academician and college administrator, argues that the failure to structure the curriculum so that it integrates responsible social idealism and humanism with economic and cultural needs constitutes the moral crisis of the university. Gould analyzes the economics and politics of higher education, showing how student consumerism, culture wars, faculty alienation, trustee activism, and a split between the concepts of "culture" and "society" have all resulted from the unholy alliance between pragmatism, corporatism, and liberalism in higher education. He asserts that what is needed is a general education for undergraduates that promotes the ability to critique power relations (including those within higher education) so that students can understand how social forces-and their embodiment of ideas, ideologies, and claims for truth-shape contemporary public philosophy.

Globetrotting or Global Citizenship? explores the broad range of international experiential learning options available to Canadian students, as well as the opportunities and the ethical dilemmas that come with them. Combining practical advice with critical examinations of international experiential learning, this essay collection is designed to help the reader to move beyond photo-ops and travel opportunities and towards striving for a deeper global citizenship. Globetrotting or Global Citizenship? is a valuable guide for students considering going abroad for experiential learning and a useful resource for those returning from such programs, as well as instructors and administrators facilitating pre-departure and return orientation sessions. Anyone taking part in international volunteering will find the reflections and analysis provided here an excellent starting point for understanding the potential impact of their time abroad.

In April 1969, one of America's premier universities was celebrating parents' weekend and the student union was an armed camp, occupied by over eighty defiant members of the campus's Afro-American Society. Marching out Sunday night, the protesters brandished rifles, their maxim: "If we die, you are going to die." Cornell '69 is an electrifying account of that weekend which probes the origins of the drama and describes how it was played out not only at Cornell but on campuses across the nation during the heyday of American liberalism.Donald Alexander Downs tells the story of how Cornell University became the battleground for the clashing forces of racial justice, intellectual freedom, and the rule of law. Eyewitness accounts and retrospective interviews depict the explosive events of the day and bring the key participants into sharp focus: the Afro-American Society, outraged at a cross-burning incident on campus and demanding amnesty for its members implicated in other protests; University President James A. Perkins, long committed to addressing the legacies of racism, seeing his policies backfire and his career collapse; the faculty, indignant at the university's surrender, rejecting the administration's concessions, then reversing itself as the crisis wore on. The weekend's traumatic turn of events is shown by Downs to be a harbinger of the debates raging today over the meaning of the university in American society. He explores the fundamental questions it posed, questions Americans on and off campus are still struggling to answer: What is the relationship between racial justice and intellectual freedom? What are the limits in teaching identity politics? And what is the proper meaning of the university in a democratic polity?"

The First Class Formula: All the secrets you should know to succeed at university

Reviews:

""This book is awesome. I read it all in one night. Going to put it into practice for my exams. Honestly, really really wish I had it in my first year of uni "" Toby Bawden, University Student.

""An inspiring read for all those who aim high and want to achieve - but who also want to get the most fun from University life "" Karen Gooch, University Faculty.

The First Class Formula gives students the insights they need to get ahead at university from day one. The authors know from their own experiences that there are things that aren't taught at university. By learning and applying the secrets in this book you can get a first class degree and have a great time doing it.

Given that you are about to invest thousands of pounds on your university education, the small price you pay for this uncommon guide could just be the best investment you make. This book offers real value to new students beginning their university adventure. This book teaches you:

- The Art of Studying. Studying at university is different to college, it becomes a way of life. Learn the art of studying using the three steps in this chapter.

- How to Write the Perfect Essay. The authors teach you the bricks and mortar strategy, which is the most effective way of gaining tops marks in your essays.

- How to Ace the Exams. Learn a two-phase method for handling any exam. From blind tests to first class cramming, this chapter is packed with new techniques that will help you ace the exams.

- The Lifestyle of a Zen Student. Learn to balance your studying with an intense social life effortlessly. This chapter contains useful insights on everything from student accommodation to partying.

- The Winning Mentality. Discover the mind-set that exists within you to succeed at university both academically and socially.

