DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Oct 7, 2010 22:16:22 GMT -5
Not every aspiring college student needs to ... seek to cure infectious diseases. Be careful now - them's fightin' words!
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Oct 7, 2010 22:40:11 GMT -5
Apologies offered. No slight intended.
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DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Oct 7, 2010 23:14:07 GMT -5
No apologies needed - I couldn't resist making fun of it. Now run out and get your flu shot, hear? ...agree with others that the website is a little too much on the stuffy side.
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Post by WilsonBlvdHoya on Oct 8, 2010 7:19:23 GMT -5
I don't know; I'm ready to start a moderator rebellion! Seriously, DFW, I do differ somewhat with some of your characterizations. Faculty at GU conducted a very incisive and insightful study about 15 years ago about the academic work habits and grade inflation associated with GU undergrads. It concluded that, compared to their academic peers at other universities, GU students studied less, partied more and earned higher GPAs. The study challenged faculty to demand more rigor of their students and to reflect said rigor in their course grading/assessments. I'm not arguing that GU should become more like Swarthmore or Bryn Mawr or Haverford and be producing more Ph. D.s (although it could certainly do a better job of that)---the nature of the GU student body, for better and/or worse, has far too pronounced of a pre-professional leaning for that. But I am arguing that what GU could use is a few MORE "eggheads" (an unfortunate and stereotypical depiction) and far fewer academic dilettantes/slackers who exert minimum effort to get the maximum grade in order to get to Dip Ball or Cafe Milano more often. Bottom line is that far too many GU undergrads don't push themselves hard enough academically... As long as those eggheads get out of Lauinger once in a while to attend the games at the Verizon Center!!
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Post by hilltopper2000 on Oct 8, 2010 8:08:21 GMT -5
I'll second Wilson's view. GU absolutely needs to produce more PhDs and students who are passionate about scholarship, rather than turning out classes consisting almost entirely of very smart professionals and entrepreneurs. I wouldn't want to go full University of Chicago or anything, but we are definitely too far on the other side. I'm torn on whether this is an admissions issue or a classroom issue, but ultimately, I think professors have a tremendous impact on how students view their academic experiences. I wrote (several) scathing reviews of undergrad classes I took, taking the professor to task for not demanding enough of the students. My best classes were almost always inevitably those in which the students were treated as serious scholars, rather than 9th grade AP students. GU students want those A's. If the professors demand more hours of study, they'll get them and they may turn more students on to rigorous scholarship as a result. Worst case scenario is that the future doctors, lawyers, and executives will learn more.
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Post by jerseyhoya34 on Oct 8, 2010 11:18:17 GMT -5
Part of this problem may be an issue with faculty leanings. In the SFS, for example, you have the Doug Feiths, George Tenets, and others who are far removed from dissertation work and are called on to teach "practice." While it may help folks to understand real-time decision-making for research assignments, it is more likely that this coursework is being used for professional reasons.
Tony Lake's course is another one - it is well worth taking - but don't expect to haul out a 20-25 pager that forces you to delve down in government records and the like. At least when I was in his course, we had to produce 4 or 5 short memos that would be designed as summaries of policy issues for consideration by a higher-level government official in crisis situations. The mere course title of Albright's undergraduate course drives home the point - "America's National Security Tool Box."
Ultimately, as someone who has not entered a national security/foreign policy field, it has been the theoretical/academic courses which I have found most helpful.
