Margaret Lamar Blog Portfolio

Introduction

At the beginning of the class, I was intrigued and excited about the idea of blogging assignments for the class. I love reading blogs in my everyday life. In fact, many hours that I should have been spent working on my dissertation, have been spent browsing blogs online. Most of the ones I read are completely unrelated to anything in my academic life. I like to use this time to escape my own life and read about other people’s adventures!

In getting this assignment, I was curious about the experience of blogging on a particular topic. I generally don’t read very controversial blogs or anything that incites comments with people yelling back and forth at each other (which I did not experience in this class). I almost never post comments on any of the blogs I read and so I was also curious about having dialogue around a particular blog topic.

Most of the current issues I am focused on center around faculty experiences. In my program (counselor education and supervision), most students are preparing to be faculty. Faculty experiences tend to be the current issue I think about and am excited to talk about because of its direct relevance to my future. As a student, I’m aware of financial aid current issues and grade inflation issues. The higher education financial struggle affects both student affairs and academic programs, so I anticipated discussing this. Student mental health issues are another topic I anticipated discussing because of my identity as a counselor.

Generally, I was excited to expand my understanding of broader current issues faced by higher education today. Regardless of what area of higher education I enter, I believe that understanding higher education systemically will improve my work. I am currently looking for faculty positions and I hope that having a better understanding of current issues will help me navigate this process. I also anticipated the current political, economic, and social climate would create some interesting discussion around higher education issues. All of these factors, along with the chance to communicate my ideas more conversationally through the blogs, had me really looking forward to this semester.

My Favorite Blog Entries

This was tough for me to answer. The blog entries I liked the most were generally related to topics I enjoy.

The entry that I was most interested in was the one about faculty misconduct with graduate students:

http://currentevents695a.blogspot.com/2011/10/are-graduate-faculty-exercising.html#comments

The blog entry I posted that received the most attention was the one about Colorado university names. Although I would not say this issue is near and dear to my heart, I genuinely like this post. I had always been curious about why University of Colorado Boulder, went by “CU-Boulder.” When I heard a story about it on the radio, I thought “perfect! I’ll write about this!” (I also secretly enjoyed finding a story that didn’t originate from the chronicle or insidehighered.com. I was getting tired of those two news outlets.)

Finally, I enjoyed this post because I learned so much from the comments. I’ll write more about this later, but I had been struggling with how to write blogs in such a way that the conversation was left open for others to comment. I honestly had no idea this topic would incite any discussion, so I was excited to see so many thoughts about it. Additionally, I learned a lot more about other university names, rebranding, etc. Interestingly, I think I spent less time on this entry than any others.

http://currentevents695f.blogspot.com/2011/11/changing-namesthe-cu-denver-story.html#comments

Blogging: What I Learned

As I said earlier, I was excited about blogging. When I check in with my regular blogs everyday, I learn new things, see new perspectives, and am linked to other blogs, which are then added to my favorite list and keep me from writing my dissertation. Before this class, blogging seemed easy. It’s a pretty casual conversation and sometimes people comment. I’ve started my own blogs every now and then. The biggest challenge has been to actually sit down and write regularly. Because this was an assignment, that challenge was removed and I figured the rest would happen naturally.

I was surprised by how much time I poured into coming up with a topic, structuring the entry, generating questions I hoped people would respond to, and then finding pictures to make the entry more appealing to read. It was a lot more work than I thought it would be!

I struggled with how to present blog topics in a way that encouraged discussion. I was not disappointed by the comments I received. I just felt, when reading my own entries, that I hadn’t left much open for discussion. I think I was filling in too many gaps and not opening up some space for other perspectives. I was reporting the information like a news story. This is especially true with blog topics I feel passionate about. I didn’t feel this was overly problematic. However, I wanted to challenge myself to learn to structure a virtual discussion.

