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Jacob Isaacs

@jacobisaacs.bsky.social
96 followers 91 following 40 posts

Higher education administrator. Experience in educational research, assessment, communication studies, advising, and student affairs. Interested in persistence, retention, belonging, and first gen issues.

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Reposted by Jacob Isaacs
Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 17/04/2026
this is fucking unreal stuff from Noah Wyle on the magic of The Pitt. www.gq.com/story/noah-w...
“It’s a couple of things that work beautifully in concert. First: no music. Audiences are so sophisticated, but what they’re not accustomed to is not being told how to feel,” Wyle says. “You take all that out and it forces a level of engagement where you’re now looking for clues within the frame of the screen, which forces you to look up from your phone. And I think that is extremely engaging, especially to young viewers who aren’t accustomed to being asked to participate in a nonpassive way in the viewing experience.“Second point, shooting it with almost exclusively 50-millimeter or 65-millimeter lenses, which is the most comparable to the human eye—and only shooting from the point of view of a human being that’s present in this space. There are no cameras on gurney wheels going in the hallway. There’s no cameras on the ceiling looking down from a God point of view. You are limited to the perspective of a participant. You can look away, but you can’t leave, and it becomes an endurance test for you to stay on your feet as long as we’re on our feet. Which [brings me to my] third point: real time. Real time has an aggregate sense of tension that you don’t get in any other form of storytelling. What happened before is happening now, and these two things are going to add up to the next thing. And if we throw more ingredients into this cooker and keep ratcheting it up, it’s going to pop.”Wyle makes eye contact for his next point, delivering it with a Robby-esque matter-of-factness. “Fourth point: The election went the other way,” he says with a shrug. “We could have been a really good show with a lot of nice things to say in a perfectly normal Kamala Harris universe. And instead we became almost a beacon of hope and humanity in an alternative universe. But in the midst of that, fifth point—this is essentially competence porn. You’re watching really smart, dedicated people do what only they know how to do at a level that you don’t know how to do it, and you’re so fucking glad that they’re there doing it, and compartmentalizing their own stuff to put your broken pieces back together. You’re so reassured by knowing that there are people out there that laugh and joke and have the ability to lock in like that.”
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Dr. Tracy @tracyrenee70.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Good morning. Remember to laugh & sing a little today.
Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me.
Sojourner Truth
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
This is an amazing kind of development in higher education, when funding is so uncertain that it's a better idea to not accept more students.
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Reposted by Jacob Isaacs
Mike Dickison @adzebill.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
The Internet Archive has to date downloaded 500 terabytes of US government websites, which it crawls at the end of every presidential term. The whole archive is fully searchable. This effort's housed by a donation-funded nonprofit, not a branch of the US government. blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/e...
blog.archive.org
End of Term Web Archive – Preserving the Transition of a Nation | Internet Archive Blogs
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 31/01/2025
One reason we bought a car last year
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
Listening to my 8 year-old read "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day" and stop occasionally to chew out Alexander for not being responsible for himself and making bad life choices. 😂🤣
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Reposted by Jacob Isaacs
Raul Pacheco-Vega @raulpachecovega.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
#RPVSky One of the first things I teach my students *and* my thesis advisees is how to develop a writing practice. Perhaps the most challenging thing in the #HiddenCurriculum of being a graduate students, one of the many things I wasn't taught, was the idea of a writing practice, the "how to".
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
Grading spree this weekend. This semester, I taught 4 classes, coming to 6 credit hours. It's been a great experience watching these students experience their first semester at college. We've got some amazing people here. I can't wait to see how the rest of their journey ends up.
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Reposted by Jacob Isaacs
Robert Kelchen @robertkelchen.com · 14/12/2024
This is a great piece on the implications for local communities when their college closes. We're planning to do an empirical examination of this topic in upcoming research.
chronicle.com
Can a College Town Survive the Closure of Its College?
For communities surrounding small institutions, the losses are more than economic.
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
One of the biggest things that we have done on our team is work on destigmatizing a student taking a step back because life got in the way. Things happen. Life happens. Sometimes it's not the right time. It's perfectly okay. We'll welcome you back when you're ready...and here's how to come back.