About the Authors:

Rob, Jake and Dan are recent graduates who live by the philosophy of working hard and playing hard. Each took a different path through university and approached studying in a different way, however what emerged between them was a combined knowledge of the experience, and a formula for getting a first class degree. This realisation, coupled with an incredible friendship stimulated the guys to sit down and write about their university experience.

Each became a Zen student in their own right. Rob got the highest degree mark in his graduating year, Jake had one of his essays published as a guideline for new students and Dan consistently topped the highest exam mark charts. Between them they started a society for magicians, played first team tennis, had a radio show and never missed a party. This is their story.

This book is concerned with teaching for students at a university level and faculty development. This book will look at how teaching and research can be brought into a closer relationship. This book welcomes research-based articles on the practice of higher education, specifically those manuscripts that span a wide range of teaching and faculty development issues and trends occurring internationally.

Before Woodrow Wilson became president of the United States, he spent 25 years at Princeton University, first as an undergraduate, then professor, and finally as president. His experiences at the helm of Princeton-where he enjoyed four productive years followed by four years of wrangling and intense acrimony-reveal much about the kind of man he was and how he earned a reputation as a fearless crusader. This engrossing book focuses on how Wilson's Princeton years influenced the ideas and worldview he later applied in politics. His career in the White House, W. Barksdale Maynard shows, repeated with uncanny precision his Princeton experiences. The book recounts how Wilson's inspired period of building, expansion, and intellectual fervor at Princeton deteriorated into one of the most famous academic disputes in American history. His battle to abolish elitist eating clubs and establish a more egalitarian system culminated in his defeat and dismissal, and the ruthlessness of his tactics alienated even longtime friends. So extreme was his behavior, some historians have wondered whether he suffered a stroke. Maynard sheds new light on this question, on Wilson's temper, and on other aspects of his strengths and shortcomings. The book provides an unprecedented inside view of a hard-fighting president-a man who tried first to remake a university and then to remake the world.

In Spiritual Harvard, Werner de Saeger brings together twelve distinct voices from America's oldest university to explore religious education and the role of Harvard Divinity School. In engaging and often playful conversations, faculty and students paint a portrait of this unique institution and the myriad perspectives that come together within it. Spiritual Harvard is a book for those who want to know more about Harvard Divinity School as well as those interested in the current state of religious studies in a society where religious illiteracy is juxtaposed with religious conflict. Amongst others, this book includes interviews with former Dean of Harvard Divinity School William Graham, Harvey Cox, Diane Moore, Dudley Rose, and Charles Adams.

This 2005 volume carries on the plan described in the preface to the Historical Register of the University of Cambridge, Supplement 1911 20. All holders of University Offices, who took up or left their posts, have been included.

Why are Australian Intellectuals and academics so hostile to contemporary Australian life? Why do they so often hold disparaging views of their fellow Australians? This was not always the case. In the nineteenth century Australians of an intellectual disposition sought to work with their fellow Australians to build a better and freer country. But from the end of the nineteenth century, beginning with the Bulletin an intellectual culture emerged which was adversarial in nature and increasingly hostile to the aspirations of ordinary Australians. This culture of intellectuals became embedded in key institutions, including the universities, the world of the arts and the ABC. It became a subculture isolated from mainstream Australia in intellectual ghettos. It is a world which bristles with hostility, negativity and nihilism. History has been a favoured domain for Australian intellectuals and they heartedly condemn the Australian past and the Australian people. The only problem is that the more they blacken the past the more they turn off students from studying history. The result is a real crisis in the study of the Australian past. The only way forward is a much more sober and sensible approach by intellectuals, especially in terms of appreciating our Western heritage.

Dictatorships destroy intellectual freedom, yet universities need it. How, then, can universities function under dictatorships? Are they more a support or a danger for the system? In this volume, leading experts from five countries explore the many dimensions of accommodation and conflict, control and independence, as well as subservience and resistance that characterized the relationship of universities to dictatorial regimes in communist and fascist states during the twentieth century: Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Francoist Spain, Maoist China, the Soviet Union, and the Soviet bloc countries of Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland.

