Nutty "university types"

She seemed very distracted, even mildly deranged, but, living in Cambridge, Jackson had got used to university types, although she said she lived in "Oxford, not Cambridge. It's a completely different place," and Jackson had though, "Yeah, right," but said nothing.

Kate Atkinson, Case Histories (New York: Little Brown & Co., 2004), p. 64.

Thanks to scientists and citizens

T. rex and the Crater of Doom comes with warm thanks to three groups of people: First to my scientific colleagues on all sides of the extinction debate, all over the world, who have made this the most exciting intellectual adventure I can imagine. Then to the citizens of the State of California, who employ me at their splendid university to teach geology to their sons and daughters. And finally to the people of my country, who support the American research enterprise with their taxes, through agencies like the National Science Foundation and NASA. I hope they take pleasure from this story of discovery.

Walter Alvarez, T. rex and the Crater of Doom (Princeton, NJ: 2008) (first pub. 1997), p. xxii

The university's value

When she was selected to head the University of Washington's Faculty Senate [in 1985], Donna Gerstenberger used her inaugural address to express her worry about a trend in American education—that of the need to "market" the university and align it more closely to business and industry.

"Our value is in being what we are and doing what we do, not the least of which is teaching students the value of a mind full of many things,"Professor Gerstenberger told her colleagues.

Katherine Long, "Donna Gerstenberger, Leader; Mentor at UW," Seattle Times, Jan. 22, 2012

A scholar natters on

March then made some mention of Aristotle ("who, as you know, I'm sure, implies the necessity of cause in his discussion of the laws of probability and necessity") and Jill nodded—oh, yes, of course—but at last she moved on: first, to a graduate seminar she was thinking of proposing for next year in "Kantian ethics and the eighteenth-century British novel," and then to an undergraduate class in critical theory she was teaching this term, and how much difficulty some of her students were having ("You know the way they'll look at you sometimes, alarmed and uncomprehending and bored all at the same time? As if you were criminally insane, speaking in a foreign language, and failing to produce the rabbit they were hoping was hidden in your hat, all at once?")—and at this Jill almost laughed, despite herself, but when March went on, "It's feminist theory in particular that seems to be their bête noire," it was only a yawn she had to restrain), and finally March took up the subject of the committee assignment she and Jill were to share this spring, the newly formed Committee for Teaching Excellence. 

Michelle Herman, Dog: A Short Novel (San Francisco: MacAdam/Cage, 2005), pp. 68-69.