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theexorcist
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Post by theexorcist on Oct 8, 2010 11:51:37 GMT -5
Part of this problem may be an issue with faculty leanings. In the SFS, for example, you have the Doug Feiths, George Tenets, and others who are far removed from dissertation work and are called on to teach "practice." While it may help folks to understand real-time decision-making for research assignments, it is more likely that this coursework is being used for professional reasons. Tony Lake's course is another one - it is well worth taking - but don't expect to haul out a 20-25 pager that forces you to delve down in government records and the like. At least when I was in his course, we had to produce 4 or 5 short memos that would be designed as summaries of policy issues for consideration by a higher-level government official in crisis situations. The mere course title of Albright's undergraduate course drives home the point - "America's National Security Tool Box." Ultimately, as someone who has not entered a national security/foreign policy field, it has been the theoretical/academic courses which I have found most helpful. The problem with this is that, in the non-academic world, no one reads anything longer than a page. That doesn't mean that there's not a lot of research done - just that it eliminates the "show your work" that's implicit in academic papers. I've been in cases - not crisis situations - where I've worked on those information memos for decision-makers. They're important in explaining difficult points to people who work a lot of things, and it's hard to do them well. There's a great Dilbert that shows the engineer writing ten pages, the manager writing a one-page summary, the division chief writing three bullet points, and the VP telling the CEO "nice necktie" - then the CEO watches CNN, sees something about interactive holograms being hot, and makes that the strategy. Some of the better work I did at Georgetown was less than ten pages. If you're preparing yourself for the real world, make sure that you're able to communicate your thoughts clearly and concisely.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 8, 2010 22:03:28 GMT -5
On the original topic of the thread: the launch of the new website has already blown through several deadlines. The smart money now, at least to the best of my knowledge, is on it going live over the Thanksgiving holiday. As for the broader point regarding Georgetown's student body: about 1% of Americans have a doctorate, somewhere between 2 and 3% have a professional terminal degree (including JD and MD, not sure whether MFA, EdD, etc. are included but it shouldn't change the numbers that much). Now, obviously, the numbers are going to be much higher for those with a college education, and particularly those with a degree from a highly selective school like Georgetown, but still, we're talking about a very small number of people here. And many of them have no idea in high school that a PhD is what they want to do with their lives, so attempting to somehow enroll more of these kinds of kids through admissions targeting is a pretty dubious proposition, in my opinion. The real issue is that the majority of PhDs are in the sciences. The hard data can be found through webcaspar.nsf.gov which has the results of the Survey of Earned Doctorates undertaken by the Science Resources Statistics Division (SRS) of the National Science Foundation. What it clearly shows is that the hard sciences and math, along with the closely related engineering fields, make up a clear majority of granted doctorates. This really isn't surprising. Physicians and lawyers have their own terminal professional degrees, and one does not need a PhD to attain the highest levels of distinction in politics, government, the foreign service, the military, business and finance, nursing, public health, social organizing, accounting, or many other careers fields (Georgetown grads tend to pursue some of the ones I've listed). Where PhDs are an absolutely critical credential is academia and top flight research at labs and private companies. If you want to be a hot shot biochemist or geneticist or computer scientist and be involved in cutting edge (and highly profitable) research and development, a PhD is pretty key. Now, as we all know, these technical fields are Georgetown's weakness, particularly at the graduate level. And since it is the grad level that tends to attract the top flight faculty and research dollars, the result is that those looking to make a career of this sort of thing - PhD included - are less likely to contemplate Georgetown as their undergraduate school. Yes, the pre-med program has a good reputation and the anemic graduate programs mean undergrads have easier access to research than at many other places, but still, the end result is a reputation for having relatively weak sciences. So, basically, the undergrads that are coming into college with PhD already on the brain are primarily looking at either known high-level research institutions (your JHUs and Carnegie Melons and many public universities that have massive research infrastructure) or selective liberal arts colleges that are known for a major emphasis on undergraduate teaching and research (Reed, Harvey Mudd, Swarthmore, Grinnell, Haverford, etc.). Georgetown ends up stuck between these two poles. Thus, you can see why the Science Center becomes such a top priority for those engaged in long-term strategic planning at the university. "If you built it, they will come" is the thought.
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Post by reformation on Oct 9, 2010 15:10:22 GMT -5
A few practical( I think) thoughts about the website and the academic program.
Re: the website, why don't we check out other schools websites and incorporate some of the features that others have that we lack--it seems like this should be an ongoing process rather than some big project which never gets done.
Re: the academic program--the real or perceived lack of rigor in Gtwn's undergrad programs(depending on your viewpoint) does affect all students, not just those applying for phd's. Don't kid yourselves that MBA/law schools etc don't haircut Gtwn GPA's vs a lot of other top schools-and also take a serious look at the courses/programs that the students actually take--its not just a sciences thing either, it definitely affects students looking at grad work in social sciences too.
Addressing the undergrad academic rigor has been very difficult for the univ-they recognize the problem and assign good people to spearhead efforts to address it but very little seems to get done.(This is not a unique problem for Gtwn: Duke & Stanford B school have gone though similar exercises--there is even a Harvard business school case on revising the Stanford B school curriculum)
One big picture thing that I think Gtwn is missing in this regard is the need to create additional signature academic programs rather than focusing on adding some watered down stats or science requirement--changing a few classes won't do much to address the issue. A few programs that come to mind that would be interesting as models are Northwestern's Integrated math/Social Science program and Integrated Science program + Harvard's History/Literature Program(its not just a math/ science thing.)
I terms of getting things done on this issue, I think the Gtwn Pres simply has to make it a priority-the faculty/students are more than capable of responding. Also, Gtwn shouldn't shy away from adopting best practices from its peers--all good organizations do, its is not a sign of weakness.
