DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on May 21, 2023 19:35:43 GMT -5
As for the selection of deans, it's not all that dissimilar from senior management appointments at other types of organizations. There are a number of roles the person must perform, and each candidate has their relative strengths and weaknesses in performing each role. There are also the symbolic aspects of the job - what kind of message it sends to have a person with X background (demographic, certainly, but not only). How much weight any of these particular roles or attributes are given in the evaluation by the search committee and the ultimate decision-makers can vary quite a bit. There's no one-side-fits-all template for a dean. I'm both a big fan and a harsh critic of strategic plans, but the complete absence of one for Georgetown speaks volumes. The old aphorism is true, of course: "Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what your priorities are." But a lot of the budget information is also kept opaque! As a result, we're left to piece things together from various sources, whether it's the campus plan or the capital campaign or on a project-by-project basis. Re: Deans, it's increasingly a lower bar. At one time, the Dean of Georgetown College was a stepping stone to a presidential appointment elsewhere, not so much now. For my two cents, the last transformative dean at Georgetown was Peter Krogh (who was hired as dean at the age of 31) and he moved mountains, even if the bureaucracy was less inclined to do so. Re: Strategic plans, they are a window to the soul of these institutions, and not always for the better. The Duke document is unusually shallow and heavily biased towards the humanities wing of the school, aka Trinity College. Very, very few undergraduates are going into academic research as they did. By contrast, its medical and law schools are hardly mentioned, its business school not at all. Duke, like many USN&WR T25 schools, also seems to think that diversity is a black/white issue. The largest ethnic minority in the USA now has over 20 million more people than the African American population and yet gets little more than a passing glance from schools like this. The Notre Dame plan is better executed (I appreciated a statement of goals from its library) and is unapologetic in using the word which causes such institutional angst at the upper levels of the Hilltop: Catholic. ND calls it "the hallmark of a Notre Dame undergraduate education: rigorous intellectual training with the cultivation of moral character and spiritual formation offered in a community distinguished by faith." Georgetown's frequent use of the phrase " and Jesuit" almost reads as a hedge to suggest that "don't worry, you're not going to recite the Glorious Mysteries if you come here." I think that's selling short the opportunity to engage big-C Catholic social thought in a multidenominational student experience.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on May 21, 2023 19:42:16 GMT -5
Re: Deans, it's increasingly a lower bar. At one time, the Dean of Georgetown College was a stepping stone to a presidential appointment elsewhere, not so much now. For my two cents, the last transformative dean at Georgetown was Peter Krogh (who was hired as dean at the age of 31) and he moved mountains, even if the bureaucracy was less inclined to do so. Prior to coming to Georgetown, Rosario Ceballo was associate dean for the social sciences at the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. That college, the largest at Michigan, spans 85+ majors, 1,000+ faculty, and 3,000 + courses.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on May 21, 2023 19:47:48 GMT -5
Agree to disagree, I guess. Ok, so Hellman and Almeida have been around longer, but the CAS seems more caught in the academic bureaucracy than SFS or MSB.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on May 21, 2023 21:12:49 GMT -5
Agree to disagree, I guess. Ok, so Hellman and Almeida have been around longer, but the CAS seems more caught in the academic bureaucracy than SFS or MSB. It's certainly true that in contract to the College, the 'applied' studies schools place a much bigger emphasis on the person in the Dean's seat having a practitioner background, vice being purely a creature of academia. It's also a different kind of gig relative to the others, given that it doesn't have a single unifying theme the way the others do, even as it supplies many of the faculty and courses for the other schools' majors. In that sense, it's fair to say that it is more of a "academic bureaucratic management" role than the others. On the point about the lack of transformational deans... on some level, that is a reflection of the increasingly centralized and assertive decision-making coming from the President's Office and the Provost that has been one of the hallmarks of DeGioia's tenure. The schools are not feudal domains governed by the local lord with minimal influence from the king in his far-off castle. The deans do all have their own priorities, agendas, etc., such as Carol Lancaster's drive to create the Global Human Development program and to upgrade Asian Studies to an MA program. But anything truly transformative, whether it's a flagship new building/campus or a major new program or whatnot is inherently going to be something that was jointly developed and prioritized with overall University leadership. Now, you could certainly have a very forward-leaning dean who is driving such change, at one of the spectrum, and much more of a 'status quo power' dean on the other end. Unfortunately, with little in the way of public-facing strategic planning, one is reliant on inside info to figure out where along that spectrum a given dean falls.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on May 21, 2023 21:22:06 GMT -5
