Books by "Daniel F. Chambliss"
3 books found
How colleges can foster growth mindsets among students—and why this approach matters. We live in an era of escalating, tech-fueled change. Our jobs and the skills we need to work and thrive are constantly evolving, and those who can't keep up risk falling behind. That's where college comes in. In Mindset Matters, Daniel R. Porterfield advances a powerful new argument about the value of residential undergraduate education and its role in developing growth mindsets among students. The growth mindset, according to Porterfield, is the belief that we can enhance our core qualities or talents through our efforts, strategies, and education, and with assistance from others. People with growth mindsets have faith in self-improvement. They tend to be goal oriented and optimistic, confident that they can master new challenges because they've done so in the past. Feedback is their friend, errors their opportunities to begin again. For students like this, college is a multiyear process of self-creation and self-emergence, a becoming that unfolds because they are applying themselves in a place rich with stimulating people, happenings, resources, and ideas. America's colleges and universities help students build the skills and self-confidence they need for lifelong discovery, creativity, mentorship, teamwork, and striving. These five mindsets, the book argues, are critical for thriving in disruptive times, and students who develop them will reap the rewards long after they graduate. To show how college activates these mindsets and why it matters, Porterfield shares the personal stories of thirty recent graduates—many the first in their families to attend college. Their growth was both self-powered and supported by involved faculty, engaged peers, and opportunity-rich campuses. Porterfield also outlines how colleges and universities can do more to foster cultures of mentoring and personalized learning that help students become leaders of their own learning.
Why the Gig Academy is the dominant organizational form within the higher education economy—and its troubling implications for faculty, students, and the future of college education. Over the past two decades, higher education employment has undergone a radical transformation with faculty becoming contingent, staff being outsourced, and postdocs and graduate students becoming a larger share of the workforce. For example, the faculty has shifted from one composed mostly of tenure-track, full-time employees to one made up of contingent, part-time teachers. Non-tenure-track instructors now make up 70 percent of college faculty. Their pay for teaching eight courses averages $22,400 a year—less than the annual salary of most fast-food workers. In The Gig Academy, Adrianna Kezar, Tom DePaola, and Daniel T. Scott assess the impact of this disturbing workforce development. Providing an overarching framework that takes the concept of the gig economy and applies it to the university workforce, this book scrutinizes labor restructuring across both academic and nonacademic spheres. By synthesizing these employment trends, the book reveals the magnitude of the problem for individual workers across all institutional types and job categories while illustrating the damaging effects of these changes on student outcomes, campus community, and institutional effectiveness. A pointed critique of contemporary neoliberalism, the book also includes an analysis of the growing divide between employees and administrators. The authors conclude by examining the strengthening state of unionization among university workers. Advocating a collectivist, action-oriented vision for reversing the tide of exploitation, Kezar, DePaola, and Scott urge readers to use the book as a tool to interrogate the state of working relations on their own campuses and fight for a system that is run democratically for the benefit of all. Ultimately, The Gig Academy is a call to arms, one that encourages non-tenure-track faculty, staff, postdocs, graduate students, and administrative and tenure-track allies to unite in a common struggle against the neoliberal Gig Academy.
Constrained by shrinking budgets, can colleges do more to improve the quality of education? And can students get more out of college without paying higher tuition? Daniel Chambliss and Christopher Takacs conclude that limited resources need not diminish the undergraduate experience. How College Works reveals the decisive role that personal relationships play in determining a student's success, and puts forward a set of small, inexpensive interventions that yield substantial improvements in educational outcomes. At a liberal arts college in New York, the authors followed nearly one hundred students over eight years. The curricular and technological innovations beloved by administrators mattered much less than did professors and peers, especially early on. At every turning point in undergraduate lives, it was the people, not the programs, that proved critical. Great teachers were more important than the topics studied, and just two or three good friendships made a significant difference academically as well as socially. For most students, college works best when it provides the daily motivation to learn, not just access to information. Improving higher education means focusing on the quality of relationships with mentors and classmates, for when students form the right bonds, they make the most of their education.