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CWS
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Post by CWS on Oct 10, 2010 14:12:06 GMT -5
A few practical( I think) thoughts about the website and the academic program. Re: the website, why don't we check out other schools websites and incorporate some of the features that others have that we lack--it seems like this should be an ongoing process rather than some big project which never gets done. Re: the academic program--the real or perceived lack of rigor in Gtwn's undergrad programs(depending on your viewpoint) does affect all students, not just those applying for phd's. Don't kid yourselves that MBA/law schools etc don't haircut Gtwn GPA's vs a lot of other top schools-and also take a serious look at the courses/programs that the students actually take--its not just a sciences thing either, it definitely affects students looking at grad work in social sciences too. Addressing the undergrad academic rigor has been very difficult for the univ-they recognize the problem and assign good people to spearhead efforts to address it but very little seems to get done.(This is not a unique problem for Gtwn: Duke & Stanford B school have gone though similar exercises--there is even a Harvard business school case on revising the Stanford B school curriculum) One big picture thing that I think Gtwn is missing in this regard is the need to create additional signature academic programs rather than focusing on adding some watered down stats or science requirement--changing a few classes won't do much to address the issue. A few programs that come to mind that would be interesting as models are Northwestern's Integrated math/Social Science program and Integrated Science program + Harvard's History/Literature Program(its not just a math/ science thing.) I terms of getting things done on this issue, I think the Gtwn Pres simply has to make it a priority-the faculty/students are more than capable of responding. Also, Gtwn shouldn't shy away from adopting best practices from its peers--all good organizations do, its is not a sign of weakness. In fairness to the people designing the website, they did a LOT of peer review and investigations of best practices. They had a series of meetings of various stakeholders (e.g., faculty, admin, students, alums) in the philodemic room with Happy Cog (the group designing the web site). For the one I attended, we were shown a number of websites (about 12 I believe: Duke, Notre Dame, American, George Washington, Brown, Georgia Tech). The idea was that these were both good and bad examples (though we weren't told which, of course). Then we were asked to evaluate them using a variety of criteria. As far as undergraduate reform: same thing -- a lot of looking around. The difference is that it's less helpful in that there are so many structural differences (e.g., Brown with its intense mentoring & lack of requirements and Columbia with its fairly rigid core curriculum). But, we have been looking at those programs (Duke actually has a great undergraduate structure/program). I think there's a lot of shared wisdom about what is working (active engagement, student-centered learning, etc.), the question is how to implement it. There are other concerns, of course, (e.g., with how much hard work the students are doing) , but as is well known, hard and challenging work, by itself, does very little to improve the quality of learning outcome. We might have some interesting data in several years about grade inflation. MSB has imposed a mandatory curve. We'll see if that changes anything. As far as moving forward: Georgetown's strategy seems to be to encourage bottom up innovation, instead of top-down requirements. They might get to a more top down approach in the future, but right now the goal is to fund innovative ideas that will transform the curricular experience through an infusion of new practices (e.g., Englehard, JUHANN, Ignatius Seminars, etc.). The university has been trying to encourage such innovation (see news and video below): explore.georgetown.edu/news/?DocumentID=46018On a related note, corporate leaders recently articulated the needs of the professional workforce and corresponding critique of higher education performance: www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/01/21/employersThe first link in the article will take you to a pdf file summarizing the findings.
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Post by LizziebethHoya on Oct 14, 2010 11:58:51 GMT -5
The Voice read this thread and followed up with the University about it. blog.georgetownvoice.com/2010/10/14/georgetown-website-debuts-beta-campus-map-still-no-launch-date/No firm commitment as to launch date but I guess they did add this map. Which I'm not totally thrilled with because its pretty incomplete and it is blending campuses. For instance, I was scrolling down looking at the building descriptions (which were all on main campus) and then they had descriptions the Law Library and Law Dorm without indicating that they were on a different campus (and most everyone who doesn't know Georgetown/DC thinks Georgetown Law is on main campus)
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Bando
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Post by Bando on Oct 26, 2010 0:00:20 GMT -5
I can't believe this entire thread happened with no one posting this: xkcd.com/773/
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kchoya
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Post by kchoya on Oct 26, 2010 16:14:50 GMT -5
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thebin
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Post by thebin on Oct 28, 2010 15:44:18 GMT -5
9 years is an eternity online. Yahoo has probably redesigned their website 3-4 times in that span. Maybe some institutions can afford to wait that long, but not top-flight universities who are obviously trying hard to attract bright kids who don't remember a time when facebook didn't exist and see the world through their web browser to a large degree.
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