Author: glscott

We have spent the last year redesigning our approach to faculty hiring.  We have done this for a variety of reasons, but front and center has been our effort to look for candidates who understand equity in the classroom and who will support equity-mindedness in instruction.  We know that our current faculty understand the diverse…

A faculty member in Economics (Dr. Geoffrey Andron) recently sent this article about cognitive biases and irrational decision-making out to others at ACC with this introduction: “We all be crazy.  Think how we can use student crazy to stimulate student education. Also think how to protect students from professor crazy…..and from administrator crazy.” You have to…

Woke up (in a whirlwind). . . Fell out of bed (into a tornado). . . Dragged a comb across my head (in a cyclone). . . May has been a remarkably busy month.  As you can tell from the introduction to this post and my parenthetical additions to the Beatles lyrics, every day has…

What is equity and why is it important?  This article in Community College Daily describes equity as “unfinished business” for community colleges across the country.  While community colleges have long been focused on (and excelled at) open access and second chances, we haven’t done nearly as good a job with our focus on equitable student…

ACC is now an Adobe Creative Campus.  What does that mean?  Well, for one, it means that students in many of our more “creative” programs get low-cost access to the Adobe Creative Suite.  And for another, it means that students, staff, and faculty will be able to explore and develop their skills in using Photoshop,…

The month of April has come and gone, and it included two conferences (the American Association of Community Colleges annual convention; the Texas Pathways Institute #6) along with the always swirling work in support of student success. There were many days from which to choose for this month’s day in the life, but I’ve settled…

I have spent my entire life in and around higher education.  My father was a philosophy professor and I found myself following him into the professoriate.  Thus since grade school, and to this day, I have always had a week off in March.  It’s a privileged existence that we have when we can look forward…

Some topics or projects dominate our time and effort here at ACC, don’t they?  Those topics vary in origin, but our work occurs in a regulatory environment that reflects legislative action and THECB rule-making, so often our energies are devoted to things that come from legislative action.  One of the recurring foci of my energy…

This article in Inside Higher Ed focuses on the positive and significant impact that a faculty member can have on a student.  We all know this, don’t we?  We all had faculty mentors who made a difference for us on our higher ed journeys. I can still name some of my faculty mentors:  Harold Sare,…

February may be the shortest month, but February 20 was one of my longer days this month. Woke up. Got out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head. I got to work at my usual time – around 8:30AM.  Soon thereafter my office received a call from a student who believed that she had…