Search results for ""Author Thomas B. Jones""

Despite flecks of the victim’s blood and what looked like part of an eyebrow, one could make out the letters etched in an artistic, painstaking script that formed the killer’s message:Hippocrite“Great. A perp who can’t spell,” said Jarvis.“So you think it’s a student?”Professor Roland Norris has been murdered in the early morning hours on the grounds of Välkommen University, and the discovery of the crime sets the scene for Thomas Jones’ new campus mystery. As two more murders rattle the university, St. Paul detectives LeRon Jarvis and Robert Phan increasingly focus on the victims’ connections to Jack Ramble, professor of literature and chair of the department.Are the crimes motivated by academic rivalries or the university’s finances? A frantic golf cart chase down the 10th fairway of the East Oaks Country Club finally reveals all…As with Thomas Jones’ previous academic mystery, The Missing Professor, this book is a parody of the mystery genre and campus life, but with a serious purpose. In 26 entertaining and succinct chapters, the story line raises such issues as the nature of today’s college students, faculty roles and responsibilities, mid-career concerns, the purpose of liberal education, racial diversity, micro-aggression, inclusive teaching, technology and learning, politics and the classroom, active learning, the role of sports in higher education, and academic freedom, to name but a few.This book will enliven, and ensure spirited discussion at any orientation, workshop, or faculty development activity.

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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

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Gives an abundance of practical advice on how active learning techniques can be used by teachers across the disciplines. Using real-life examples, the authors discuss how various small-group exercises, simulations, and case studies can be blAnded with the technological and human resources available outside the classroom. The book is engagingly written for all classroom teachers. --Stephen Brookfield, distinguished professor of education, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota

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