The Missing Professor: An Academic Mystery / Informal Case Studies / Discussion Stories for Faculty Development, New Faculty Orientation and

by Thomas B. Jones

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1579221386
• ISBN13: 9781579221386
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.7" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Professor Jones uses the mystery genre as a learning tool

Thomas B. Jones has been a college educator for thirty-five years as a professor of history, academic administrator, faculty developer, educational consultant. He co-authored PROMOTING ACTIVE LEARNING: STRATEGIES FOR THE COLLEGE CLASSROOM, and his range of writing includes articles in U.S. history, teaching, and education. Professor Jones uses the mystery genre as a learning tool. The tale begins with a brand new Ph.D., Nicole Adams launching her teaching career (against the advice of her advisor) at a small liberal arts college in Iowa called Higher State University. Jones uses Nicole as a sort of lab rat in the tale, with her arriving at a school in obvious financial distress with an out-of-control dean and cynical faculty. Nicole is immediately tapped for every committee assignment the dean can think of to throw at her, and although she is quick to make friends with her peers, they have their own struggles with disillusionment: "They bitch about the textbook, and mine's a good one - very readable and has lots of supplementary stuff," said Clark. "I asked them today if they'd bought the historical novel that's due in two weeks. About half the class just plain admitted they hadn't. I couldn't believe it." Jones presents new challenges for Nicole in each chapter of the book, ranging from student inertia to peer review and new ideas on scholarship and learning. He throws in a little political intrigue and bombastic faculty to make things interesting. But his methods are well structured, as the informal case studies he includes if one turns the book upside down contain careful questions relating to each step of Nicole's journey. Dr. Jones cleverly uses the mystery genre to create a new type of discussion book for curriculum and education students. His mystery isn't meant to be a tightly structured literary tale, but rather a theoretical study of the problems that graduate students will encounter as new teachers as they enter the marketplace. His discussion of the relevance of old curriculums, the notion of tenure, the sliding motivation of students, approaches to the classroom, and career planning gives students a ruler to use to plot their careers. Shelley Glodowski Senior Reviewer