A weekly collection of interesting things I find around the web. Feel free to add more in the comments!

The Chronicle asked scholars what the next decade’s Big Idea would be. Here’s what they had to say.

Negotiating your “alternative academic” appointment — those jobs that are in the academy but not disciplinary. Think digital humanities and the like.

How to navigate graduate school in STEM fields if you’re a woman.

Just because people aren’t on the tenure track doesn’t mean they aren’t engaging with research.

Dr. Crazy takes all the rhetoric about reforming higher ed and starts putting it together to talk about how something might actually happen. In Part 1, she reviews the important stakeholders. Here, she reviews the different types of schools involved. Here, she adds the multiple arguments around graduate education.

A weekly collection of interesting things I find around the interwebs. If you’ve seen something neat I missed, put it in the comments!

Stanley Fish argues that plagiarism is a professional issue, not a moral one.

Two search consultants offer tips for applying to administrative jobs.

When the faculty union and the adjunct union face off.

150 non-profit colleges fail a test of financial strength.

Were you both simultaneously obsessed with and procrastinating on your thesis? Check out PhD Comics this week.

This week’s NY Times “Modern Love” column is all about the academic tw0-body couple — and it doesn’t end the way you might expect.

A weekly compilation of the interesting things I find around the web. Saw something interesting? Add it in the comments!

That xkcd cartoon I linked last week skewering university home pages has actually gained some traction in higher ed, leading to conversations about what the site should have.

An expert on university management suggests that two related “Hippocratic oaths,” one for faculty and one for administrators, could help defuse campus tensions.

Should professors have to ask permission of their universities to run for political office? Central Michigan University says yes. It’s faculty says no.

A university architect asks whether faculty really need private offices — would communal space work as well? The comments raise a lot of interesting points, including the tenure-track / adjunct divide, issues of different work expectations, and questions about student privacy.

David Hiscoe returned to academia after twenty years in corporate American to find that the things that drove him out have only gotten worse.

Claire Potter of Tenured Radical fame suggests dealing with academic overload by consciously — and routinely — tracking your work against department norms.

A weekly compilation of interesting, useful, and just plain amusing things I find around the web. Got one I missed! Add it to the comments!

XKCD does a Venn diagram of what college websites have on their home pages and what people go looking for. I’m not sure why I find it so funny, but I really do.

The stereotype of the cushy academic life is fading, but that’s partially because fewer and fewer people get to experience it that way. (subscription required)

The New York Times asked, what if tenure dies? This, unsurprisingly, created a rousing debate. Gabriella Montel rounds up some of the responses. Dean Dad weighs in on the side of abolishing tenure (the comments get quite heated, and he responds in a following post). Timothy Burke argues that tenure has, to all practical purposes, already been abolished.

An academic librarian asks us to answer the “so what” question for research.

A weekly collection of interesting stuff I find around the web. Found something you want to share? Put it in the comments!

What? What’s that you say? Today is TUESDAY? Yes, well, Sunday night found me stuck in Dallas and then rerouted to an airport 5o miles away from both my car and my luggage. Yesterday therefore did not go as planned. But we persevere!

All postdocs are different, but Zoe Smith and Ariana Sutton-Grier offer advice for maximizing yours.

Adjuncting is a tough position, but this article offers ways to make the experience better.

Despite its supposed time flexibility, the tenure track is not so hospitable to mothers, a new study shows, which explains why tenured faculty are still so often male.

Handling email as a faculty member is challenging, because you have to balance student desire for access with the need for faculty sanity — and sleep. How do you prevent it from creating a third shift?

An interesting review of an organization book that matches strategies to your personality type.

Despite the economic disasters putting diverse pressures on higher ed, some colleges are still rated by their employees as great places to work.

The interesting things I found around the web last week. Got something to add? Put it in the comments!

What does “adequate support” from your department and university look like in terms of developing a research agenda and eventually getting tenure? IHE blogger GMP gives you the low-down.

An associate professor’s story of applying for a new position.

The gap between men and women’s satisfaction in academia is greatest in the social sciences.

A weekly collection of links I find around the web. Enjoy!

A work-life scholar gives up tenure for love. He admits that it would be different if he were a woman.

Jessica Quillin suggests you write a one-pager for your career to get the big-picture sense of where you are and where you’re going.

One graduate students comes to the end of her submissive rope and learns the power of assertiveness.

Having self-doubt? Think like a creator, not a sponge.

Some suggestions on creating an effective adviser relationship.

Also? Have a very happy day-off-for-the-holiday-we-already-celebrated, if you indeed get this day.

A weekly collection of great stuff I find as I read around the web. If you’ve read something fabulous, leave it in the comments!

Leaving a Job Gracefully, by Heather M. Whitney. Step by step instructions for leaving one academic job for another gracefully and with as few missteps as possible. Via the Prof Hacker blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Stephen C. Stearn’s “Some Modest Advice for Graduate Students.” Be warned, it’s a little … blunt, and it’s geared mostly to science students. Still, he dishes out some good big-picture advice.

CHE reports on the struggle adjuncts face to get unemployment benefits when they aren’t rehired.

Eliza Woolf’s tale of botching a non-academic interview for an editorial assistant position, from Insider Higher Ed. They only seem less challenging than academic ones.

Three national groups of historians have agreed to guidelines that would open the tenure process beyond the monograph for public historians.

One scholars studies faculty burnout and suggests there are multiple factors, one of which is high expectations scholars set for themselves.

Another article on the same research reveals that non-tenured tenure-track faculty are more burned out than their tenured or non-tenure-track peers.

Carolyn Foster Segal was invited to write an inspirational book about being at the top of the academic heap, but she refused. This article explains why — she wasn’t comfortable encouraging people to follow a calling when the likelihood of it turning into a tenure-track job was so slim.

The title says it all: “The Fantasy of the Faculty Vacation.”

The reality of being a female science professor: less respect, less money, more surreal conversations with peers who think you couldn’t possibly be the researcher in question.

Rob Jenkins offers some sage advice about succeeding in the community college job search.

Michael Bérubé, second Vice President of the MLA, responds to a letter asking whether the writer should go to graduate school. While he doesn’t say yes or no, his articulate response leans towards no.