DFW HOYA
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Jun 1, 2023 13:59:19 GMT -5
Post by DFW HOYA on Jun 1, 2023 13:59:19 GMT -5
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Bigs"R"Us
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Jun 1, 2023 22:28:38 GMT -5
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Post by Bigs"R"Us on Jun 1, 2023 22:28:38 GMT -5
This and Amazon’s Innovation Campus which it partnered with Virginia Tech. Plus, we’re in a conference with academic misfits.
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DFW HOYA
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Jun 2, 2023 12:26:26 GMT -5
Post by DFW HOYA on Jun 2, 2023 12:26:26 GMT -5
One day after that announcement, this:
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C86
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Jun 2, 2023 14:56:02 GMT -5
Post by C86 on Jun 2, 2023 14:56:02 GMT -5
I wonder the extent to which this is tied to the size of the endowment, the perception that GU is not really a research university (particularly in the sciences), or the idiosyncratic way that Georgetown governs itself (promoting from within, having a president of 20 years standing). Except for the Ivy League the AAU is the ultimate academic club, and I question how much these factors, alone or combined, prevent GU from being viewed as clubable.
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RusskyHoya
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Jun 2, 2023 15:45:03 GMT -5
Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 2, 2023 15:45:03 GMT -5
It's essentially a measure of STEM research output. For any number of reasons, that is not our strong suit. Now, if someone had wanted to give us a billion dollars to, say, buy the National Labor College White Oak campus that we were interested in and turn that into a STEM (or at least biomed, given that FDA is next door) research campus, then maybe that would have been a worthwhile venture. But so long as the Main Campus space is highly constrained and top tier research facilities are so intensive in terms of space and other resources and attributes, this was always going to be a very daunting proposition with a lot of unknowns as to success. The buildout of the McCourt School and Georgetown Downtown, on the other hand, capitalizes on existing strengths and has been a much lower-risk investment. But public policy and law programs don't help you get into the AAU.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 2, 2023 15:53:31 GMT -5
I wonder the extent to which this is tied to the size of the endowment, the perception that GU is not really a research university (particularly in the sciences), or the idiosyncratic way that Georgetown governs itself (promoting from within, having a president of 20 years standing). Except for the Ivy League the AAU is the ultimate academic club, and I question how much these factors, alone or combined, prevent GU from being viewed as clubable. "Ultimate academic club" is a little much. No one is sitting there thinking that Texas A&M, Ohio State, Iowa, Kansas, South Florida, Rutgers, SUNY Stony Brook, GW, Pitt, and every single UC are elite, while Georgetown, Wake Forest, Boston College, William & Mary, and Northeastern are not. To say nothing of LACs like Williams or Amherst.
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C86
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Jun 3, 2023 10:19:01 GMT -5
Post by C86 on Jun 3, 2023 10:19:01 GMT -5
I’ll stand by “ultimate academic club.” IThe AAU is an invitation-only group that serves as an institutional status symbol. Schools want to be admitted, and schools are aggrieved when they are dropped, GW is touting its new membership in an exclusive club gwtoday.gwu.edu/gw-joins-prestigious-association-american-universities. And Georgetown no doubt would have used similarly self-congratulatory language if it had received an invitation. Two other points. As a resident of Big Ten country, I’m going to quibble with any argument that large state schools like Ohio State, Texas A&M, and Iowa are not elite. I’ll grant you that these schools are not as selective as Georgetown, Wake Forest, or Amherst. But that’s not their mission. Ohio State has 66,000 students.; It can never be Williams But in terms of resources, grant money, and productivity, those schools are elite. And not just in the sciences. Iowa has thefamous Writers’ Workshop, and A& M has a world class rare book collection I agree that Georgetown’s historic under-investment in the sciences probably played a role in this decision. Although I don’t think campus space is necessarily a factor. There are AAU members that have urban campuses similar in size to Georgetown (Tufts and Case are two that come to mind). And NYU and GW are just as landlocked
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RusskyHoya
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Jun 3, 2023 16:09:55 GMT -5
Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 3, 2023 16:09:55 GMT -5
