Campus Talks by Times Higher Education

Ngiare Brown is the first female and the first indigenous chancellor of James Cook University. She’s joined the institution at a time when efforts to indigenise Australian higher education are taking root, with the recent interim report of the Universities Accord saying that putting First Nations at the heart of Australian higher education would result in positive, long-term changes.  Dr. Brown in...

Eve Riskin is on a mission to broaden the definition of diversity. The newly appointed dean of undergraduate education at Stevens Institute of Technology is determined to make sure they are "student ready" in order to support more women, mintoritised groups and students with disabilities through STEM degrees. She's also an award-winning mentor, having received the Presidential Award for Excellence...

In an episode last year with the chief scientist at Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities Ashok Goel, we asked: Is AI in higher education worth the hype? It turns out that, yes, it is. Ashok is back to help us understand what the developments of ChatGPT and other generative AI systems mean for teaching and learning and how they fit with the machine learning frameworks that were alrea...

This episode of the Campus podcast comes as record temperatures beat down through the northern hemisphere summer, with wildfires engulfing Greece and Spain, and deadly floods engulf India. With the UK recently approving new oil and gas licences, it’s easy to feel that reversing the climate crisis is a lost cause. However, our guests both offer elements of hope despite the bleak outlook. Bryan Alex...

Watch the video recording of this podcast on Campus    Findings from a recent Gallup survey of Americans found that only 36 per cent have a "great deal" or "quite a lot of" confidence in higher education. That’s about 20 percentage points lower than the same survey in 2015. For Jonathan Koppell, president at Montclair State University, it’s time for universities to own their part in that loss of t...

In this episode of the Campus podcast, we’re embarking on a journey into a realm of the unknown. A world full of possibilities and creative opportunities but not without risks and ethical quandaries. Three intrepid pioneers are our guides as we learn how tools such as ChatGPT can enhance student feedback and academic research. Jennifer Rose, a senior lecturer in accounting and finance at the Unive...

Will the promise of lifelong learning - to extend access to higher education to more people while at the same time creating a highly skilled and relevant workforce - ever be realised? On the whole, university systems remain set up to educate 18-year-olds studying full-time degrees. And how many working age adults are really able to take time off to go back to study and to take on more debt?  David...

In this episode of the Campus podcast, Michael Dennin, a professor of physics and astronomy in the School of Physical Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, talks about using superheroes (and zombies) to bring the dynamics of physics into the classroom. Michael, who is also dean of undergraduate education, vice-provost for teaching and learning, and the recipient of UCI Senate teaching...

On this episode we’re talking about every campus' connector, collector and collaborator – the university library. Often overlooked, university libraries are critical to the teaching and research missions of institutions. They also play a key role in digital innovation and community outreach. Two librarians tell us more about how they see their work as agents of change.  Masud Khokhar is a third-ge...

A veteran leader in English higher education, dame Madeline Atkins is the former CEO of the Higher Education Funding Council in England and is the current president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. In this Campus interview, she tells us about a widening access initiative that has led to the college admitting over 90 per cent of students from state schools – as in tax payer funded, non selecti...

Dr. Nicholas Dirks is a higher education leader, an historian, the former chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley and the current president and CEO of the New York Academic of Sciences. In this interview he explains why interdisciplinarity might be harder to achieve than some might think, how to communicate the public good of science to various audiences, and if science should be leve...

Decolonisation has become a lightning rod for critics who accuse universities and colleges of being full of liberal ideologues, with a number of pundits up in arms about efforts to decolonise reading lists and the curriculum.  But for some scholars, decolonisation is merely a by-product of the work that they do, including our guest Farish Noor, a professor in the department of history in the Facul...

For international women's day, we spoke with two academics of colour about their experiences of being minority women in academia.   Henrika McCoy is the Ruby Lee Piester Centennial Fellow in Services to Children and Families and associate professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. Henrika shares her experience of colleagues and students having erroneou...

Academia and activism might seem like a natural pair. Both require grit, persistence and a passionate commitment to a cause. However doing social justice work is often at the sacrifice of other tasks that count towards career progression in higher education.    In this episode, three academic activists discuss the structures within higher education that make this work difficult, how they balance i...

A career in academia comes with a lot of components – some good and some not so good. In this episode we’re talking about topics that might seem like their on the periphery of the core elements of an academic career, but they’re crucial to your credibility among colleagues and your sense of well-being. Ray Crossman, president of Adler University in Chicago, shares his experience of being an out pr...

Universities have been around for a millennium, however their modern iteration - and the people who lead them - are somewhat different to their medieval European ancestors. Over the centuries, institutions have dealt with a multitude of difficulties but the current combination of a global pandemic, economic downturn, populist politics and a climate crisis seems particularly challenging. So what so...

Ruth Simmons was the first African American president of Brown University which she led for 11 years. Before that she was president at Smith College where she set up the first engineering programme at a women’s institution. She was recently called out of retirement to lead Prairie View A&M an historically black institution in southeast Texas. As she approaches the end of her tenure there, THE Camp...

How can faculty and staff address the real issues, however forbidden, that make students feel isolated and voiceless? When teams research difficult topics, how can they establish two-way, equitable participation with their community? Members of the teams that won the Times Higher Education 2021 Awards for Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community and Outstanding Contribution to Equality, Div...

Artificial intelligence has a lot of potential for higher education. It can automate onerous repetitive tasks for teachers, help researchers leapfrog mountains of data crunching and make higher education more accessible and personalised for students. But AI also presents risks, including biases that can become embedded into algorithms and a lack of transparency around data use. Though we may be a...

Even the most experienced faculty member could benefit from teaching advice from their peers. In this episode of the THE Campus podcast, we feature short tips from university educators around the world to create a mini teaching community in podcast form. And we speak with David Dodick , a sessional lecturer at University of California, Berkeley and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at...

Education is often offered as a solution to tackling misinformation, particularly training in critical thinking and analytical skills. But what does that actually look like in the day to day running of a university? Or for the average higher education instructor not specialised in fields like media, politics or social sciences? And is there more that institutions could be doing to inform public po...

Whether teaching or writing up research, there is a strong incentive for academics to try and make their work as interesting as possible. If people are intrigued by what they’re doing, it is likely to have a greater impact. But since everyone has their own unique take on what is or is not interesting, this can seem an impossible task. So, we spoke to three academics to find out if there are any un...

During his 30-year tenure, Freeman Hrabowski, the outgoing president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, has transformed UMBC from a small branch of the University System of Maryland into one of the leading producers of Black STEM graduates in the country.   In this interview, Freeman talks about how to have the difficult conversations that identify where students needs are not being m...

We’ve asked academics, authors, publishers and postdocs to share with us their advice for how to improve your academic writing and chances of getting published.    They cover everything from tips to establish a consistent writing practice like Jack London and how to find the hook in your work, to why your article might be rejected and how to bring in voices beyond just those writing in standard No...

Three university leaders heading up their institutions’ public affairs and community engagement in London, Melbourne and Chicago speak with us about the value of mutually beneficial partnerships with First Nation communities, local neighbourhoods and government.   They talk about using their strengths of teaching and research to engage with the community and what that means for increasingly digita...