Tag: easier

  • Texas just made it easier for students to report DEI, faculty senate violations

    Texas just made it easier for students to report DEI, faculty senate violations

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    Dive Brief:

    • Texas officials are encouraging college students, employees and the public to report violations of the state’s ban on faculty senates and diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education.
    • The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s newly created Office of the Ombudsman launched the Students First portal — separate from its existing student complaint portal — to give “the public easy access to file complaints and provide feedback” over colleges’ alleged legal violations.
    • Through Students First, college students and employees can submit formal complaints and are not required to have previously filed a complaint with the college. Members of the public can submit informal feedback.

    Dive Insight:

    The Students First portal focuses on violations of two significant Texas laws — 2023’s SB 17 and 2025′ SB 37.

    SB 17 prohibited colleges from having diversity offices or hiring employees to do DEI-focused work. It also banned mandatory DEI training for employees and students.

    While SB 17 functionally outlawed DEI at public colleges — making Texas one of the first to enact legislation growing increasingly popular in conservative states — SB 37 focused primarily on academic governance.

    The law stripped faculty senates of much of their authority and autonomy and shifted that power to political appointees. SB 37 also established the THECB’s ombudsman office. Earlier this month, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott appointed Brandon Simmons, the chair of the Texas Southern University Board of Regents, to lead the office.

    Republican state Sen. Brandon Creighton, author of SB 37, said in April that the bill is meant to affirm authority over public colleges lies with regents, not faculty. In Texas, regents are appointed by the governor.

    Prior to its passage, higher education advocates and faculty groups — including the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors and the Texas American Federation of Teachers — strongly opposed SB 37 and raised concerns over the erosion of academic freedom and increased political influence on college campuses.

    Creighton, who also wrote SB 17, resigned from the Legislature in October after being named the chancellor of the Texas Tech University System.

    In September, Abbott said Texas is “targeting professors who are more focused on pushing leftist ideologies rather than preparing students to lead our nation.” The following month, Texas policymakers launched new select committees in the state House and Senate and tasked them with reporting on “bias, discourse, and freedom of speech” on college campuses.

    If the ombudsman office decides to investigate a formal complaint, the affected college will be notified within five days. From there, the college has 175 days to respond to the complaint — barring an office-granted extension — and 30 days to respond to any written requests for additional information.

    If the college is found to be out of compliance, it has 180 days to resolve the issues to the ombudsman office’s satisfaction.

    The ombudsman office will “submit to the Ombudsman and State Auditor a report on the noncompliance that includes the recommendations” if it determines the college “has not resolved issues and recommendations identified in the report,” according to the Students First portal.

    Simmons said Friday that he aims to foster a “collaborative, productive partnership with our institutional leaders and students” through the new “user-friendly website and engagement on campuses across Texas.”

    Source link

  • Make Faculty Writing Support Easier to Find (opinion)

    Make Faculty Writing Support Easier to Find (opinion)

    Faculty writing has never been more crucial. In an era of heightened competition for grants, promotion pressures and demands for public engagement, writing is the vehicle through which faculty share their expertise, secure funding and advance their careers. Research shows that successful academic writers aren’t necessarily better writers—they’re better-supported writers. They have systems, communities and resources that support their productivity and help sustain engagement with writing as their needs change across their roles, responsibilities and careers.

    Faculty writers are seeking support for their writing. Where do they go when they need it? Many are unsure.

    Support for faculty writing on campus is often decentralized or may vary from year to year, making it difficult to find or accessible only to those with the advantage of an informed mentor. Support for faculty writing might be offered in any number of campus locations: centers for teaching and learning, provosts’ offices, offices for faculty advancement, writing centers or academic support centers, research centers for grant writing, graduate student support centers, or individual departments. Writing support may be outsourced through institutional memberships to organizations such as the NCFDD or the Textbook and Academic Authors Association, which offers webinars, writing programs and templates for downloading.

    Department chairs and campus administrators may want to support faculty writers but aren’t sure where to begin. Or if there is a problem, it’s considered an individual faculty problem and not one that calls for a campus response.

    Perhaps there’s an underlying assumption that faculty should already know how to write and shouldn’t need support to meet basic job expectations, like publishing a certain number of articles before tenure. Establishing a faculty writing space or central resource hub might be seen as suggesting they need remedial help—much like the stigma writing centers face as places where “bad” students are sent.

    Yet today’s faculty are expected to write across more genres than ever before: grant proposals, peer-reviewed articles, public-facing pieces, social media content and policy briefs. Each involves different skills and audiences. The faculty member who can craft a compelling journal article may struggle with a foundation proposal or an op-ed. Writing support isn’t remedial—it’s strategic professional development.

    The current moment also presents unique challenges. Post-pandemic isolation has disrupted the informal networks that previously supported faculty writing. Budget constraints mean fewer resources for individual faculty development, making shared writing support more essential. New faculty arrive on campus without the professional development resources or mentor networks that previous generations took for granted, while midcareer faculty face mounting pressure to produce more with less support.

    We can do better in our support of faculty writers. If you want to help, here are ways to do better, or to get started.