Comparisons across these cases reveal that the higher-education policies of modern dictatorships were characterized by a basic conflict of aims. On the one hand, universities were supposed to propagate reigning ideology and serve as training grounds for a dependable elite. Consequently, university autonomy was restricted, research used for political legitimation, personnel policies subjected to political calculus, and many undesired scholars simply put out on the street. On the other hand, modern dictatorships needed well-educated scientists, physicians, teachers, and engineers for the implementation of their political, economic, and military agendas.

Communist and fascist leaders thus confronted the basic question of whether universities should be seen primarily as producers of ideology and functionaries loyal to the party line or as places where indispensable knowledge was made available. Dictatorships that opted to subject universities to rigorous political control reduced their scholarly productivity. But if the institutes of higher learning were left with too much autonomy, there was a danger that they would go astray politically.

Besides the editors, the contributors are Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Michael David-Fox, Jan Havranek, Ralph Jessen, Gyorgy Peteri, Miguel angel Ruiz Carnicer, and Douglas Stiffler.

The enchantment of English is a study of the teaching of English in Australian universities, from its beginnings in the second half of the nineteenth century through to the 1960s and 1970s, a period in which universities proliferated and diversified. Written from the belief that every discipline is enhanced by understanding the arguments made for its existence and the conditions in which it was established, the author aims to help students and colleagues to think critically about the impact of institutional location in forming our habits of mind. Amidst these stories of politics, critical debates, scrambling for appointments in specific areas and disputes about the need to satisfy the demands of students and the public for 'usefulness', this history reveals something intangible but durable: the power of the literary text over the imagination, and the power of the idea of England and its writers as a basis and motive for reading and study - hence, The enchantment of English.

Debating thesis supervision features chapters on the topic of thesis supervision by departmental members and three academics, which together provide a rich and compelling line of argument worthy of careful study, critique and elaboration. Four articles are presented with replies by each author and a postscript. Together, they have the objective of exemplifying responsible and rigorous debate on thesis supervision on the one hand, while providing space for conceptual clarification and elaboration on the other.

The creation of the "modern university" dates back to the early 1900s when American professors fashioned for their institutions a mission of social service and defined themselves as truth-seekers whose expertise would bring social benefits. These academics also introduced a new idea to the American public: academic freedom. In 1925, University of North Carolina President Harry Woodburn Chase proclaimed, "What the university believes with all its heart, is that a teacher has a right to state the honest conviction to which he has come through his work, that he has the right of freedom of speech in teaching just as any other citizen has that right under the constitution." The forging of this new identity and the introduction of academic freedom did not come without internal and external struggles, however. Perhaps in no other region was the university-trained intellectual's new identity met with more suspicion and scrutiny than in the South, a region historically resistant to change. A close examination of one of the leading southern universities, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), during these years reveals the ambitions of this new generation of professors, the reactionary logic of their critics, and the confused attempts of school leaders to use academic freedom to help the school navigate through these transformative decades. Between world wars, UNC emerged as a modern university that championed academic freedom and the expertise of its faculty. This expertise would, in theory, help lift the state and indeed the entire South out of poverty and place it on the road to progress. From the outset, university leaders understood that explaining and defending academic freedom was the key to gaining public support, thereby setting an example for other southern universities. In To Carry the Truth: Academic Freedom at UNC, 1920-1941, Charles J. Holden examines academic freedom through a contextualized intellectual history of the movement's origin at one school. Holden explores how academic freedom worked over time and reveals the fault lines between the goals of academic freedom and what was really possible. To Carry the Truth will be of interest to historians of higher education, of the South, and of the law. This project is being considered for UPK's New Directions in Southern History series. Charles J. Holden is Aldom-Plansoen Distinguished Professor of history at St. Mary's College of Maryland. He is the author of In the Great Maelstrom: Conservatives in Post-Civil War South Carolina (South Carolina) and has contributed to several other publications, including North Carolina Historical Review and Maryland Historical Magazine.

