I have been in an administrative position for just over a year now. I started in January 2023. My position is unique. I am not a Dean or Provost. I direct a Center, but the role is unusual in that I am responsible for the physical building, the budget, the staff, the faculty, and the students. We have 20 staff members, 10 adjunct or visiting faculty, and about 200 students who live in the building at any given time. Our Center is akin to a very small campus. Because my position is unique, I have been hesitant to extrapolate from my experience and offer any general advice or reflections ..read more

This academic year, I am back on campus and back in the office, but our adaptation to remote life means I have more work-from-home days than I did pre-COVID. The semester is just getting started, but it looks like I will have at least 3 days a week where I can work from home. I love working from home, at least part-time. But, I also find that I can spend the entire day in front of my screen all day without feeling like I have gotten very much done. Somehow the whole day goes by, and I still haven’t gone for a walk, cleaned my kitchen, or responded to all the emails. To address this issue, I de ..read more

I recently challenged authors on Twitter to state the core argument of their non-fiction book in a tweet. It’s harder than it sounds to state your argument clearly and succinctly. It’s also a necessary step in the manuscript development process.  If you are writing a nonfiction book and can’t articulate the argument in a tweet, don’t worry. I have written several books, and usually have no idea what the argument is until I have drafted most of the chapters. If you aren’t there yet, keep writing and thinking.  You need an Argument  So, what is an argument? An argument is not a ..read more

This is a guest post by Maria D. Duenas, PhD student at the University of California, Merced, and a long-time Teaching Assistant and Teaching Fellow in Sociology. Graduate students are often tasked with leading discussion sections, yet graduate departments sometimes do not provide adequate training on how to teach effectively.  During the first year in my Ph.D. program, I remember my cohort and I feeling unsure about what we needed to do in a discussion section since, for many of us, our undergraduate institutions did not offer discussion sections. Even if you have experience being a st ..read more

I just finished writing a script for a TEDx talk and I am certain I have never before put in so many hours into such a short piece.  I chose to write a script instead of speaking from an outline. The talk needed to be 12 minutes or less and the best way to ensure that would happen was to write a script. As an academic, writing a TEDx script is like exercising a whole new muscle. I write all the time but had never done this particular form of writing. Learning how to do this well took a lot of time and feedback. Thus, I did something I have never done before: I got a speaking coach who r ..read more

Exciting news: My TEDx talk "How to Kill a Neighborhood and Make a Profit" will be released on January 23, 2021!  I have long thought about doing a TED or a TEDx talk. (TEDx events are independently organized TED events.) Thus, when I heard of a local opportunity, I applied immediately. That was in February 2020. As you can imagine, that event was canceled due to the pandemic.  Once I applied, however, I started giving some serious thought to what I would say in a TEDx talk. To apply, I had to tell the organizers what I would say, so I had already come up with a throughline: Disinv ..read more

We are facing unprecedented times. The summer is now upon us and it will be unlike any summer we have ever experienced. This will be the first summer in over two decades that I will stay put. When I moved to Merced, I knew the summers were very long and very hot. But, I also thought that I would be able to leave for at least a month each summer to escape the heat. Clearly, that won’t be happening this summer. I am particularly disappointed about having to postpone our writing retreat which was going to be on a private island in Belize, but, this is our new reality and I have accepted that ..read more

When preparing an online class, videos may be the first thing to come to mind. And, videos can be a great idea. However, you certainly do not want to transform your 50-minute lecture into a 50-minute video. Instead, think carefully about your learning goals for each class session. And, think about which portions of your lecture class are best suited for video format. You can teach your learning goals that don’t require videos through lecture notes, assigned readings, discussion boards, podcasts, and online activities. (You can check out my LMS site for some examples.) Once you’ve settled on ..read more

It seems as if it should be straightforward – if you have the whole day to work at home, you should be super productive. Just work all day, long, right? If you are able to consistently have days where you sit in front of your computer and write for hours on end, then kudos to you. I, on the other hand, find that if I am not mindful about how I spend my time, a day that is free of appointments can end up being a frustrating, unproductive day. I love my home office! My very best writing days are the ones I have at my annual writing retreat, where I am in a beautiful location, surrounded by ama ..read more

You likely have heard this advice before. You may have even followed it for some time. You may have even read the book: Never Check Email in the Morning. But, if you’re anything like me, you tried avoiding email in the morning, and it worked for a while before you slipped back into your old habits. We tell ourselves all kinds of stories for why we have to check email in the morning. Here are a few things I tell myself: It’s efficient to check and delete emails from my phone while drinking my morning coffee. It’s important to know what’s coming for the day. There may be something urgent I n ..read more