    • Gather resources. Even though writing support might be available, it may not be widely known, or up-to-date, and it may be dispersed across many different units or offices on campus. Create a centralized web page gathering information for all campus resources for faculty writing. The entity that hosts the site will be different for each campus. For some, it’s the provost’s office. For others, it’s a writing or teaching center. List the resources—where faculty can go for support—and help faculty navigate the resources by providing descriptions (not just links), categories (i.e., “find a writing group”) and contact information. Collaborate with faculty to curate a list of recommended books, podcasts and writing spaces they have found helpful.
    • Make faculty writing visible. What if faculty writing support were as central to campus as student writing support? A teaching center could include a workshop on writing about teaching; the provost’s office or campus research center could offer workshops on developing institutional review board protocols. Consider reserving dedicated spaces for faculty to gather and write (such as a faculty writing room) or schedule specific writing times/days in a university writing center or campus coffee shop. Give them a name (Writing Wednesdays, Motivating Mondays). Writers can plan for these meet-ups and write in the company of others, in public rather than isolated in individual offices.
    • Organize a virtual workshop watch session and follow-up discussions. Gather faculty for a workshop watch session. After the workshop, help participants continue to discuss what they learned and how they’ll apply it through group check-ins or follow-up meetings. Try NCFDD’s core curriculum webinar “Every Semester Needs a Plan,” The Professor Is In’s “Art of Productivity,” or join a London Writers’ Salon Writers’ Hour, and talk about everyone’s work after the writing session.
    • Identify a faculty cohort to support for a year. Supporting all faculty writers with diluted support is often ineffective. Instead, focus on associate professors one year, new faculty writers the next and clinical faculty writers the next. Help them connect and be resources for each other throughout the year through writing retreats and writing groups. Build a campus writing community one cohort at a time.
    • Collaborate with campus partners. Combine campus resources to support writers. Could the library offer a meeting space? Two departments co-convene a writing group? Campus units could take turns hosting a daylong writing space once a month, helping writers learn about different spaces and writers across campus.
    • Start a writing support library. This can be virtual or in a central location on campus. Partner with the library to keep track of which books are in circulation or in high demand. Consider developing a workshop or writing group around in-demand books.
    • Ask faculty what they need and listen and respond. If we don’t ask faculty what they need, we won’t know. What some faculty need now may be different than what they needed last fall.
    • Support connectors. Every campus has them—the person or department that is a go-to for troubleshooting faculty questions and connecting them to writing resources. Amplify their reach, and support the faculty relationships and networks they’ve already established. Support the person or people who will curate that library, update the resource list, collaborate with campus partners and serve as a faculty writer point of contact.

    What’s next? Start by mapping what already exists on your campus. Create one central hub where faculty can find all writing-related resources. Make faculty writing as visible and supported as student writing. It’s OK to start small: Try one of these strategies we’ve shared and notice what happens. And remember—supporting faculty writers isn’t about fixing deficiencies. It’s about recognizing that writing is central to faculty success and deserves the same institutional attention we give to other essential job functions. Faculty are an invaluable resource in our campus ecosystems. Let’s lower the barrier to them finding the support they need to write well. When they thrive, so do our institutions.

    Jennifer Ahern-Dodson is an associate professor of the practice in writing studies at Duke University, where she directs the Faculty Write Program.

    Christine Tulley is a professor of English at the University of Findlay and president of Defend, Publish & Lead, a faculty development organization.

    Source link

  • Education Department unveils guidance to make switching accreditors easier

    Education Department unveils guidance to make switching accreditors easier

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    The U.S. Department of Education unveiled guidance Thursday intended to make it easier for colleges to change accreditors and lifted a pause on its review of applications for new accrediting agencies. 

    The guidance comes a week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to reshape the accreditation system and make it easier for new agencies to come onto the scene. 

    Trump’s order also took aim at accreditor criteria related to diversity, equity and inclusion and directed U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to ensure colleges prioritize “intellectual diversity” among their faculty — a mandate that raised concerns about academic freedom among some higher education experts. 

    “President Trump’s Executive Order and our actions today will ensure this Department no longer stands as a gatekeeper to block aspiring innovators from becoming new accreditors nor will this Department unnecessarily micromanage an institution’s choice of accreditor,” McMahon said in a Thursday statement. 

    The Education Department also revoked guidance issued in 2022 that outlined a more rigorous review process for colleges to switch accreditors. The Biden-era guidance said the department would review whether a college wanted to change accreditors to lessen oversight and if moving to a new agency would strengthen its institutional quality, among other factors. 

    At the time, the Biden administration said the guidance sought to ensure colleges weren’t attempting to evade oversight from their current accreditor by switching to a new one. 

    The Trump administration’s new guidance, however, says the agency will reestablish “a simple process that will remove unnecessary requirements and barriers to institutional innovation.” Under the policy, colleges must submit a two-page form to serve as documentation of their prior accreditation, as well as “materials demonstrating reasonable cause” for changing or adding an accreditor. 

    The form includes a checklist of reasons institutions may seek to switch accreditors, along with a section requiring colleges to certify that they have not had their accreditation withdrawn or faced accreditor sanctions in the past two years. Colleges must also attach their most recent letter renewing their accreditation. 

    Wesley Whistle, project director for student success and affordability at New America, a left-leaning think tank, criticized the new process, arguing that making it easier to switch accreditors could lead institutions to move to agencies with less rigorous standards. 

    “This new guidance says all they have to do is fill out this checklist and provide them [with] their most recent letter of reaffirmation,” Whistle said. “That letter could be almost a decade old.”

    Moreover, that letter wouldn’t indicate if a college is currently under investigation by its accreditor, Whistle said. 

    “Just because an institution may not be on probation today, they could still be under investigation,” Whistle added. 

    The Education Department also said it will have 30 days to approve an application to switch accreditors. If not, the change will be automatically granted unless a college failed to meet the eligibility requirements. 

    Whistle described the policy as a “30-day rubber stamp.” 

    “It’s irresponsible,” Whistle said. “There’s nearly 6,000 colleges and universities that are eligible for Title IV aid, so conducting even a modest review takes time and expertise.”

    The Trump administration’s new guidance also permits colleges to switch to new accreditors if required by state law. Other recognized reasons include seeking an accreditor that better aligns with a college’s religious mission, changing the types of academic programs offered or objecting to current accreditation standards, including DEI requirements. 

    Source link