21 February 2011

automated grading!

correlates highly with SAT scores!

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/02/21/debate_over_reliability_of_automated_essay_grading

18 February 2011

dissertation assistantships

congratulations to the winners

grad conference at Emory


Philosophy as a Way of Life – 2011 Graduate Philosophy Conference at
Emory

Keynote speaker: John Cooper, Princeton University

April 8-9, 2011 - Atlanta, GA
info after the break

16 February 2011

acronyms

from e-mail:

The classrooms that are listed have been officially assigned by the Course Building & Academic Space Management Office (CBASM), formerly known as the Registrar’s Office

yes, that's "CBASM."  I believe the adjective form is "CBASMic".

14 February 2011

lew speaks

February 16, 2011 
IASH Fellows’ Speaker Series: On the Foundations of Platonic Theology.  Recent accounts of Plato's theology have argued that Plato's Laws presents us with a version of the cosmological argument for the existence of god. My account radically challenges this interpretation by examining how Plato treats empirical evidence for the existence of god. Against recent treads in the scholarship, presenter Lewis Trelawny-Cassity shows how an adequate account of Plato's theology needs to begin from his analysis of the orientation that human beings take towards the world when they act as political and ethical agents.  Lewis Trelawny-Cassity is an IASH Graduate Student Fellow in the Philosophy Department at Binghamton University.  10:00 am, IASH Conference Room (LN 1106)

engaging africa

Study Abroad Information Meetings: "Engaging Africa" There will be an information meeting this Weds, February 16, at noon in Fine Arts Room 166 (FA 166), and on Thursday, February 17 at 7 p.m. in FA 170 for the 2011 Study Tour "Engaging Africa: Ethnographic Study In Ghana".  The Faculty Director, Professor James Burns, will discuss the program for summer 2011 and show slides from previous trips.  This program is suitable for any major, and for both undergraduates and graduates.  The 2 ½-week trip portion of the program will take place from July 27 to August 15.  Come learn how you can:

·        Spend three weeks immersed in the history and culture of Ghana

·        Experience the music, dance, arts, language, religion and cuisine of this beautiful West African nation while exploring the capitol city of Accra and surrounding areas

·        Study the history of the slave trade and take field trips to coastal slave castles and palaces, nearby cities, villages and nature preserves

·        Attend dance and drumming performances and other cultural programs and ceremonies

·        Participate in research project on one aspect of Ghanaian society or culture

·        Program will be housed at the University of Ghana.  Credit will be cross-listed in several academic departments in the humanities and social sciences at Binghamton

·        Some scholarship money available.

For more information contact The Office of International Programs, ext. 7-2336
Or Professor James Burns, Department of Music
Email: jburns@binghamton.edu; ext. 7-2595

IASH Dissertation Fellowships

The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) is recruiting applicants for its fellowships.

IASH has two Dissertation Fellowships  which it may divide into one semester DFs, each providing $7,250 + 1 tuition credit + a small research allowance. Students applying for them have to be ABD by 12 May, 2011 and currently in their fourth or fourth year equivalence (if they were accepted with an MA). 

IASH is also able to offer several one semester or one year long unstipended Graduate Student Fellowships. These do provide a small research allowance. Students applying for these should also be ABD by 12 May 2011 and currently in their fourth or fourth year equivalence (if accepted with an MA). In addition, they should have a form of support (Departmental DF, a non-residential Dissertation fellowship from another source, and the like) for the 2011-2012 semester they apply for.

Applications are due on 06 April 2011. Interested students should be referred to the IASH site at http://www2.binghamton.edu/iash/fellowships/ where they can find an application. they should be encouraged to talk with Ami Bar-On, if they need a clarification.

grad students suck

and needy college students, too.  From the Obama budget proposal:

Pell grants for needy college students would be eliminated for summer classes, and federal loans to graduate students would start accruing interest immediately, rather than when the students graduate, though they would not have to begin paying them off until graduation. Those changes are intended to help save $100 billion over 10 years to offset the costs of maintaining Pell grants for 9 million students, according to administration officials.      

Someone needs to pay for Pell grants, so it has to be needy college students and graduate students.  (The $544 billion for 2 years of Bush tax cut extension or the $300 billion/3yr AMT fix -- that's different money.)

via NYT

update: of course the Republican proposal is worse: Chronicle

09 February 2011

tragedy summer school

The Tilburg Philosophy Summer School
The Tragic and Its Limits
A Seminar with Simon Critchley | July 12-21, 2011

for more information, please visit:
http://www.tilburgphilosophysummerschool.com/

Is the tragic an adequate category for thinking about the nature of
contemporary conflicts, and their cycles of revenge, violence and
claims to justice and state legitimacy? Was 9/11 a tragedy? Is the
Israel/Palestine conflict tragic? Iraq? Afghanistan? The list goes on.

What is the nature of the tragic and what is questionable in its
constant invocation in the contemporary world? What is the
availability of the tragic for us, as an aesthetic genre, a mode of
experience and a critique of the present? Are we perhaps approaching
the limits of the tragic?



SPEL workshop tomorrow

SPEL workshop on building your teaching dossier is tomorrow (Thu).

usual time, usual place

05 February 2011

01 February 2011

deadlines

Dissertation Assistantship applications are due in, uh, about 35 minutes.

PIKSI nomination apps are due on Friday, I think.