By Any Other Nerd

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes The day began in an unfamiliar bed, in a rented space. We had arrived the night before so that we could avoid the typical chaos of Boston commutes and just give us some breathing space before and after the graduation. It was an early start like many of the early starts throughout my time at UMASS Boston.  Rising around 5am (though I do this normally) and driving into the city to avoid tedious traffic and white-knuckling my steering wheel (audiobooks only help so much).  I did that trek for 3 years--during the 3-week intensives in June and Fridays for the Fall and Spring semesters.  When I arrived at campus, I often went for a run along the Harbor Walk, a beautiful vista of the harbor and surrounding city and islands.  Some really great sunrises to capture as well.   This morning, I would also get up and go for a run along that path to take in the morning, exercise the demons, get a hit or two of nostalgia, and sit with a pr...

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes Here is another exploration of a different set of questions about AI and copyright that I recently wrote and had published on the London School of Economics and Political Science Impact Blog (LSE Impact for short). It continues the conversation that I have had here in some previous posts including this one on academic fracking and the question of whether copyright has been violated , as well as connected to my own research and previous work on the commons .  LSE Impact reached out to me to see if I would write this and funny enough, I was already several paragraphs in when I got the email because, surprise, I had some thoughts.  I like how this piece turned out because it captures a tension that I don't hear in all of this and that is the reasonable return of copyrighted work back to the commons; something that is impossible to happen for any work that arrives in our lifetime, which just seems disappointing.  I keep thinking about how...

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes Last month, a work that I was collaborating on with two amazing colleagues and friends (Deborah Kronenberg and JT Torres) got published.  It was a piece for Inside Higher Ed called, Growing Orchids Among Dandelions and I appreciate the sentiment we put forward in it.   I know that we didn't necessarily solve anything but I do find metaphors and analogies help me put things into perspective. What I enjoyed about this was not just it was a collaborative effort with two people whom I deeply appreciate as human beings but are also have such rich insights and provocations to my own thinking that it pushes me to see things differently.   We wrote this piece last fall as we were all navigating new and different work contexts and realized there was something to be said about the overlapping experience we were encountering and had experienced over our collective years in higher education.   You can read the excerpt below or th...

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes Last week, it finally happened. I submitted my dissertation to the institution for publication on their scholar work site. I believe a round of formatting edits is probably in order, but I've done the thing that will allow me to participate in the late May graduation. To say that it's a tremendous relief is an understatement.     As this website tag shows, I have been in this program for a decade, and during that time, I’ve written close to 100 posts. And now, I am done.     I think readers of this blog will find a few more posts forthcoming in this series. I have been meaning to write these and took notes on them, but never finished. I think they would be additionally helpful as other insights gathered in this journey.     For instance, I want to do a post about the media kit I created when I was looking for participants because it proved successful and I had some templated material that others might benefit from. Th...

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes I hit one of those deep and meaningful career moments last week at the annual NERCOMP conference.   I was incredibly honored to receive the Mark Berman Community Outreach Award at NERCOMP; it’s one of those career moments that you pause, look back, and appreciate how far you’ve come, but also are even more energized to look forward and consider how much more you want to do for supporting and connecting with folks in the teaching, learning, and technology spaces in higher ed. For some of you, it might be helpful to know more about both the organization and award.  NERCOMP is a regional organization in the northeastern of the US that focuses on technology in higher education with a focus on leadership, teaching & learning, and technological systems in higher ed.  There are  hundreds of institutional members and they do lots of professional development and also consortium discounts for different services.  The Mark Berma...

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes I mentioned in my last post that I'd be talking a bit more about something that is giving me hope and a way to think about how to navigate the next few years (or rest of my life--take your pick).   And while I don't usually make blog titles so explicit, I really needed to with this one. I listened to  Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching by Jarvis Givens a few years ago and it's all I can think about since the current administration decided it wanted to root out anything related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. I recently had to relisten to it and read sections of it as well. Since January 2025, I've mentioned the book dozens of times if I've mentioned it once.  The book explores the work of Carter G. Woodson and other Black educators in the 1900s.  Carter G. Woodson 's impact is significant.  He earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1912 and would play an important role in shaping t...