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Category Archives: Being an academic
An open letter to students about the postal survey on same-sex marriage
Here is a copy of an open letter I sent to my students studying a course on community engagement. Even though I have concerns about the postal vote, as we are having it, I hope there is a very high … Continue reading
Posted in Being an academic, Social change
Tagged Gay marriage, Marriage equality, Same-sex marriage, Teaching
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Updated information for new lecturers.
This morning I spoke to some new lecturers at the University of Newcastle about how I try to maintain a balance between supporting students and not letting teaching take up all my time as an academic. In preparation, I updated … Continue reading
Smoking and community engagement
All campuses of the University of Newcastle (UoN), Australia, are now smoke free. I love working in a smoke free environment and don’t miss the days when smoking was much more common. When I was much younger, I had to … Continue reading
Strengths-based measurement
As practitioners and researchers we need to think carefully about the types of measures we use with the people we support. The measures we use can cause pain and distress for participants, undermine trust and engagement, and produce unreliable data. … Continue reading
Transparency report (January-April 2017)
At the start of the year, I decided to start preparing transparency reports. While I don’t make any money from the blog, I like the idea of sharing information about the blog that might be of interest to other bloggers. … Continue reading
Searching for my authoritative voice
Sometimes I fear I’m going to be discovered as a fraud. Who am I to be writing a blog on community engagement? On what basis do I support other organisations to improve their work? Am I really preparing students for … Continue reading
Posted in Being an academic
Tagged Academia, Blogging, Hesitate, University academic, Writing
2 Comments
Some hints re course coordination for new lecturers
[Updated 18 July 2017] I’ve been asked to speak to new lecturers at the University of Newcastle about the role of a course coordinator and thought I’d share some thoughts here. (Note: the University of Newcastle uses course to refer … Continue reading
Posted in Being an academic
Tagged Academia, Online teaching, Teaching, University academic, University lecturer
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Looking forward to 2017
It’s that time of the year which seems to be particularly conducive to planning, so here are some of my ideas for 2017 Blogging I don’t think I’ll be making all that many changes to the blog this year. I … Continue reading
Transparency report (2016)
I recently came across a transparency report on Eco Warrior Princess. A major focus of her post was to be transparent about how much income she generated from her site and, even though I don’t generate any income from the … Continue reading
My top posts for 2016
There are a number of ways to judge my top posts for 2016. To start with there are 10 posts that I think add a useful contribution to working with communities and families. Some of them came from my work … Continue reading
