College Faculty Member Grief Over Deaths of Current and Former Students

2019 ◽  
pp. 003022281984639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul C. Rosenblatt

This article is an autoethnographic exploration of college faculty grief. Over a career, a college teacher is likely to encounter deaths of current and former students. The rich connections that can develop in a faculty–student relationship can make for strong grief. Issues that can complicate faculty grief include regrets that might be unique to faculty–student relationships and information about the deceased that the faculty member feels obligated to keep confidential and cannot mention while processing their grief with others. Faculty members may rarely have the benefit of attending funeral or memorial services for students and former students, but with the deaths of current or recent students, a faculty member is likely to have colleagues and students who knew the deceased with whom to talk. With deaths of students from long ago, a faculty member is likely to be limited to processing grief with people who never knew the deceased.

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 2665-2673
Author(s):  
Parmanand Tripathi

Every teacher must realize that he/she needs to be highly motivated, committed, passionate, and optimistic towards his/her students as well as his/her teaching in order to create a positive and productive impact on the students and their learning outcomes. It is a proven fact that teachers who are sincere, caring, approachable, supportive and inspiring can easily enable their students to become enthusiastic, successful and creative learners. John Hattie, a proponent of Evidence Based Quantitative Research Methodologies on the Influences on Student achievement, who is also a Professor of Education and Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia, has noted in his study that a harmonious classroom can assist with the development of creativity as well as reduce anxiety levels amongst students. In my opinion, the primary objective of all effective and conscious teachers should be to promote a safe and healthy learning environment wherein students will feel confident, comfortable, happy and accepted. Time and again, I am convinced of the fact that only effective and conscious teachers understand, acknowledge and therefore, appreciate the significance of creating a rapport and bonding with their students for providing an education that is positive, productive and progressive. When teachers display a positive and congenial attitude towards their students, they not only make them ‘learn better, faster and deeper’ but make them self-confident and self-reliant too. Building positive, supportive, cooperative and mutually strong teacher-student relationships is the key to create a welcoming, healthy and conducive learning space in which students are enabled to thrive, prosper and go on to become what they are meant to be in life. And it is only by forging and nurturing a strong and positive relationship with their students, can teachers create a healthy and conducive learning atmosphere wherein students feel welcome, accepted, respected, loved and cared for, wherein learning becomes fun and joy. Conscious and committed teachers promote the art of positive parenting in every classroom and in every school to enable the students to become confident learners by willingly and happily shouldering the responsibility of being their ‘second parents’.When teachers teach with passion, display positive attitude towards their students and their success, and show genuine care for them, the students reciprocate with respect for their teachers, interest and love for their learning.


2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 393-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda G. Kucirka

BACKGROUND: There is an increase in students enrolled in higher education diagnosed with mental illness or experiencing symptoms suggestive of mental health issues (MHI). This has a significant impact on the faculty–student relationship. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to identify the basic social psychological process that occurs when nursing faculty interact with students with MHI. DESIGN: Grounded theory methodology was implemented to identify the basic social psychological process that occurs when faculty encounter students with MHI. Thirteen nursing faculty were interviewed. Data were analyzed using line by line coding and constant comparative analysis. RESULTS: The resulting substantive theory, navigating the faculty–student relationship in the context of student MHI, is an iterative four-phase process: noticing, responding, experiencing, and reflecting. CONCLUSION: This theory provides a framework for understanding how nursing faculty recognize and address student MHI. The theory can be used to establish interventional strategies and best practice guidelines.


Author(s):  
Mei-Yan Lu ◽  
Michael T. Miller ◽  
Richard E. Newman

This chapter addresses the challenges associated with college faculty members crossing international borders to be employed by higher education institutions. This process includes challenges associated with the technical aspects of recruiting and hiring faculty members of different nationalities and then the subsequent challenges of understanding cultural dynamics in the classroom and how faculty members can be prepared to deal with these cultural differences. The chapter includes a practical analysis of these issues and concludes with recommendations for the stronger institutional integration of transnational faculty to higher education institutions.


Author(s):  
Stephen Springer

This chapter addresses the author’s model to assist faculty members in gaining a closer relationship with distance learning students. The model that will be discussed consists of a greeting, message, reminder, and conclusion (GMRC). The GMRC will provide concrete recommendations designed to lead the faculty through the four steps. Using these steps in writing and responding to electronic messages demonstrates to the distance learning student that in fact the faculty member is concerned with each learner and the learner’s specific questions and needs. It is a practical application of human relations theory and is based on ideas generated by counseling theory. In addition, the chapter will take the reader through issues and examples that will arise during the duration of discussions and exchange of information using electronic messages. It is the intent of the author to provide not simply a theoretical model, but a model that can be learned and applied immediately upon completion of reviewing the article.


Author(s):  
Stanley Fish

But you can’t do it in a vacuum. And although academics would be reluctant to admit it, the conditions that make what they do possible are established and maintained by administrators. When I was a dean, the question I was most often asked by faculty members was, “Why do administrators make so much more money than we do?” The answer I gave was simple: administrators work harder, they have more work to do, and they actually do it. At the end of my tenure as dean, I spoke to some administrators who had been on the job for a short enough time to be able still to remember what it was like to be a faculty member and what thoughts they had then about the work they did now. One said that she had come to realize how narcissistic academics are: an academic, she mused, is focused entirely on the intellectual stock market and watches its rises and falls with an anxious and selfregarding eye. As an academic, you’re trying to get ahead; as an administrator, you’re trying “to make things happen for other people”; you’re “not advancing your own profile, but advancing the institution, and you’re more service oriented.” A second new administrator reported that he finds faculty members “unbelievably parochial, selfish, and selfindulgent.” They believe that their time is their own even when someone else is paying for it. They say things like “I don’t get paid for the summer.” They believe that they deserve everything and that if they are ever denied anything, it could only be because an evil administrator has committed a great injustice. Although they are employees of the university (and in public universities, of the state), they consider themselves independent contractors engaged fitfully in free-lance piecework. They have no idea of how comfortable a life they lead. Neither, said a third administrator recently up from the ranks, do they have any idea of how the university operates. They seem proud of their parochialism and boast of their inability to access the many systems that hold the enterprise together.


Author(s):  
Steven Tolman ◽  
Matt Dunbar ◽  
K. Brooke Slone ◽  
Allie Grimes ◽  
Christopher A. Trautman

As online education continues to grow, more and more faculty find themselves transitioning from teaching face-to-face to online environments. Unsurprisingly, this can be challenging for many faculty as they go through this process. This book chapters examines the experience of a faculty member who transitioned from teaching exclusively face-to-face to online and lessons learned are shared. Additionally, four students share their experience learning online and provide recommendations to faculty members.


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