Re: Strategic plans, they are a window to the soul of these institutions, and not always for the better. The Duke document is unusually shallow and heavily biased towards the humanities wing of the school, aka Trinity College. Very, very few undergraduates are going into academic research as they did. By contrast, its medical and law schools are hardly mentioned, its business school not at all. Duke, like many USN&WR T25 schools, also seems to think that diversity is a black/white issue. The largest ethnic minority in the USA now has over 20 million more people than the African American population and yet gets little more than a passing glance from schools like this. The Notre Dame plan is better executed (I appreciated a statement of goals from its library) and is unapologetic in using the word which causes such institutional angst at the upper levels of the Hilltop: Catholic. ND calls it "the hallmark of a Notre Dame undergraduate education: rigorous intellectual training with the cultivation of moral character and spiritual formation offered in a community distinguished by faith." Georgetown's frequent use of the phrase " and Jesuit" almost reads as a hedge to suggest that "don't worry, you're not going to recite the Glorious Mysteries if you come here." I think that's selling short the opportunity to engage big-C Catholic social thought in a multidenominational student experience. The Duke plan I linked to is specifically academic-focused, it has to be looked at in concert with the " Strategic Vision." In any case, putting on my strategic planner hat, I will note that being "heavily biased towards the humanities wing of the school" is not necessarily a strike against it, much as that might pain you as a Fuqua grad. Strat plans are about priorities for change efforts and about how organizational leadership is allocating its time and attention. They are not supposed to be all-encompassing, something-for-everyone documents. That's the #1 mistake that is made with them, in fact. I'm not really the best person to comment on matters of Catholic identification, but I will emphasize that - as a non-Catholic who grew up in various non-Catholic settings but around a lot of academics - the Jesuit identity and brand as an intellectual/educational tradition is orders of magnitude stronger than any other order. The "Jesuits = academic-minded educators" association exists in the minds of many who have no idea what the association would be for the Congregation of the Holy Cross or the Franciscans or the Marinists or Benedictines. Indeed, most non-Catholics will barely be aware of their existence, if at all. Everyone knows the Jesuits.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on May 21, 2023 21:35:33 GMT -5
On the point about the lack of transformational deans... on some level, that is a reflection of the increasingly centralized and assertive decision-making coming from the President's Office and the Provost that has been one of the hallmarks of DeGioia's tenure. The schools are not feudal domains governed by the local lord with minimal influence from the king in his far-off castle. Good post. Interesting how you mention the ideal of a feudal system but the Robert Curran history of Georgetown goes into some detail on the Jesuit regents that ran the professional and graduate schools of the 1940s and 1950s with unusual independence. You may be aware of the story with the Law Center, cited below, but it took a critical report from the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools for the University to finally break the feudal mold. gulcfac.typepad.com/georgetown_university_law/2008/11/what-paul-dea-1.html
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on May 23, 2023 12:50:00 GMT -5
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hoyaguy
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Post by hoyaguy on May 23, 2023 16:33:17 GMT -5
Definitely have seen the MSB at least at the undergrad level reach great heights in recent rankings on other sources as well with really Wharton being the only one consistently ahead and have seen the MSB be #2 on multiple occasions so glad to see it always progressing. I also believe that students really interested in Georgetown should be looking beyond face value rankings, personally I looked at debt to income ratio and am glad to see the university be in top 10s such as "income 10 years post grad" or "proportion of business leaders". Re: Things that can be done I realize that certain aspects of Georgetown's uniqueness work against it in certain rankings and I agree that US News kind of jumped the shark awhile ago, but as an alum and recent student, it feels as if some people just kind of throw their arms in the air and say "it is what it is" with the whole "inertia" and status quo when it is clear the current trajectory has it very possible that we fall to the upper 20s eventually. Are there things actually being done to strive forward that will have an impact on ranking(/raising the undergrad level/experience) at all because I think things can be done that are not necessarily "prestige chasing"? And to respond to an earlier post about a movement towards a more centralized power structure with the president, that is deeply concerning and it could be somewhat felt as a recent student in some ways. It wouldn't be concerning if there was a more publicly visionary and innovative leader at the helm, but it did not feel that way as a student or now as an alum who visits friends including some faculty on campus. Perhaps I am wrong there, but I am just saying and also looking for signs as I know georgetown plays things close to the chest.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on May 23, 2023 21:05:41 GMT -5
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Nov 24, 2023 17:15:18 GMT -5
Congrats, everyone, we're in the South now!
