Thanks to our terrific contributors and a lot of readers, ProfPost (University of Cincinnati’s ground-breaking, written-by-professors-for-professors blog) has had over 12,000 hits since its January 2009 launch. We think we’re really on to something here, and we’re starting to take some risks to make things lively.

That’s why we’re looking for a few professors with fresh takes on teaching and learning—and we’re running a couple of competitions to shake those professors from the bunch.

“Points of View” Columns (Deadline: August 15, 2009):
We’ll choose two professors to write at least three posts each over three quarters, and we pay $250 per quarter in faculty-development funds for doing it! The focus of these submissions is completely up to each writer but should relate broadly to teaching and learning in higher education. We believe the best rule of thumb is to write about whatever is lately on your mind…if it’s nagging at you, it will probably interest other professors, too.

“Points of View” submissions should be posts of 500-1000 words and should be emailed to liz.tilton@uc.edu by August 15, 2009.

“Raised Hand” Column (Deadline: August 15, 2009):
This column is sort of the hip professor’s “Dear Abby.” If you’ve got a quirky way of seeing the classroom, college students, or your fellow professors, this competition may have your name (written in chalk dust) all over it. We’d like someone to field some tough/funny/insightful questions having to do with 21^st Century teaching—if you can do it with a twist, we want you. And, to sweeten the deal, we pay $250 per quarter in professional-development funds for each of the three quarters you write a column or more for us.

We tried to formulate a catchy question to which you could showcase your wonderful responses, but we couldn’t come up with a question we all agreed was a good one. So, we’ve decided to let you pose your own question and then answer it yourself. Don’t think we can’t roll with the punches.

Please write a 500–1000-word response to your question, and then email both the question and your answer to it to liz.tilton@uc.edu by August 15, 2009.

Notes regarding both “Points of View” and the “Raised Hand” competitions:

—Submissions should be approximately 500 to 1000 words.

—Our panel of judges will determine winning submissions by August 30, 2009.

—Winners earn the right to publish their columns anonymously.

—There’s a good chance that submissions not winning the competitions will eventually be published in ProfPost

Now, pick up your pen and write something for us.

by our new yet anonymous “Points of View” professor

In the Army, you run a lot. Or at least I did. And to the Army’s credit, they start you running early in basic training. It was the Saturday of our first full week, and we’d been slowing increasing the distance we ran to prepare us for the final physical-training exercise that would help determine if we’d graduate from basic training. Once we’d formed at 5:00 am, one of our drill sergeants told us we would run five miles that day.  While many of my fellow soldiers-to-be groaned, (and Baby Belton muttered her breath, “Someone will be carrying me the last three”), I had confidence that I would finish just fine because I was a runner.

by our new yet anonymous “Points of View” professor

It takes a couple of years for new faculty to feel as though we’ve established a routine and have truly become part of the university. Tenure-track junior faculty have to find ways to balance life and work; and somewhere in the midst of publishing, teaching, and service, we have to acclimate ourselves to a new town and a new university, establish new routines, and build new friendships. 

 I’m lucky to have a host of colleagues to help guide me along these ways, and I’m even luckier that some of these same colleagues have become wonderful friends.  Last fall, my newfound friends convinced me to go to the gym with them. They argued strongly with the familiar refrain that exercise positively benefits all aspects of life.  So I relented, and three times a week since October, I’ve been regularly working out with the same group of people. As many of you know, when you first return to serious exercise after a long absence, the road back is hard—it takes work, commitment, and dedication—and the road was made much easier because I had others helping me.

by our experienced yet anonymous “Points of View” professor

I like to try new experiences in my classroom. Sometimes I ask students to work in groups to research questions and summarize their findings in oral presentations. Sometimes I use a canned talk with PowerPoint slides. Sometimes I come to class ill-prepared, and other times I’ve spent hours working on a lecture that maps everything to Bloom’s taxonomy and clearly identifies my learning objectives and rubrics for student assessment. But at the end of all of this experimentation, I’m still left wondering whether it’s pedagogy or charisma that results in my accolades as a teacher.

by our new yet anonymous “Points of View” professor

Intimidating. Frightening. Scary. These are not the words I ever expected to receive on any evaluations, but in all their varying forms and phrases, they were a constant refrain in my first UC student evaluations. When I started at UC in the fall of 2006 (I had taught previously while I completed my PhD), I had grown accustomed to seeing words like “hard,” “demanding,” and “rigorous.” Prior to graduate school, I taught in the Army, and later, as a professional consultant, I led a myriad of training sessions. In all of these situations, I had never once been called intimidating or frightening or scary.

I tried to replay in my mind my teaching persona at UC compared to my previous personas. I could not for the life of me come up with a substantial difference that would account for the students’ new perceptions of me. I told myself I would wait and see what the next quarter’s evaluations showed. Alas, the same thing. In the third quarter, I tried a new tactic and asked a colleague to visit my class. And guess what? Yep, she used the word “intimidating,” too. Even though I had a detailed conversation with my colleague, she couldn’t specify why or how she felt that way. She attributed it to a combination of factors. It was, simply, my presence in the classroom.