The Missing Professor

Download or read book The Missing Professor written by Thomas B. Jones and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-03 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fresh out of graduate school and desperate to pay off her student loans, Nicole Adams joins the faculty at Higher State U, a small university with a dubious past located in the middle of the Midwest. On her second day of classes as a new assistant professor of philosophy, still flustered and disoriented, Nicole is plunged into a campus-wide mystery. Someone has ransacked the office she shares with the ill-tempered R. Reynolds Raskin, the department's senior professor, and he has since disappeared. Two weeks later, with Raskin still missing, Nicole receives a threatening phone call . . .Read one way, this is an entertaining parody of an academic mystery and a humorous take on academic life. Turning the book upside down reveals another purpose. Each chapter is constructed as an informal case study/discussion story, as is made manifest by a series of discussion questions intended for faculty development, new faculty orientation, and conversations among faculty, administrators, and academic staff. As the mystery unfolds, each chapter finds Nicole encountering challenging situations—such as, the first day of class, student incivility, teaching evaluations, peer observation, academic assessment, the scholarship of teaching and learning, faculty and student rights and responsibilities, core curricula, and tenure standards. This little book can be read and used both ways: as pure entertainment and as a series of informal case studies, spiced with humor, to help break down academic barriers and promote spirited discussions