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
It's definitely the busy season right now. Wrapping up a semester of teaching, doing registration for Spring semester, onboarding a new colleague, handling a couple of special projects, and leading our retention project data work. It's a lot, but our team is a great one!
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
One thing that I learned in my move up north is that there is a hidden inhibitor to career progression: the cost to move. Even with a moving allowance, the cost of moving my family a significant distance was a financial hit. 1/?
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Very excited this week to hear about our new record first-year retention rate! We've got a great advising team working with our colleagues to build a phenomenal community here in NW Minnesota!
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 07/11/2024
Going to try to spend more time here than the other place. I think that it's going to be better all around. Anyone want to talk student success?
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 10/10/2024
Have to love working at a rural institution. Heard recently that the annual message went out reminding students in the residence halls to not dress fresh game in the halls or dispose of carcasses in university dumpsters. There are lots of institutions where this would never cross their minds!
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 13/08/2024
Now that the Olympics is over, the TV in the Student Center just isn't the same. Times like this, I wish that ESPN News was still showing "The Ocho" during the afternoon. Even a mustache and beard contest would be cool!
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 04/08/2024
Trying to figure out a good gaming magazine to subscribe to since Game Informer was so unceremoniously eliminated. Anyone have good options?
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Reposted by Jacob Isaacs
Gravel Influencer @gravelinfluencer.bsky.social · 08/07/2024
At the risk of posting something stupefyingly obvious: If you're among those canceling a New York Times or Washington Post subscription, I guarantee you have a great nonprofit media outlet or local paper in your area that could use some revenue. And that coverage is absolutely vital right now.
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 24/06/2024
Excited to be attending the 2024 NASPA Conferences on Student Success in Higher Education (SSHE) this week in Anaheim, CA! If you're here, I'm looking forward to meeting you and learning from you! #highereducation #studentsuccess #academicadvising #academicsupport #naspa #firstgen #sshe #nacada
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 02/03/2024
Spent part of the day driving up to the Canadian border and back. A lovely drive through some small towns that I'd like to visit again. Just wish I had more time to pop into Canada and make a run to Winnipeg for the day. There's still so much to explore up here!
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 05/02/2024
Starting the morning and getting powered up for the NACADA Administrators Conference in Raleigh, NC. Going to be a great day!
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 01/02/2024
Working on data related to students in academic crisis this week. Trying to see if certain interventions are working. Let's hope the data says so because it anecdotally feels like good work.
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 25/01/2024
I never think about how it might actually be more hazardous and slick out there when it's closer to 32°F. I've been skidding and sliding more today at 30°F than I was when it was -10°F a week or two ago.
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 22/01/2024
This semester, I'm back in a communication classroom for the first time in a decade. So far, it's a process of taking what I've learned from a decade in student affairs and trying to meld it into my faculty exp from back in the day. I think I'm going to have stories by the end of this semester!
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 28/12/2023
Absolutely thrilled for my advising and student success team today as we got confirmation that we raised our traditional first-year student retention rate to the highest level in at least 20 years for our campus. My team does great work and it's awesome to see that play out in the data!
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 16/12/2023
I've been reading one of Helen Sword's books on academic writing. It's done more to help me be comfortable with my own writing idiosyncrasies than most anything in the last decade or more. That said, I'm still going to keep reading to understand more. #NeverStopLearning
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 24/11/2023
A good day today spent partly with our students as our campus provided a Thanksgiving feast for those who couldn't get home to their loved ones. Thank you to our local Walmart for providing the food to care for our students. We're definitely thankful for our Golden Eagle family.
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 21/11/2023
Slowly re-figuring out how to research and review literature so that I have a foundation for writing articles. Trying Notion, Evernote, and Obsidian so far, with limited success. Used Evernote back in the day after doing my dissertation with hard copies of quotations. Any advice, academic friends?
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Jacob Isaacs @jacobisaacs.bsky.social · 16/11/2023
Make every day the best day ever. Just because you look back and see your best day so far in the past, that doesn't mean that an even better one couldn't be happening right now.
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