A former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers is giving Georgetown University $100 million to found a school of public policy that will bear his family name, the largest donation ever to the nation’s oldest Catholic university, the Washington Post reports. Frank H. McCourt Jr., who took the storied baseball team into bankruptcy in 2011 and sold it last year for a reported $2.15 billion, has endowed Georgetown’s ninth school with a gift that will expand the university’s footprint in the growing field of public policy scholarship. McCourt, 60, who lives in New York, graduated from Georgetown in 1975. His donation, which surpasses a previous university record of $87 million set in 2010, is scheduled to be announced Wednesday…
…Read MorePodcast Series: Innovations in Education
Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
Is AP better than freshman college courses?
We are in the midst of a national debate over the worth of Advanced Placement courses and tests in high school, says Jay Mathews for The Washington Post. The weight of opinion so far is on the side of AP. The program is growing. Thousands of college professors and tens of thousands of high school teachers support it. Most of the available data shows that high school students who do well in AP courses and tests do better in college than students who do not take AP. But a few very selective colleges have resisted giving much credit for AP…
…Read MoreWhat is Florida Gulf Coast University?
It’s safe to say that a few weeks ago not many people outside South Florida had heard about Florida Gulf Coast University. Now, thanks to the school’s basketball team and its historic forward march in March Madness, it’s the new “it” school, at least for the moment. What exactly is it? And where is it? asks the Washington Post. Florida Gulf Coast University is a 760-acre accredited public comprehensive university located in South Fort Myers, on the southwest coast of the state. It has some 11,300 undergraduate students and 1,400 graduate students, 92 percent of whom are from Florida, and it offers 52 undergraduate degree programs, 30 graduate degree programs, two doctoral programs and on specialist program, according to its web site. It has its own astronomical observatory It was established in 1991 with the idea of being a commuter school where most students took classes online, but it did not start classes until August 1997…
…Read MoreTransgender AU senior turns personal experience into political action
At 22, Sarah McBride’s resume shows a passion for public service. Former president of American University’s student government. Intern with the White House Office of Public Engagement. Aide to Delaware Gov. Jack Markell (D), the Washington Post reports. Behind her narrative of aspiring politician aiming to fix the world, her resume doesn’t reflect the personal struggle she has faced her entire life. A year ago, McBride revealed that she had been living with a deep secret for 21 years. At the time, her name was Tim. In April 2012, on the last day of serving as the latest of AU’s many white, heterosexual male student body presidents, McBride revealed her inner struggle — she’s transgender.
“Gender identity shouldn’t matter and doesn’t matter in my capacity as an employee, as a leader, as a person,” McBride said. “You can be true to yourself and still do what you want to do with your life . . . [T]hey don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”
AP good for high school, bad for college?
I complained recently that college professors too often wrongly dismiss high school teachers as being unsuited to teach college-level classes such as the Advanced Placement courses so popular in the Washington region, says Jay Matthews for the Washington Post. Two scholars from distinguished universities gently chided me for being too hard on their academic colleagues. They might be right. After an e-mail exchange with John T. Fourkas, Millard Alexander Professor of Chemistry at the University of Maryland, and Bryan McCann, associate professor of history at Georgetown University, I concede that professors’ concerns about AP often show no disrespect for high schools but instead stem from discomfort with the ill effects of colleges competing for AP students. Fourkas and McCann like AP and similar college-level programs such as International Baccalaureate. They recognize that those classes have made high school more challenging and gotten students ready for long college reading lists and long exams…
…Read MoreMore on classroom flipping in colleges
Flipping the classroom is in vogue, the Washington Post reports. The idea is to take the standard lecture and put it online or in some other format that a student can review on his or her own time — hence the term “flip.” Then students and instructors have classtime free to work on seminars, projects, homework or whatever. Or they can listen to a guest lecture. Last month, I reported the example of Philip Zelikow at the University of Virginia. His lectures in modern world history are now available to the world via a free online platform called Coursera. That means his U-Va. students in his flipped class at Charlottesville spend more time interacting with Zelikow and less time passively listening. There are many examples of this phenomenon. Here are a couple more. At the public Salisbury University on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, professor Deborah A. Mathews said the Social Work Department puts much of its lecture material online. About two weeks before a semester begins, Mathews said, the online portion of the class goes live…
…Read MoreVirginia’s Liberty transforms into evangelical mega-university
The small Baptist college that television preacher Jerry Falwell founded here in 1971 has capitalized on the online education boom to become an evangelical mega-university with global reach, the Washington Post reports. In the almost six years since Falwell’s death, Liberty University has doubled its student head count — twice. Total enrollment now exceeds 74,000, with nearly 62,000 working toward degrees online in fields such as psychology, business, education, criminal justice and, of course, religion. That makes Liberty the largest university in Virginia — with more than double the number of students at No. 2 George Mason — and the largest private, nonprofit university in the country. With a slogan of “training champions for Christ,” Liberty also is the nation’s largest university with a religious affiliation…
…Read MoreFive habits of great students: Lessons from top-ranked STEM school
Many factors affect how well students do in school, but among them are how the students themselves approach their work and learning, the Washington Post reports. Here are some of the habits of successful students at High Technology High School in Lincroft, New Jersey, which was ranked the #1 STEM high school in the nation by U.S. News last year (for those who think rankings have any value). This was written by Jonathan Olsen (@jonathanaolsen) and Sarah Mulhern Gross (@thereadingzone), who team-teach an integrated humanities program to ninth grade students at High Technology. Jonathan and Sarah are regular contributors to the New York Times Learning Network. Jon , the district’s curriculum coordinator, teachers world history; Sarah, a National Board Certified teacher, teaches English. They have both been honored as Teachers of the Year by their school…
…Read MoreProfessor: Why Teach For America can’t recruit in my classroom
Teach For America is an organization that recruits new college graduates, gives them five weeks of training in a summer institute and then places them in some of America’s neediest schools, with only a two-year commitment, the Washington Post reports. When it started more than 20 years it only accepted Ivy League students as recruits but has since expanded to include many other schools. Its founder, Wendy Kopp, envisioned the TFA mission as creating a network of alumni who, as they assume important roles in society, can advocate for public education. Here is a piece by a college professor who does not welcome Teach For America in his classroom to recruit. It was written by Mark Naison, a professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University and director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African American History, urban history, and the history of sports. This piece was written last year and versions have appeared on several websites. I am running it because I think it is powerful…
…Read More2013 Presidents’ Day quiz
Presidents’ Day is something of an odd holiday, given that there is no universal agreement on which presidents are being honored, on the actual name of the holiday or whether there is an apostrophe in “presidents,” the Washington Post reports. To the U.S. government, Presidents’ Day is still recognized as “Washington’s Birthday,” though in some states the day jointly honors the birthdays of Washington, born Feb. 22, and Abraham Lincoln, born Feb. 12. And in other states the day is meant to honor Washington and Thomas Jefferson but not Lincoln — or all of the presidents…
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