Oxford's Word of the Year - "Unfriend"

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

Every year at this time, Oxford University Press announces a list of "words to watch" for possible inclusion in the next edition of their dictionary. The word at the top of the list becomes their Word of the Year.

An explanation on the OUPblog site says, "Unfriend has real lex-appeal” because friend has not, until now, been considered a verb.

• Interestingly, the word unfriend is not used on the configuration pages of Facebook. The phrase "Remove Connection" directs the unfriending action.

Curious about other Words of the Year? The website AskOxford published a hundred Words of the Year. Here are the past 10 years of words:

1998 • to Google

1999 • blogger

2000 • bling

2001 • 9/11

2002 • metatarsal

2003 • to sex something up

2004 • chav

2005 • biosecurity

2006 • bovvered

2007 • locavore

2008 • hypermiling

Which of those had staying power?

• Becoming the Word of the Year does not guarantee inclusion in the dictionary. The verb to google did not enter the Oxford or Webster's dictionaries until summer of 2006.

Should Everybody Go to College?

Photo by Noah Berger for The Chronicle Review

In the most popular item posted this week on the website of the Chronicle of Higher Education, experts in economics, education, management, political science, and career counseling in the field of higher education are asked if they think everyone should go to college.

The responses are widely varied. In Are Too Many Students Going to College? the experts do not agree. This makes sense. The decision to go to college is personal and quite often a family decision. Deciding to continue education beyond high school is a financial and time commitment, whether the choice is community college, a two year or a four year degree program, or a shorter program designed for specific career preparation.

The issue seems to not be, "should you go," but "where should you go." Clearly in today's world, post-secondary school education gives people a better chance of a higher income. It is safe to say that what high school used to give you in earnings now requires some higher education.

Which expert do you agree with? Is college a waste of time and manpower, is it essential to earning a living wage and finding fulfilling employment, or something in between?

Shuttle Schedule from Logue Library Changes During SEPTA Strike

Early this morning SEPTA drivers went on strike; this strike impacts bus lines, trolley lines and the subway. Regional Rail (which runs the SEPTA R7 and R8 trains into Chestnut Hill) is not impacted by the strike but is currently running up to 30 minutes late due to increased volume.

In response to the strike, the College’s shuttle system will be running on a modified schedule.

• One shuttle will run a continuous loop between the R8 station, the R7 station and Logue Library.
• The second shuttle will run between Logue Library and SugarLoaf approximately every 15 minutes.
• Finally, a third shuttle will make as needed runs depending on traffic patterns and train schedules.

We ask for your patience during these times; there may be delays in the shuttle due to increased ridership and traffic. We will keep the College community informed of any updates.

For information on the SEPTA strike and help in planning a different route to campus please visit http://www.septa.org/.

Schools of Education Deserve Praise, Not Scorn

by Stephen Krashen

(This was originally posted as an October 24th comment to a Newsweek blog post. The text of the post with a link to Duncan's speech appears below.)

Department of Education Secretary Duncan thinks that Schools of Education should be held accountable for student achievement. If so, American Schools of Education deserve praise, not scorn. If the role of poverty is taken into consideration, American children do very well in international comparisons.

The late Gerald Bracey pointed out that U.S. schools with less than 25 percent of their enrollments made up of children of poverty outscore all other countries in math and science. American children only fall below the international average when 75 percent or more of the students in a school live in poverty.

The obvious reason: The results of many studies confirm that the characteristics of poverty, hunger, poor diet, toxins in the environment, and a lack of reading material seriously affect academic performance. The United States has the highest level of childhood poverty of industrialized countries.

Clearly, poverty is beyond the control of Schools of Education.

Low scores on international tests are the fault of a society that allows so many children to live in poverty. Also, if we are to apply Secretary Duncan's logic, we should hold schools of business and departments of economics accountable for the current economic crisis.

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Duncan Offers Incentives for 'Revolutionary' Overhaul of TeacherColleges
by Patrice Wingert

As Wednesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan's major speech at Columbia University this week called on America's teacher colleges to follow the lead of Louisiana, which has been setting the pace nationally in terms of overhauling its schools of education. The state has turned the devastation wrought by Katrina into an opportunity to force through the kind of education reforms that other states just can't seem to muster. One of its mostcontroversial strategies has been to include data on how effectively new graduates are teaching and how much their students are learning when evaluating the quality of teacher colleges and other training programs.

As Duncan put it: "Right now, Louisiana is the only state in the nation that tracks the effectiveness of its teacher-preparation programs. Every state in the nation should be doing the same." Duncan said the U.S. Department of Education would "provide incentives for states" through the ongoing $4.3 billion Race to the Top competition to make serious upgrades in their teacher colleges.

Duncan also went out of his way to chide university presidents for their failure to take the lead in overhauling the nation's overwhelmingly "mediocre" teacher colleges while blaming everyone else for the fact that too many high-school seniors aren't prepared to handle college-level work." I do not understand when college presidents and deans of the arts and science faculty ignore their teacher-preparation programs—and yet complain about the cost of providing remedial classes to freshmen," Duncan said. "Simply put, incoming freshmen don't know the content because too often they have been taught by teachers who don't know the content well."

Chilly Fall Break!

It's fall break at CHC so things are a little quiet around here. Talking to you last week though, it was clear that you would be doing a lot of work over the break. Don't forget that we are still here if you have any research questions while you're getting it all done.

Check the library's Ask! page for a list of ways to contact us, or just type your question in the Meebo box on the left side of this page. (If we're not online at the moment, leave your email address and we'll shoot you a message as soon as we get back.)

Sorry you're missing our favorite tree's big annual display!

Here's hoping you're also having some fun! Fresh air and falling leaves might be just what you need to control that early afternoon crash! You know what they say. "All work and no play . . . "

See you in a couple of days!

The 7 Must Read SlideShare Presentations for Job Seekers

Grabbed from Slideshare.net:

These seven presentations are handpicked by the Applicant Blog at applicant.com. They also got some love from from getthatjobonline.com

1. Effective Job Interviewing from Both Sides of the Desk
It is gives great advice by looking at both sides of the job interview. My favorite tidbit is,
"Your Awesomeness is not self-evident."

2. 10 Job Search Attitudes that Will Get You More Interviews
Short, but sweet. I think attitude is often an overlooked piece in the job hunt puzzle. My favorite tidbit is, "I will search as if I don't need a job."

3. Rethink your Job Search
This reads a bit like marketing material for JobTiger, but is still has good content. My favorite tidbit is, "Tap into job openings that may not have been published."

4. Leveraging LinkedIn for the Job Search
A great little walkthrough on using LinkedIn for your job search. Favorite tidbit, "When you find a connection, leverage it to find other connections."

5. 10 Commandements of Job Search
This is the presentation by the Applicant Blog, and it stresses staying positive. "Ignore the fact that your friend, uncle, aunt and even your mother-in-law is unemployed. It's about you."

"It stresses Staying Positive"

6. Job Search with Social Media & Mobile
This is a great presentation that covers LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter & some mobile apps. "Maxims remain the same ... tactics are very different."

7. Converging Trends Impacting Your Job Search
It covers a lot of ground discussing marketing trends, social media and what networking means today. "Become a content expert ... shift, cull & create content"

Back on the Hill

Welcome! And welcome back to you old-timers!

If you're starting classes for the first time, don't forget to stop into Logue Library and have a look around. Get a library bar-code sticker for the back of your ID card so that you can check out books and other materials you'll be using to support your academic research.

If you're baaaaack after a fun summer, stop in and say hello and tell us what you've been up to! We missed you and are glad you're back!