Reference Letters and TAs

I am finding more and more that students that I have never met are asking me for letters of reference. These are students who have attended my lectures, but have never had me as a seminar leader. These students have gone through their university careers instructed mostly by part-time contract employees. So they are in an awkward situation when it comes to requesting reference letters as the part-timers tend to be transient and anyway their lack of academic qualifications weakens the authoritativeness of their recommendation letters.

Undoubtedly the quality of education these students have received is inferior to that that students I taught in my early years at Brock received when classes were much smaller and direct interaction with tenured faculty was more the norm. This is a serious concern and a source of considerable regret to me.

The Principles of Psalm 72 Inform My Life's Work

A Psalm for Solomon.

1  Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king’s son.

2 He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment.

3 The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness.

4 He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.

5 They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations.

6 He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth.

7 In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.

Observation on the U.S. Election Result

President-elect Obama won 52.9% of the popular vote in the recent U.S. general election.  So close to half of the voters did not vote for Obama.

It makes me wonder about the electoral process in liberal democracies.  The results are often very close.  Why is this?  To my mind one would expect that in the course of a campaign one candidate and his policies would emerge is clearly superior to that of his rivals.  I would therefore expect result to be say more than 70% in favour of one over the others.  But it rarely seems to work that way.

It makes me question how really "democratic" our election system is.  But that being said it is clearly the best system compared to all others currently existing.

Better to Be a Lazy Lecturer

This coming term, I am teaching 2 large lecture courses both enrolled at capacity: "Canada and the Global Community" and "Rights Across Borders."

I have been assigned 6 teaching assistants to cover 16 seminar groups. But despite the 6 people to help me out, all the troublesome aspects of university teaching such as dealing with plagiarism, student complaints about marking, students who require special accommodations due to illness and that sort of thing falls on the professor and not on the TAs. Managing the TAs and other administrative aspects take up quite a lot of time too.

But some colleagues have only 10% of my course enrollments. In some cases this is due to their reputation as ill-prepared and uninspiring lecturers so students stay away from their courses in droves.

But actually the lousy lecturer has a lot less to do because their lousy courses attract fewer students and and require few if any TAs. So the lazy lecturer can put more time into writing articles for publication. That is why it is called "teaching load" and "research opportunities."

My conclusion: To succeed as an academic, teach badly.

Rafting at Letchworth State Park, NY

This park is located near Castile, New York about 160km from St. Catharines. The Letchworth Gorge formed by the Genessee River is know as the "Grand Canyon of the East." The park comprises 17,000 acres. We saw a lot of widllife, especially deer, but a lot of the time there were no other people about. The natural beauty of the place is outstanding. There are cabins for rent quite cheaply or slightly more expensive cottages or campsites. The rafting trip that took us about 3 hours costs $27.50 per person (http://www.adventure-calls.com/rafting.html). I recommend this place very highly: http://nysparks.state.ny.us/parks/info.asp?parkID=12

Photos of our visit there in August 2008 can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cburton001/sets/72157607061498549/