College and University Books

Book Review: Designing & Assessing Courses & Curricula by Ann Tomey

This book provides a model for designing, implementing, and evaluating courses and curricula from which the book has been organized. The first two chapters are the introduction. Chapters three through twelve describe the process, present research about teaching and learning, and identify excellent resources. Chapters three through five discuss deciding to begin, getting the process going, and the relationship of courses and curriculum. Chapters six and seven use case studies to illustrate the design process, ask appropriate questions, identify what data needs to be collected, and explore options. Chapters nine to twelve focuses on the course design, identification of instructional goals, development of assessment to measure accomplishment of the goals, decisions of how the course will be taught and usage of technology. Chapters thirteen and fourteen deal with communications between the teacher and the student and diversity. Chapter fifteen is about course and curriculum evaluation. Chapter sixteen outlines the characteristics of successful innovation. This 81/2 by 11inch book has large print, bolded divisions, bulleted and numbered lists, lots of diagrams and figures, and summaries at the end of most chapters. Resources, references, name and subject indexes are at the end of the book. This is a practical handbook for faculty and administrators.

I bought this book at a time when I felt that course design needed more structure than we traditionally gave it. I bought other related titles at the same time. However, this is the book that I found myself returning to each time I had to deal with some aspect of course design or evaluation. I have now moved on to working on overall quality of delivery in our college. Once again I found this book helped me out. It is what it claims to be - a practical guide to course design and evaluation.

The Knowledge College Plan is the perfect college guide to help you plan ahead. Having gone through the process before, this book makes it easier to understand the right steps to get the best out of a student's education. I look forward to sharing this guide with other parents and schools, churches and other organizations in my city. This is awesome!

This book is great because it tracks a child's grades from 9th through 12 grade. It then allows the student to prospect their top five college choices. In the end, you can rate what school is best for them based on cost, city size, admission requirements, etc. It's nice to all of this information in one place.

"The Dying of the Light" by Fr. James Tunstead Burtchaell. This is an enormous book, some 868 pages long. Fr. Burtchaell deals with the secularization of the Christian colleges, which, as with Harvard and Yale, changed from a church-started, church-supported institution into secular, non-sectarian schools. His method is to pick one, two or three institutions in the particular denomination and deal with the history of the changes from a religious school into a secular institution. Fr. Burtchaell has a chapter for the Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics and Evangelicals. The author's irony borders on humor once in awhile, as when he wonders why the Presbyterians found it so difficult to report the number of attending Presbyterians to church boards, but now find it so easy to report to the Federal government the racial make-up of the student body, down to the last Samoan. In the preface, Fr. Burtchaell notes that the reader will probably go directly to the section dealing with his/her religious affiliation. I did, but mainly because I was working on an MA thesis on Catholic colleges in the United States. I would recommend this encyclopaedia work to any one truly interested in the recent wave of secularization of church-related colleges in the US. Many details and stories from around the nation make this an interesting micro-history....

Antidisestablishmentarianism in contemporary Catholic religious-community sponsored colleges might well be a subliminal message in Fr. James Burtchaell's incisive disection of the historical disengagement of colleges and universities from their Christian Churhes. The biting humor and irony in Burtchaell's style counterpoints the euphemistic rationale vaunting past and current disengagement from the specific founding church's credo and etholgy. The present widespread disengagement by many Catholic colleges and uni-versities is the legacy of the historic, passive, submission of church related schools beneath whelming financial and enrollment pressures.

The Vatican might well use "The Dying of the Light" as its primer to argue the case for rescuing Catholic institutions from modern-day disengagement by means of episcopal appropriation.

In his asessment of the disengagement of seven-teen representative colleges and univer-sities, the author delved deeply into their ar-chival and historical references and posits a commonality of purpose, basically driven by economic necessity.

Is "greed" the dysphoric, but correct, syn-onym for what Burtchaell records? Is "naivete" an, assuaging, palliative for moral incom-petence? Is "hierarchic megalomania" being masked by ecclesiastical dogmatism? The answers to these questions are interpretable from Burtchaell's data. The answers are not easy. The information is complex, but the pattern is quite simple, money requires compromise. The issue becomes: is the loss worth the cost? Is the price of freedom too high? Is skewed pedantry inevitable with church involvement in education? Can academic excellence be acheived without academic freedom?

