Will Schlickenmaier

Anyone here tried NotebookLM for lit reviews for articles?

Looking to put together a roundtable on ethics and difficult conversations in political science education at APSA's Teaching and Learning conference in February - anyone interested in participating? #polisky #TeachLearnSky

That feeling when Mitch McConnell announces his retirement the day before your lecture on Congress and US foreign policy.

That feeling when you're on deadline so you choose to reorganize all the books in your office.

Georgetown’s Elite Consulting Clubs Come Down to Earth Wait, now ANYONE can join?

I preach on the dangers of this in every class I take - not the inclusive approach now forced on these clubs, but on the desire of too many Georgetown students to sell their souls for management consulting gigs.

www.washingtonian.com/2024/02/13/g...

Happy pitchers and catchers report! (and other holidays too ✝️💘)

Calling scholars of norm entrepreneurship... sounds like a pretty clear case study in our own world.

Super excited for it!

Parents freak out about this because they want their kids to succeed. You have to show a success pathway that works here. Indeed, in that vein, it would be fascinating to explore charter schools as a space for working through this given both their freedom and relative success rates.

Last point - I've gone on too long - you need a coalition of credible colleges who would take alternatively graded students, and a coalition of employers - serious, good paying employers - who would take alternatively graded higher ed alums.

Someone like @joshbrake.com who's both from an Evangelical Christian tradition and also thinks about these things seriously I think would be a real value add; I'd look for partners like that so that this doesn't come across like just a group of hippies. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Finally I think it would be profoundly powerful to have some political and cultural diversity in the group looking at this. Too often, those who consider alternative grading as seen as "too progressive," and Evergreen State activates those profiles from years back on the Intellectual Dark Web

Every time I engage on alternative grading, the answer is, "it isn't rigorous. It isn't scientific." Starting from a base that grades themselves are NO MORE RIGOROUS OR SCIENTIFIC is a fundamental need to level the playing field and shift the "Overton Window" on the conversation.

Then you need a pathway to overcome the "doubters and haters" - the ones who would say that grades are objective, that you have to have them for admissions, jobs, etc., and that without grades, everything is just "touchy feely."

I also think that what you need at the outset is not goodness about alternative grading structures, but a more powerful case for why the current grading construct is both just that, a social construct, and is actively detrimental to learning outcomes.

Count me in! I've been looking at this both in higher ed and elementary schools, and I think those of us who are potential practitioners need support to make the case.

Does anyone out there in polisky have a good glossary for terms people should know if they're studying IR? Asking on behalf of a student.

Great study, as I was talking about the failures of what should appropriately be Congressional dominance in my US foreign policy class a couple weeks ago and will return to it again soon www.aei.org/research-pro...

How do polisky professors think about talking about DEIA questions when it comes to policy models/theories/etc.? Particularly in classrooms that may be politically divided. sotlsky

Education Dept. Won’t Send Completed FAFSAs to Colleges Until ‘First Half of March’ A financial-aid cycle like none before is about to become even more complicated. Many colleges will have to scramble to issue aid offers in time for applicants to respond by the May 1 deadline.

www.chronicle.com/article/educ...

Colleges won't receive student FAFSA information until March Colleges will not receive applicants’ federal aid information until March. They may be forced to push back commitment deadlines, and the delay could discourage low-income students from enrolling.

www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

I just read about the FAFSA delays in @insidehighered.bsky.social and @chronicle.com this AM. Thinking about this in the context of how (elite) universities are gatekeepers into the IR/foreign policy world and the need for real DEI at earlier ages, this is just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

@gavinwilde.bsky.social

This is the way.

We all have to take that up. That we’re trying — that we’re trying. That’s all we can say.”
She thought for a few seconds quietly, and then spoke again. “I think that’s what community is — coming together and saying: ‘I’m vulnerable, just like you are. I’m trying. I’m not going to leave you alone.’”

And this feels like it captures the right way to engage:

"I think all of us have to be able to say to each other, and even to the people who are suffering: ‘This is difficult. This is difficult for me. I feel you. I’ll try to help but know that I may not be perfect...’

...Almost one in four Americans in college considered dropping out in the last year because of their mental health. Adjusting pedagogy to account for this scale of illness and, in some cases, disability, is the new frontier of postsecondary education.

...More than half of American college students now report depression, anxiety or seriously considering suicide. This is a problem that reaches across geography, race, class, identity, institutional resources or prestige and academic ability...

Here's the takeaway quote:

It is clear by now that the mental-health crisis has changed academia forever: its structures, its culture and the function it is expected to perform in American society....

The Unthinkable Mental Health Crisis That Shook a New England College Over six terrible months, professors and administrators at Worcester Polytechnic Institute took on the unofficial role of counselors during a spate of campus suicides.

Too many of us faculty know what this kind of loss is like. And how we're not equipped to help our students appropriately cope, much less cope ourselves.

www.nytimes.com/2024/01/22/m...