CAA News Today

Each week CAA News summarizes eight articles, published around the web, that CAA members may find interesting and useful in their professional and creative lives.

Doubts about Date: 2016 Survey of Faculty Attitudes of Technology

Most faculty members say data-driven assessments and accountability efforts aren’t helping them improve the quality of teaching and learning at their colleges and universities, according to the 2016 Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology. Instead, instructors and many academic technology administrators say the efforts are mainly designed to satisfy accreditors and politicians. (Read more from Inside Higher Ed.)

The Next Step in Diversifying the Faculty

These days there’s no escaping discussions about the need to diversify academe. So it should be. A recent addition to this brimming conversation was a widely discussed essay in The Hechinger Report from Marybeth Gasman, in which she argued that there aren’t more people of color on faculties for a simple reason: colleges and universities don’t want them. (Read more from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

After a Decade of Growth, MFA Enrollment Is Dropping

Across the country, art schools have minted a growing number of visual art MFA programs over the last ten to fifteen years. Many of them now face a challenge, as application numbers and enrollment figures are falling, according to the better part of a dozen insiders who spoke to Artnet News, some of them on condition of anonymity. (Read more from Artnet News.)

David Salle’s How to See, a Painter’s Guide to Looking at and Discussing Art

The painter David Salle, in his new book How to See: Looking, Talking, and Thinking about Art, goes bravely in search of happiness. His quarry is aesthetic bliss. Salle’s mission is to seize art back from the sort of critics who treat each painting “as a position paper, with the artist cast as a kind of philosopher manqué.” (Read more from the New York Times.)

Toxic Art: Is Anyone Sure What’s in a Tube of Paint?

Artists get called many things—geniuses, madmen, rebels, unemployed—but rarely chemists. Painters, however, increasingly find that they need a degree in organic chemistry when they go to an art-supply store and try to buy a tube of paint. (Read more from the New York Observer.)

How to Work in the Art World without Selling Out Your Politics

What if you realized that an entire community of people were underrepresented in the arts, so you created your own area of study in college to push their work to the forefront? What if you spent the next thirty years trying to change the ratio? Would you have the perseverance to get there? (Read more from New York.)

Why Attend Conferences as a Freelance Academic?

Attending a conference without an institutional affiliation can feel alienating. That alienation, combined with the fact that many freelance academics are no longer searching for faculty positions, can make conferences seem like a colossal waste of time and money. What could you possibly contribute? (Read more from Vitae.)

Missing Out on the Fear of Missing Out

There are three openings tonight in three different parts of the city and it’s only possible to do one. Your old friend, your new friend, and the hip space that just opened. Now make a choice. Was it the right one? (Read more from Momus.)