The former president of MIT discusses challenges and policy issues confronting academia, science and technology, and the world at large. In his fourteen years as president of MIT, Charles Vest worked continuously to realize his vision of rebuilding America's trust in science and technology. In a time when the federal government dramatically reduced its funding of academic research programs and industry shifted its R&D resources into the short-term product-development process, Vest called for new partnerships with business and government. He called for universities to meet the intellectual challenges posed by the innovation-driven, globally connected needs of industry even as he reaffirmed basic academic values and the continuing need for longer-term scientific inquiry. In Pursuing the Endless Frontier, Vest addresses these and other issues in a series of essays written during his tenure as president of MIT. He discusses the research university's need to shift to a broader, more international outlook, the value of diversity in the academic community, the greater leadership role for faculty outside the classroom, and the boundless opportunity of new scientific and technological developments even when coupled with financial constraints. In the provocative essay "What We Don't Know," Vest reminds us of what he calls "the most critical point of all," that science is driven by a deep human need to understand nature, to answer the "big questions"-that what we don't know is more important than what we do. In another essay, on the future of MIT, he celebrates MIT's strengths as being extraordinarily well-suited to the needs of an era of unprecedented change in science and technology. In "Disturbing the Educational Universe: Universities in the Digital Age-Dinosaurs or Prometheans," he describes MIT's innovative OpenCourseWare initiative, which builds on the fundamental nature of the Internet as an enabling and liberating technology. Vest, who is stepping down from MIT's presidency in the fall of 2004, writes with clarity and insight about the issues facing academic institutions in the twenty-first century. His essays in Pursuing the Endless Frontier offer inspiration to educators and researchers seeking the way forward.

Writing high quality grant applications is easier when you know how research funding agencies work and how your proposal is treated in the decision-making process. The Research Funding Toolkit provides this knowledge and teaches you the necessary skills to write high quality grant applications. A complex set of factors determine whether research projects win grants. This handbook helps you understand these factors and then face and overcome your personal barriers to research grant success. The guidance also extends to real-world challenges of grant-writing, such as obtaining the right feedback, dealing effectively with your employer and partner institutions, and making multiple applications efficiently. There are many sources that will tell you what a fundable research grant application looks like. Very few help you learn the skills you need to write one. The Toolkit fills this gap with detailed advice on creating and testing applications that are readable, understandable and convincing.

The modern university can trace its roots to Kant's call for enlightened self-determination, with education aiming to produce an informed and responsible body of citizens. As the university evolved, specialized areas of investigation emerged, enabling ever more precise research and increasingly nuanced arguments. In recent decades, however, challenges to hegemony of disciplines have arisen, partly in response to a perceived need for the university to focus greater energy on its public vocation--on teaching and the dissemination of knowledge.

"Valences of Interdisciplinarity" presents essays by an international array of scholars committed to enhancing our understanding of the theoretical underpinnings and the practical realities of interdisciplinary teaching and research. What is, and what should be, motivating our reflections on, and our practice of, approaches that transcend the conventional boundaries of discipline? And in adopting such transdisciplinary approaches, how do we safeguard critical methods and academic rigour? Reflecting on the obstacles they have encountered both as thinkers and as educators, the authors map out innovative new directions for the interdisciplinary project. Together, the essays promise to set the standards of the debate about interdisciplinary for years to come.

Raphael Foshay is the program director of the Master of Arts in Integrated Studies program at Athabasca University.

Since the American University of Beirut opened its doors in 1866, the campus has stood at the intersection of a rapidly changing American educational project for the Middle East and an ongoing student quest for Arab national identity and empowerment. Betty S. Anderson provides a unique and comprehensive analysis of how the school shifted from a missionary institution providing a curriculum in Arabic to one offering an English-language American liberal education extolling freedom of speech and analytical discovery. Anderson discusses how generations of students demanded that they be considered legitimate voices of authority over their own education; increasingly, these students sought to introduce into their classrooms the real-life political issues raging in the Arab world. The Darwin Affair of 1882, the introduction of coeducation in the 1920s, the Arab nationalist protests of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the even larger protests of the 1970s all challenged the Americans and Arabs to fashion an educational program relevant to a student body constantly bombarded with political and social change. Anderson reveals that the two groups chose to develop a program that combined American goals for liberal education with an Arab student demand that the educational experience remain relevant to their lives outside the school's walls. As a result, in eras of both cooperation and conflict, the American leaders and the students at the school have made this American institution of the Arab world and of Beirut.