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Bigs"R"Us
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Post by Bigs"R"Us on Nov 24, 2023 18:20:56 GMT -5
We rank favorably, but the WSJ list is awful.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Nov 24, 2023 19:06:33 GMT -5
Congrats, everyone, we're in the South now! A southern university? Isn't this part of some bizarre 2nd Healy nightmare, when 37th Street becomes Fraternity Row and the fans are at Capital One Arena are singing this song?
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Nov 24, 2023 23:12:38 GMT -5
Congrats, everyone, we're in the South now! A southern university? Isn't this part of some bizarre 2nd Healy nightmare, when 37th Street becomes Fraternity Row and the fans are at Capital One Arena are singing this song? Was definitely a Southern university at one point, when most of the students were Confederates (whether in uniform or merely in sympathy).
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CTHoya08
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Post by CTHoya08 on Nov 25, 2023 8:44:15 GMT -5
Does this mean we rank ahead of Duke and Vanderbilt? I’ll take it!
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nbhoya
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Post by nbhoya on Nov 28, 2023 20:59:09 GMT -5
I mean, we aren’t northern…
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Nov 29, 2023 9:53:39 GMT -5
I mean, we aren’t northern… The Mid-Atlantic: a distinctive region replete with schools Catholic (Georgetown, Mount St. Mary's, Loyola), non-denominational (GW, AU, Johns Hopkins), and public (Maryland, UMBC, Towson) whose student bodies are mostly made up of kids from New Jersey
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Nov 29, 2023 11:02:26 GMT -5
I mean, we aren’t northern… The Mid-Atlantic: a distinctive region replete with schools Catholic (Georgetown, Mount St. Mary's, Loyola), non-denominational (GW, AU, Johns Hopkins), and public (Maryland, UMBC, Towson) whose student bodies are mostly made up of kids from New Jersey The New Jersey percentage at Georgetown continues to decline, a factor of relentless demographics and the drive for a national student body. In 2022, NJ students represented six percent of incoming students, comparable with Maryland. That's third overall but not an area of growth. Today's students are more likely to drive along the 405 than the Turnpike. The demographics are really taking its toll on the Midwest. Ony 17 kids from Ohio enrolled in 2022, 13 from Michigan, just five from Missouri. Yes, there is a certain element of the gentry that still sees "flyover country" as a poor substitute for life on the coasts, but the long term future of Georgetown is not growing up in the Tri-State area.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Nov 29, 2023 13:40:31 GMT -5
The Mid-Atlantic: a distinctive region replete with schools Catholic (Georgetown, Mount St. Mary's, Loyola), non-denominational (GW, AU, Johns Hopkins), and public (Maryland, UMBC, Towson) whose student bodies are mostly made up of kids from New Jersey The New Jersey percentage at Georgetown continues to decline, a factor of relentless demographics and the drive for a national student body. In 2022, NJ students represented six percent of incoming students, comparable with Maryland. That's third overall but not an area of growth. Today's students are more likely to drive along the 405 than the Turnpike. The demographics are really taking its toll on the Midwest. Ony 17 kids from Ohio enrolled in 2022, 13 from Michigan, just five from Missouri. Yes, there is a certain element of the gentry that still sees "flyover country" as a poor substitute for life on the coasts, but the long term future of Georgetown is not growing up in the Tri-State area. All true...and the demographic shifts are always the part of the annual AAP briefings that get the most attention. The wildcard looking forward is climate change and the extent to which movement to the Sun Belt starts slowing or reversing.
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Bigs"R"Us
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Post by Bigs"R"Us on Dec 1, 2023 0:05:57 GMT -5
I don’t think Florida will be under water in the near future.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Dec 5, 2023 7:52:20 GMT -5
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