Issues seem to have been ignored during the evolution of the disengagement by the churches. Questions were left unasked, because the answers were too painful. The basic rationale, seems to have been that financial support became increas-ingly limited as ecclesiastical strictures re-duced enrollments.

The ultimate emergent question becomes, can there be intellectual probity in a religious insti-tution which limits the parameters of discussion and exploration according to a predetermined schema of dogma and morals?

Burtchaell's comprehensive, paradigmatic, exposition of the disengagement process by religious schools bodes ill for any continuance of a moral or spiritual underpinning for edu-cation in our contemporary society. An argument, inferable from "The Dying of the Light", is that State and Federal governments are restricting freedom of religion and ideas and relegating morality and knowledge to a moral and intellectual relativism under the guise of monetary benignity towards education.

Wm.G.Condon, csc e-mail Billcondon@AOL.com

This book easily earns the right to be among the foremost textbooks on the Viking Age. A comprehensive study that covers the various levels of Norse society from thralls to jarls, karls and kings. Northern laws are particulary covered well and the varied crafts at which the Northmen excelled: smithcraft, trade, battle, ship building and sailing. There are also very good sections on Viking art and verse. A stand-by book for any serious Norse scholar.

"The Viking Achievement" is an outstanding introduction to the culture and history of Viking Age Scandinavia. It includes information on laws, society, families, warfare, armor and weapons, archaeology, ships and trade, art, literature and poetry, religion and mythology. The information is carefully based on the scholarship provided by scientific archaeological research and modern literary analysis.

I got the book quick and it was in great condition, and for about 1/8 the price of a new one.

I needed this book for a summer course I'm taking. I saved $94 off the bookstore price.

This book is a great read. The format is set up in such a way that you can pick it up and read for 2 minutes or 2 hours. It plays no favorites, just gives brief recaps of the seasons each team were having, then the recap of the Egg Bowl. It is full of historical facts, good pictures, and funny little anecdotes.

When I was reading the about the early seasons and games, I felt like I was reading a list of Buildings and Streets from each campus. Many of these athletes went on to be coaches and administrators and later to have various campus landmarks named after them. It was also interesting reading some of the origins of mottos and traditions that have popped up over the years.

Hopefully there will be a revision, or a supplement that will chronicle the Egg Bowls that have and will occur after this book went to print. It would be interesting reading to have the yearly accounts of the State v. Ole Miss Basketball Rivalry. It's the oldest rivalry in the SEC.

Buy this book, it is worth the read.

Just got a copy today to give to my father as a gift. This is an instant classic with all the players and coaches we remember. Each year's meeting has a couple of pages devoted to it with game stats, a game picture or two, and even the weather conditions! Impressive stats, trivia, etc. in the appendix. The author clearly did his homework. (I noticed that he's an Ole Miss grad, but with a quick glance of the contents, I also noticed no bias -- and I'm a State alum). This will prove to be THE definitive Egg Bowl reference guide to settle disputes, wagers and possibly the occasional fist-fight. But before going to that extreme, just refer to the book, first. You'll probably find it in there! Rest assured, you'll enjoy reliving some special memories.

I feel like I got more information about Elon University through this guidebook than I did going to Elon. The book gives you information about clubs Elon had to offer, traditions within the school's name, the emphasis put on greek life, all the restaurants and bars within the area, where the best and worst places to live are, and so much more! I feel like I will be one of the most informed freshman entering into Elon University, and since reading the guide, am more confident about my decision :-)

As the author for this book, I feel it important for me to tell you why I feel every high schooler or student looking to transfer to Elon should have this book. I am currently a student at Elon who really wanted to get others as excited about Elon as I am. After doing much research by looking up facts on our homepage, interviews with the Dean of Admissions and getting other information from our Public Relations director, surveying over 200 students, and just giving my personal account, I feel that this book gives you the most honest idea of what it is like to attend this great school. A lot of books are just going to tell you what you want and glaze over the facts such as drugs on campus, the girl to guy ratio, or even campus security. This guidebook gives you all that so you can make an educated decision on whether or not this is the place for you. Furthermore, there's tips on the best restaurants, tradtions, best places to study, and facts and figures about admission into this university. Buy one today, it's full of quotes and information you'll be glad to know!

