This book lists 206 examples of stories, anecdotes, and commentaries on the world of higher education. They are based on my experiences as a faculty member for 41+ years, an interested observer of higher education for many years before that, a department chair for 9 years, and on a number of stories I have heard from others. I suspect that I am a lightning rod for unusual situations and stories, since I have seen and heard so many.You'll meet some interesting characters and situations inside, including Professor Watch-My-Fingers, the student who did not understand the purpose of a Do Not Disturb sign, dropping the lowest grade, and the student who could not take an exam at a certain time of the month (no, it is not what you think). We'll also describe the "rule of thumb," the matched set of luggage, and why every new department chair should make three envelopes. In the book you will also be introduced to the arcane academic languages known as deanspeak and presidentspeak, and the infamous Five-I speech – and how they are related to the theory of mass mental defect.The stories, anecdotes, and commentaries are grouped generally into several categories:GradingClassroom StoriesCheatingStudentsStudent workersThe Faculty get confused, tooCommitteesDelusionsStudent PresentationsDepartment ChairsPromotion and TenureMore faculty responsesDress CodesRetirementHarassmentGrading, part IIThings you can't say in classPsychic BenefitsDo not be misled about either the title of this book or the cover. The Jonathan Swift 1726 essay, A Modest Proposal, a satire about eating children to address a food shortage in Ireland, had no effect on the writing of this book. Nor are there any recipes included within.As a relatively recent retiree, it was a pleasure to reminisce about my experiences in higher education as I was putting this volume together. I enjoyed the experience. I hope you like reading this book. Ronald J. Leach recently retired as Professor and Chair Emeritus from the Department of Systems and Computer Science at Howard University, where he had taught since 1969. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Maryland at College Park and the M. S. degree in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include distributed systems, performance modeling and capacity planning; and most areas of software engineering, especially software reuse, fault-tolerance, and software performance measurement and their empirical foundations. Some of his current work includes the application of computing to the social sciences, especially in the area of name matching within historical documents, using both his computer search skills and genealogical knowledge. He is a frequent member of ABET site visit teams. He is an experienced cruise ship lecturer, with special emphasis on identity theft and computer forensics. He also lectures to other groups.Ron Leach is the author of seven print books: "Using C in Software Design," Academic Press Professional,"Advanced Topics in UNIX," John Wiley; "Object-Oriented Design and Programming in C++," Academic Press Professional, Software Reuse: Methods, Models, and Costs," McGraw-Hill, "Introduction to Software Engineering," CRC Press, "Genealogy for the Information Age," Disruptive Publishing, and "Relative Genealogy," Disruptive Publishing. He has published two books on the subject of identity theft: "Twelve and a Half Steps to Avoid Identity Theft," as an ebook, and "Identity Theft in the Cyber Age," which is available as both an ebook and in print. Revised editions of many of these are available as ebooks.Dr. Leach has offered technical training and seminars on software reuse, reengineering, and testing on three continents. He has lectured on a variety of other topics between continents! He is also the author or co-author of more than one hundred technical papers. In his spare time, he is the co-Editor of the Maryland Genealogical Society Journal and is webmaster for
