Academese is a useful and humorous look into the language and culture of higher education. It is designed as a hybrid technical reference tool and a light-hearted resource in the form of a glossary with terms and topics organized alphabetically. It also serves as a kind of travel guide for doctoral students and new faculty exploring the land known as Academia. As a memoir of a confessed "recovering academic," the book presents an array of topics ranging from the profound to the mundane and the unexpected. This includes examining things such as academic freedom, cultural competence, and tenure to "real issues" such as parking and office space. Euphemisms such as "load" and "tenure clock" are unpacked. New and emerging terms and concepts such as "spray and pray" and "severe spoken simile syndrome" are introduced. While the format and voice may not be scholarly in the traditional sense, the book is most definitely about scholarship and scholars. The book is both factual and accurate yet irreverent and self-effacing. It is, indeed, the information doctoral students yearn from their dissertation committee chair over drinks in a bar at a professional conference. The postscript invites the aspiring doctoral student and professoriate to reframe the transactional paradigm of higher education into a transformative process of "deeper education." This book is ideal for new faculty orientation workshops and doctoral student seminars.
About the Author: Marshall Welch has been in higher education for 30 years. He earned his undergraduate degree in Education and Sociology from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. He later earned his masters degree and doctorate in Special Education from Southern Illinois University before becoming a faculty member in the Department of Special Education at the University of Utah. He moved up the ranks to become a full professor and Department Chair. While at the University, Marshall later became the Director of the Lowell Bennion Community Service Center in 2001, overseeing the service-learning program. In 2007, he became the Director of the Catholic Institute for Lasallian Social Action at Saint Mary's College of California to coordinate service-learning and community engagement. Marshall took the role of Assistant Vice Provost for Engagement at the college in 2015. He also managed to earn his Doctor of Ministry from San Francisco Theological Seminary in his "spare time." He has numerous publications, book chapters, and books. Marshall has made several conference presentations and conducts engaging and entertaining workshops across the country. In a previous life, he was a high school teacher and dorm parent, a professional musician, breakfast chef, and gravedigger. He and his wife enjoy gardening, traveling, camping, and hiking.