This is chip hiltons first year playing baseball for state university. He must face a jealous teammate that ia a bad sport and has a horrible attitude. He also helps a friend that is introduced in this book that has financial problems.

One of the best books I have read in the past year has to be Fence Busters by Chip Hilton. It is a marvelous book about how Chip and his friends make it into the collage baseball team. One of the major reasons I enjoyed this book so much is that it is about baseball. It is a sport where different people play. Another reason I found the book to be so wonderful is that it was baseball because that is my favorite sport. The reason I picked out this book is because I used to play baseball for 8 years. Of course, my favorite reason for loving this book is it is a sports book. As you can see, Fence Busters By Chip Hilton was truly my favorite book.

This is a collection of sermons preached by John Henry Newman while he was the vicar of the Anglican church of St Mary's in Oxford, ie. before Newman became a Catholic. Because they were aimed at the university students, the sermons are somewhat academic in style, perhaps more like lectures than sermons, and I must admit that this book is not really an easy read. However it is definitely worth the effort.
This book contains ideas that were developed in later works by Newman. Sermons 10 to 14 focus on the relationship between faith and reason, a subject which the author would later explore most fully in his "Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent". And the final sermon is on the "Theory of Development in Religious Doctrine" , a subject to which Newman of course returned in his "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine."
I would definitely say that the sermons on faith and reason - "Faith and reason contrasted as habits of mind", "the nature of faith in relation to reason", "Love the safeguard of faith against superstition", "Implicit and explicit reason", and "Wisdom as contrasted with faith and with bigotry" - are worth reading for themselves. Newman's brilliance has not been dimmed by the passage of time since the 1800's, and I would say he still has a lot to say to us today, when there is, arguably, a danger of religion as a whole falling into disrepute, due to the actions of religious extemists on one hand, and the writings of people like Richard Dawkins on the other hand! Newman does remind us that faith in God can be a rational choice, does not have to lead to prejudice or bigotry,and that faith involves the mind and the heart.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Cardinal Newman's thought, and in fact it should be in the library of anyone with ambitions to be a Christian intellectual!

No one plumbs the deeps of faith more illuminatingly than John Henry Newman, and in these fifteen sermons he affirms the dignity of our state with an eloquence and conviction that place him in the very first rank of Catholic apologists.

Pounce, gentle reader.

This is a strange and wonderful book. It is perfectly titled: it is a reproduction of a file of correspondence and other documents which document the efforts of one unusually persistent man to get members of the academic and journalistic establishment to live up to their professed ideals of Truth. When the price of this is to admit error, or even give equal time for an irreverent, impolitic, iconoclastic, interloper armed with facts and questions, they often prove unequal to the challenge.

Is it sociology, or is it the exciting tale of an intellectual knight errant tilting at sacred cows and windmills? Both, and more.

This book will not appeal to people who think we live in the best of all possible worlds. It will appeal to those who think that individual effort to fight for accuracy and to expose intellectual corner-cutting in the service of received wisdom might actually be worth the trouble. It's a pity it's so expensive; it's a wonder it was published at all.

Serge Lang's "file" covering the Ladd-Lipsett 1977 "Survey of the American Professorate" is an insider's look into the politics of poor science. Lang, as usual, exposes the inaccuracies, misstatements and hypocrisy of our nation's leading "intellectuals" by reproducing their very own words. He has actual correspondence from the major characters involved and simply puts them on display for you to draw your own conclusions. It's almost impossible not to see how some people try to pass off political opinions as "science".

If you are looking for an eloquent book-style narrative, this is not really the book for you. The book is mostly reproductions of letters and newspaper columns placed in chronological order, with little comment from Lang. However, if you enjoy reading actual dialogue and want to avoid reading someone else's rehashing of the events, then this book is the only source.