I’ll stand by “ultimate academic club.” IThe AAU is an invitation-only group that serves as an institutional status symbol. Schools want to be admitted, and schools are aggrieved when they are dropped, GW is touting its new membership in an exclusive club gwtoday.gwu.edu/gw-joins-prestigious-association-american-universities. And Georgetown no doubt would have used similarly self-congratulatory language if it had received an invitation. Two other points. As a resident of Big Ten country, I’m going to quibble with any argument that large state schools like Ohio State, Texas A&M, and Iowa are not elite. I’ll grant you that these schools are not as selective as Georgetown, Wake Forest, or Amherst. But that’s not their mission. Ohio State has 66,000 students.; It can never be Williams But in terms of resources, grant money, and productivity, those schools are elite. And not just in the sciences. Iowa has thefamous Writers’ Workshop, and A& M has a world class rare book collection I agree that Georgetown’s historic under-investment in the sciences probably played a role in this decision. Although I don’t think campus space is necessarily a factor. There are AAU members that have urban campuses similar in size to Georgetown (Tufts and Case are two that come to mind). And NYU and GW are just as landlocked There seems to be a tension here. You refer to GW's press release as touting admission to an "exclusive club" and an "invitation-only group that serves as an institutional status symbol." This suggests that "elite" is synonymous with "exclusive" in this context. But then you grant that the large state schools will never be as selective in their admissions - that is, they will never be as exclusive or elite when it comes to their student bodies - as various non-AAU members. So why is it that AAU members are elite by dint of the AAU's exclusivity, but their own admissions lack of exclusivity has no bearing on their eliteness? It has to work both ways, at both the level of institutions and at the level of individuals. Now, you might argue that the relevant programs within the AAU schools are highly selective. The Iowa Writers Workshop certainly is (" From 2013-2017, 5061 people applied to the Workshop and 135 (2.7%) were admitted")! But that simply reinforces my point, which is that the AAU is indeed an elite, exclusive club - but not for universities/academia generally. It is an elite, exclusive club for highly-productive STEM research programs. This typically correlates with highly-ranked undergraduate and graduate programs, but not always. Harvey Mudd is, by pretty much any measure, a top 20 engineering undergraduate program, but it is not in AAU because it simply does not have the scale and the volume of graduate students and research output required. Having an urban campus is certainly not disqualifying, but it does make having a large STEM research program much more difficult. None of the schools you listed are anywhere near as constrained in this regard as Georgetown. - GW recently built a new STEM building that takes up an entire city block. Their (non-)campus is largely located on land zoned for commercial use, meaning they do not operate under the same restrictions on development that Georgetown does. Most notably, sitting atop a Metro station and criss-crossed by bus lines, they do not face the same District-enforced constraints with respect to bringing larger numbers of students and staff to campus. Their transportation demand management plan is largely "take Metro," which frees them to grow in a way Georgetown cannot.
- Case Western Reserve's 267 acre campus is more than 2.5x bigger than Georgetown's Main Campus (whose 104 acres includes the hospital clinical facilities that do not contribute to University research output). It also has its own RTA subway station and is right off of the best transit corridor Cleveland has to offer, the HealthLine, thanks to its location adjacent to the world-class Cleveland Clinic. That Clinic plays a major role in Case's STEM research productivity, obviously. If Medstar Georgetown University Hospital were instead the several times larger Medstar Washington Hospital Center, you might see something similar.
- NYU might be constrained horizontally, but not so much vertically - no pesky Height of Buildings Act in Manhattan! But speaking of Manhattan... NYU's Engineering program isn't there at all! It's in the "Brooklyn Tech Triangle." Regardless, both Washington Square and Downtown Brooklyn have orders of magnitude more transportation capacity than the Hilltop, which again facilitates the kind of expansion not feasible on Main Campus.
- Tufts is probably the closest analogue of the four, with a campus only 1.6x bigger than Georgetown's. But it, too, has its own T station, plus commuter rail nearby. It is not boxed in to anywhere near the same extent.
You're certainly right that, were Georgetown's growing endowment to eventually allow it to fund the kind of STEM research program that merits AAU membership, it would trumpet that achievement. But a significant proportion of that research would inevitably take place elsewhere, whether at government facilities in the region or even abroad, such as the work of the Center for Global Health Practice and Impact, which has Georgetown-employed practitioners and researchers doing work in Cameroon, Eswatini, Haiti, Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania (not for nothing, but research dollars go a lot farther in those places). And that would be a 'rising tide lifts all boats' story, rather than the realization of a critical objective. Just as winning the Patriot League would be welcome, but the performance of the football team is clearly not a top institutional priority.
