If you scroll back far enough, you can still find my first post here at TonyFerrar.com (here’s a link if you’d rather have a shortcut). In August, 2016 my life was quite a bit different than it is today. I enjoyed those days, the start […]
Rigorously Empathetic
“As your mentor it’s my job to put my arm around your shoulders, and kick you in the tail.” When you work at a college with a 30% 5-year graduation rate it can be hard to decide where to start improving. At my institution, a […]
Getting Ready
As summer comes to an end I once again find myself in “prep week” – that short but essential time to get everything in place so that an amazing semester is inevitable. It’s one of my favorite weeks of the year because nothing is set […]
Things Successful Students Do
We’re whole people. You may have heard the term “work-life balance” before. Personally, I don’t like the use of the term “balance” here because it implies that work and the rest of our lives are somehow opposed to each other. Instead, let’s focus on nourishing […]
Midterm Rehab
Surviving. That’s the number one word students (and faculty) use to describe themselves in the middle of the semester. Time, Money, and Career are three areas of life that can combine to cause so much stress! I recently gave a workshop to share quick, simple […]
In Defense of Deeper Thoughts
As we work to make higher education equitable and inclusive, we face a fundamental challenge: scaling our offerings to a larger student body without scaling the faculty in the same proportion. A key aspect of access is cost, and bringing additional faculty into the mix […]
The Importance of (Every/No)thing
“Is this on the exam?” “Sort of.” I’d just shown my students how to use trigonometric substitution to simplify the process of integrating functions involving radicals. If esoteric integration techniques aren’t your thing, what you need to know is that there are many of them. […]
Multiply Yourself
As I wrapped up my undergraduate degree, I decided to stick around for a masters. Why? I met someone, and she wouldn’t be graduating for a couple more years. Get a masters, graduate at the same time, happily ever after. The plan changed, but the […]
Integrity as a Learning Objective
It’s that time of year, writing course syllabi and deciding on the policies that we’ll be living with for the next 15 weeks! One component that always causes me to stop and think is the “Academic Integrity” section of my syllabus. Cheating is more common […]
Playing the Game
There are different types of games. The simplest ones are what we call zero-sum games. In order for one player to score a point, the other players lose the opportunity to score. I’m reminded of a game I used to play as a child called […]
