Reading and commenting to ProfPost should feel as if you’re mixing at a colorful party attended by intriguing and annoying guests—we hope you’ll listen, laugh, get irritated, speak up, and head home talking about it.

ProfPost is designed specifically for professors and is managed through the University of Cincinnati’s Center for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning— ProfPost provides a forum for stimulating debates that we hope will continue to nag our readers and our contributors and disturb our set notions about teaching and learning. You should expect posts on this site to relate broadly to teaching and learning (even if we sometimes have to paint that definition with a wide brush).

Because ProfPost is rooted in academia, and because its primary audience is professors, we expect some critical thinking and inquiry here; we practically insist, however, on the necessary balance of humor and the occasional off-the cuff, knee-jerk reaction that we’ve come to expect from savvy profs…that way, we’re sure to mine some essential nuggets that otherwise might not surface.

Naming ProfPost proved an unexpectedly difficult exercise in probing our focus—Eruditio, the Latin word for “learning,” was high on our list, but its connotation seems too stuffy and, well, erudite. We still like ProfTalk, and we vacillated between that and ProfPost until the very last minute…however, we finally decided that ProfTalk implies stream-of-consciousness ramblings we want to avoid here; instead, the content you’ll find on this site are definitely “posts”— rooted, purposeful, and thoughtful expressions that take a stance. Finally, we want ProfPost to carry the feel and the smell of the historical word “post” as a way to get the latest news.

Welcome to ProfPost. We encourage you to introduce yourselves to those you don’t know and contribute to the conversations that engage you…that way, you’ll probably have more fun.