Update: Reliance on Adjuncts Drives Away Students

Earlier I blogged about a study by Allison Jaeger showing that when adjuncts teach introductory level courses, students are less likely to go on to take other courses in that field. The study had only been presented at a conference, but had been written up in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The full peer reviewed version of a related study by Jaeger is now available. This study only covers one institution, but it is quite large. The final sample included 14,494 students at a "a large research-extensive institution located in the
southeast" presumably NC State University, Raleigh, the authors' home institution.

They examined ten variables to see if they would predict an eleventh, student retention. The potential predicting variables were

1. ethnicity
2. gender
3. high school GPA
4. high school percentile
5. rank
6. SAT verbal score
7. SAT math score
8. total SAT score
9. percent exposure to graduate student instruction
10. percent exposure to part-time faculty instruction
11. percent exposure to full-time faculty instruction

Of those only HS GPA, gender, number of hours attempted and exposure to part time faculty had any predictive value. Interestingly, exposure to part time faculty did not have as strong a negative effect on retention as being female.

One of their citations seems worth following up on:

Hagedorn, L., Perrakis, A., & Maxwell, W. (2002). The negative commandments: Ten
ways community colleges hinder student success. (ED 466 262).

I don't know what (ED 466 262) means, but the article seems related to this

Florida Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, Fall, 2007 by Linda Serra Hagedorn, Athena I. Perrakis, William Maxwell

Israeli soldier shoots three children close range.

Israeli soldier shoots three children, ages 2, 4 and 7, close range. The girls were on the front steps of their house holding white flags, with their mother and grandmother, having been ordered to evacuate. The soldier who shot them was not under fire, and shot slowly and methodically from on top of a tank turret. The seven year old died instantly. The two year old died in minutes. The seven year old was carried a mile to the hospital by her father, past Israeli soldiers eating potato chips and chocolates.

Details of the story were confirmed by three witnesses to The World's correspondent. The IDF said it would investigate.

Updated CV and publication links

I've got some new projects--after like four years I heard back from Slayage about my Buffy paper, my review of Cylons in America should be posted soon, and I'm sending my CV to someone organizing a academic journal on philosophy and pop culture. So its about time I get some of my online professional stuff in order.

Here is the curriculum of my professional life (click to see whole thing):



Articles

Article title links to article, book or journal title links to book or journal

1. “The Theragāthā Model of the Aesthetic Appreciation of Natural Environments” accepted, subject to revision, at Environmental Values. 


2. “Moral Complexity in the Buffyverse” accepted, subject to revision, at Slayage: An International Online Journal of Buffy Studies.


3. “Means, Ends, and the Critique of Pure Superheroes” in Watchmen and Philosophy ed. by M. White, (Oxford: Blackwell Press, 2009)


4. “‘What a Strange Little Man’: Baltar the Tyrant?” in Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy ed. by J. Eberl (Oxford: Blackwell Press, 2008)


5. “The Other Value in the Debate over Genetically Modified Organisms” In Ethical Issues in the Life Sciences, edited by F. Adams. (Charlottesville, VA: Philosophy Documentation Center, 2007).


6. “Germ-Line Enhancement of Humans and Nonhumans” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal Special Issue on Justice and Genetic Enhancement 15:1 (March 2005).


7. “Three Problems for the Aesthetic Foundations of Environmental Ethics,” Philosophy and the Contemporary World 10:2 (Fall–Winter 2003).

Reviews for Metapsychology Online. http://mentalhelp.net/books

I review books a lot of places, but these are easily accessed online.

1. C.W. Marshall and Tiffany Potter (eds.) Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica, Jan 15, 2009.
   
2. William Irwin and Jorge Gracia (eds.) Philosophy and the Interpretation of Pop Culture, Mar 25th 2008
   
3. Maxwell J. Mehlman, Wondergenes: Genetic Enhancement and the Future of Society, July 25, 2006.
4. Peter Coates Nature: Western Attitudes Since Ancient Times Janurary 9, 2006
5. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, The Case of the Female Orgasm, August 2, 2005.
   
6. Robert Plomin et al. (eds.), Behavioral Genetics in the Postgenomic Era, March 26, 2004.
   
7. Gordon Graham, Genes: A Philosophical Inquiry, June 23, 2003.
   
8. Marc Bekoff, Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions, and Heart, February 7, 2003.
   
9. Susan Lufkin Krantz, Refuting Peter Singer’s Ethical Theory: The Importance of Human Dignity, July 15, 2002.