YouTube.com has become the new medium for academia. Many colleges are setting up individual “channels” on YouTube, and professors are their cast and crew, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
The University of California at Berkeley was the first to post video clips of class lectures and demonstrations on the site. They were followed by Vanderbilt University, the University of Southern California and University of New South Wales in Australia.
The online videos can be anywhere from one to two minute clips or entire classes of two to three hours. YouTube clips have become hugely popular; some videos on Berkeley’s channel have more viewers – nearing 100,000 hits – than many pop culture videos online.
Fighting Financial Woes
Despite years of decreasing enrollment and increasing financial deficit, the College of Santa Fe Board of Trustees decided Friday not to declare a financial state of emergency, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.
The declaration would have allowed them to fire tenured faculty members, but the Board of Trustees decided that the measures for avoiding a crisis already being taken would suffice.
Already, the college had been laying off faculty members, eliminating under-enrolled programs and reducing funds for operating costs.
Adventure Writing 101
Hamilton College History Prof. Maurice Isserman offers a seminar on Adventure Writing – a course that provides part adventure, part writing to first-year students, the Chronicle reported.
Before the year begins, students have the option to travel with Isserman on a four day “adventure” to an isolated lake in the northern Adirondacks. The students keep detailed journal entries and then use them throughout the course in the fall.
Isserman said the trip brings students together on a closer emotional level, easing their transition into college and improving their writing.
Frontier Showdown
Wyoming Gov. David Freudenthal defended the University of Wyoming’s academic freedom policies against angry lawmakers on Friday, the Casper-Star Tribune reported.
Lawmakers rejected a $500,000 budget increase to the University of Wyoming’s Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources. The lawmakers fired back against a University report attacking a methane recovery method in Wyoming. Freudenthal encouraged the University to promote an environment where even controversial ideas can be expressed without fear of political retaliation.
Wyoming Rep. Frank Philp, (R-Shoshoni), Joint Appropriations Committee co-chairman, said the money wasn’t entirely off the table.
ELAINE LAFAY