I started paying attention to my favorite bloggers to see how they encouraged discussion among their readers. These bloggers left a lot of negative space in their work. This is an art term, if you’re not familiar with it, which concerns the “empty” area around a subject. That negative space adds a lot to the overall picture. I wanted to learn how to create a negative space that let people think about the topic or say add to the discussion.

I believe, as the semester, I learned how to let go of some of the subject to create some space in my blogs. I chose topics that I wanted to know more about. While I think it is valuable to write about things I know a lot about, it actually became more interesting to write about things I knew less about and hear other perspectives. Ironically, once I took this new perspective, writing these blogs actually became a lot easier.

As I created more space in my blogs, I noticed more people able to share their experience or insight. This actually made the experience much more interesting to me. I was able to learn from other students and really create a virtual discussion.

I also learned how to have more fun with the blogs. I am so often in the academic writing frame of mind. It took me a while to tap into my own sense of fun and creativity. I started pulling stories from different news sources and thinking more critically about everything I heard or saw. When I started changing the way I thought about the blogs, I had a lot more fun!

Current Issues Learning Experience

I learned a lot from this class experience. Some of the most important things I am taking away from this experience are an increased understanding of some of the issues facing higher education today, a broader perspective of higher education crises, and the complexity that exists with all of these issues. I have also learned a lot from hearing the perspectives of other people in the class. There were representatives from so many programs, offices, and institutions. I believe I gained a much deeper understanding of higher education current issues from others in the class.

One of the things I really appreciated about this class was learning about how the current higher education issues fit into a historical perspective. I tend to get caught up in the fervor that the word crisis often creates. I can imagine worst-case scenarios with the best of them! I loved reading about the tradition of crisis within higher education. With apologies to previous generations of educators, it was comforting to know they suffered from financial crisis, groused about student entitlement, and struggled with how to integrate new technologies into education. It helps me put current issues into a broader perspective to understand how crises have been treated in the past.

I learned a lot from hearing different aspects of the issues many institutions are facing. My experience in education has primarily been at two institutions. Both were/are public institutions, one about three times larger than the other, but, generally, the experience is much the same. My perspective in regards to higher education issues can tend to be pretty narrow. It usually consists of my personal experiences and the experiences of the office/program in which I am currently employed. In this class, I learned about so many different issues being experienced by various institutions. Hearing the experiences of people in the room and issues their programs/institutions are facing was enlightening. I got such rich information about those issues, how they are impacting the institution, program, staff, and students. One specific example of this is the amount of information I learned about community colleges. I honestly had no idea what community colleges face and how much is being invested in their success. It was helpful to hear the experiences of those staff and how they are handling those issues. I learned about the challenge of gaining “Hispanic serving institution” status, perspectives of allowing guns on campus, trends in student behavior, and the list could go on for a while.

The amount of existing issues within higher education can be overwhelming to think about. At times, I felt that things seemed hopeless. There are so many issues; how can they be solved?

Matt something the last weekend (I think!) about the issues being so complex, there isn’t an easy answer. As soon as he said this, I thought, “Oh right, of course!” In counseling, this concept is so clear to me. Our clients have issues too complex to think we can solve them in a session, or even 20. However, when it comes to higher education, somehow it seems the problems should be more easily solvable. I get caught up in the “crisis” of the moment and immediately try to find a way to fix it, or make it go away. I realize this is an arrogant position to take; to think that somehow I have the answer to solve all of these problems that have been in existence for years. I think this reaction is about feeling uncomfortable with not being perfect (or making every student successful, or making programs financially successful, etc). If higher education is not perfect, let’s fix it!

However, I think the mere existence of problems can teach us a lot. And, isn’t that really what higher education is about? Many of these current issues force us to listen to other perspectives and work with people outside of our offices, which sounds like a good thing to me. A lot of these current issues make us stop and consider students we might not have otherwise considered. Honestly, I think that is a pretty good place to be.

In conclusion, I think the most important thing I learned was the value of considering these issues carefully and understanding their impact on our higher education system.