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DFW HOYA
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Jun 3, 2023 20:28:18 GMT -5
Post by DFW HOYA on Jun 3, 2023 20:28:18 GMT -5
I see what you did there... Seriously, this is a solid response and a contrast between reputation versus brand in academic circles. For some schools, their reputation among the academic community is their brand; for others, their brand is their reputation. The University of Texas has remarkable academic resources given the second largest endowment of any university (trailing only Harvard) but it is not considered a Top 25 institution because it is too large to be exclusive. Georgetown is seen as exclusive but not at the AAU level for serious research, no matter what Messrs. DeGioia and Groves would say. In a comparison of Notre Dame, GW, and Georgetown in statistics published by the National Science Foundation, Georgetown holds its own...to a point. In numbers of graduate students, GW is 49th, Georgetown 55th, and Notre Dame 91st. In research dollars, Georgetown is 92nd, GW 101st, and Notre Dame 106th. But for earned doctorates, ND is 75th, GW 91st, Georgetown 124th, and research space (square footage), the gap is apparent: GW 116th, Notre Dame 117th, Georgetown 153rd, just ahead of Miami (which also earned an AAU invitation). Georgetown's reputation is in politics and the humanities, and outside of medicine, these disciplines are simply not seen as "hard" research among AAU schools. GU has the brand but not the reputation as a research university. Georgetown has, for a variety reasons, steered clear of the applied sciences. It has added dozens of programs in the past 20 years, from gender and ethnic studies to "American Musical Culture" and "Tech, Ethics, & Society", but nothing on engineering. The lack of a college of engineering is the most visible lack of credentials for Georgetown, yet four of the AAU schools don't have a college of engineering--but can make a case for research expenditures where GU has none. (Brandeis, one of these schools, adds engineering by 2025.) Of the four pillars of STEM, GU is creditable in the sciences, understated in technology, absent in engineering and largely unremarkable in mathematical research; which, much as we might argue to the contrary, may be acceptable at the highest levels of the University.
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C86
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Jun 4, 2023 9:11:37 GMT -5
Post by C86 on Jun 4, 2023 9:11:37 GMT -5
I think DFW has got it right. Universities can be elite in what they do or in who they let in. The AAU has members who are in the former category, but not the latter. (E.g, Ohio State). It also has members that are in both categories (the Ivies, Duke, Chicago). Many of the schools that straddle both categories are GU’s perceived peers.
Since this thread also addresses public transportation, s bit of clarification. Tufts’ T stop opened in December 2022, a while after it was admitted to the AAU. Before that time the closest T stop was Davis Square, which seems to be about as far as Roslyn is to Georgetown (this is from walking both routes) . The commuter rail is at Porter Square, which is even farther than Davis Square. Driving to Tufts is still a nightmare
As for Case, they do have a Rapid station at University Circle, but in my experience the Healthline bus that you mention is not a huge factor. I’ve been stuck in traffic on Euclid and MLK Drive enough times to know that transportation issues still exist
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RusskyHoya
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Jun 4, 2023 15:00:49 GMT -5
Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 4, 2023 15:00:49 GMT -5
I see what you did there... Seriously, this is a solid response and a contrast between reputation versus brand in academic circles. For some schools, their reputation among the academic community is their brand; for others, their brand is their reputation. The University of Texas has remarkable academic resources given the second largest endowment of any university (trailing only Harvard) but it is not considered a Top 25 institution because it is too large to be exclusive. Georgetown is seen as exclusive but not at the AAU level for serious research, no matter what Messrs. DeGioia and Groves would say. In a comparison of Notre Dame, GW, and Georgetown in statistics published by the National Science Foundation, Georgetown holds its own...to a point. In numbers of graduate students, GW is 49th, Georgetown 55th, and Notre Dame 91st. In research dollars, Georgetown is 92nd, GW 101st, and Notre Dame 106th. But for earned doctorates, ND is 75th, GW 91st, Georgetown 124th, and research space (square footage), the gap is apparent: GW 116th, Notre Dame 117th, Georgetown 153rd, just ahead of Miami (which also earned an AAU invitation). Georgetown's reputation is in politics and the humanities, and outside of medicine, these disciplines are simply not seen as "hard" research among AAU schools. GU has the brand but not the reputation as a research university. Georgetown has, for a variety reasons, steered clear of the applied sciences. It has added dozens of programs in the past 20 years, from gender and ethnic studies to "American Musical Culture" and "Tech, Ethics, & Society", but nothing on engineering. The lack of a college of engineering is the most visible lack of credentials for Georgetown, yet four of the AAU schools don't have a college of engineering--but can make a case for research expenditures where GU has none. (Brandeis, one of these schools, adds engineering by 2025.) Of the four pillars of STEM, GU is creditable in the sciences, understated in technology, absent in engineering and largely unremarkable in mathematical research; which, much as we might argue to the contrary, may be acceptable at the highest levels of the University. Hah yeah I figured you'd 'appreciate' the football comparison. I think Messrs. DeGioia and Groves (the latter a statistician by training) can read the numbers as well as anyone and have no problem acknowledging the realities of our current situation. Georgetown is certainly credible as a research university - it is an R1, after all, which ostensibly puts it in the top 4% of all universities in the U.S. But STEM research tends to be very labor-, facility-, and equipment-intensive (sometimes ridiculously slow, as we've seen from Duke's sabotaging of a light rail line on the grounds that the vibrations would disturb its highly sensitive experiments - an argument some at UMD also pulled out to try to drive the Purple Line underground). The constraints on all three of those inputs at Georgetown helps explain why the school tends to prioritize fields of study that are not quite so resource-intensive in this regard. So long as there is a hard cap on undergraduates on Main Campus, adding new undergraduate programs is largely going to be a zero-sum game, taking away from existing majors. There are some cases where this is considered justified due to stakeholder demand, as there was for some kind of music major (the aforementioned AMC) and for Af-Am. You see more of this at the minor/certificate level, e.g., the minor in Disability Studies. One partial exception to this is the forthcoming Public Policy major. The precondition for this is having the undergraduates who select this major live at the new downtown dorm, thereby allowing the University to increase the overall number of undergraduates by a corresponding number. By the way, the UT endowment figure is for the entire UT system, and obviously there are major differences in 'eliteness' between the flagship campus in Austin and, say, UT-Permian Basin. I did really enjoy coming across this quote: "In a lot of ways, the University of Texas is more like a sovereign wealth fund for a place like Norway," says Charlie Eaton, a sociology professor at the University of California, Merced who studies college endowments."I think DFW has got it right. Universities can be elite in what they do or in who they let in. The AAU has members who are in the former category, but not the latter. (E.g, Ohio State). It also has members that are in both categories (the Ivies, Duke, Chicago). Many of the schools that straddle both categories are GU’s perceived peers. Since this thread also addresses public transportation, s bit of clarification. Tufts’ T stop opened in December 2022, a while after it was admitted to the AAU. Before that time the closest T stop was Davis Square, which seems to be about as far as Roslyn is to Georgetown (this is from walking both routes) . The commuter rail is at Porter Square, which is even farther than Davis Square. Driving to Tufts is still a nightmare As for Case, they do have a Rapid station at University Circle, but in my experience the Healthline bus that you mention is not a huge factor. I’ve been stuck in traffic on Euclid and MLK Drive enough times to know that transportation issues still exist All fair points about Tufts and Case (although the pedestrian experience of walking from Davis Square is physically and psychologically very different than coming from Rosslyn due to the grade change and the Key Bridge experience). I was using transportation as one facet of the larger set of growth constraints that are most severe at Georgetown, not least because it is that very transportation challenge that is used by Georgetown residents and the District to place so many restrictions on the University, far beyond what is placed on any of these other institutions. There's no question that all the AAU members are elite producers of STEM research - I would never object to recognizing them as such. But expanding that out to a general indicator of academic quality or prestige or what have you, such that any school inside the club is considered superior to any one outside of it - is simply not justifiable in my view.
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Jun 5, 2023 10:26:53 GMT -5
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Post by buffandblue on Jun 5, 2023 10:26:53 GMT -5
Russky: GW’s “non-campus?” It is very much a campus, even with it being integrated into the street grid. University Yard, Midcampus and Kogan Plaza are major open spaces. And most of the campus is zoned for educational and institutional use, not commercial. Sites that are exceptions include investment properties along Pennsylvania Avenue, at Washington Circle and near the World Bank. The development of the Foggy Bottom Campus has been regulated by a DC-approved campus plan for decades. The Mount Vernon Campus is also guided in its development by a DC-approved campus plan. And the Virginia Science and Technology Campus in Loudoun County is regulated by a County-approved Campus Plan.
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hoyatables
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Post by hoyatables on Jun 5, 2023 14:46:43 GMT -5
Russky: GW’s “non-campus?” It is very much a campus, even with it being integrated into the street grid. University Yard, Midcampus and Kogan Plaza are major open spaces. And most of the campus is zoned for educational and institutional use, not commercial. Sites that are exceptions include investment properties along Pennsylvania Avenue, at Washington Circle and near the World Bank. The development of the Foggy Bottom Campus has been regulated by a DC-approved campus plan for decades. The Mount Vernon Campus is also guided in its development by a DC-approved campus plan. And the Virginia Science and Technology Campus in Loudoun County is regulated by a County-approved Campus Plan. GW's Foggy Bottom campus is largely located in a residential zone, just like its Mount Vernon campus and just like GU's Main Campus. Howard, AU, CUA, UDC, and Gallaudet are also located all or part in residential zones, which is why they all need to go through the Campus Plan process -- university use is allowed, but only via a special exception approval process that ensures the university use does not create objectionable impacts on the surrounding residential neighborhoods. Put another way, there's no material difference between GU, GW, or any other local university in terms of zoning. Now, practically speaking, GW's campus is located in high-density residential zones (rather than low-density zoning that only allows single family houses (like Mount Vernon's zone) or rowhouses (like GU's Main Campus zone), and GW has also used a special zoning tool known as a Planned Unit Development to rezone portions of its campus to higher-density commercial zoning (such as to allow buildout of the aforementioned Science and Engineering Hall), but GW agreed to provide significant benefits (giving up existing and future off-campus expansion opportunities, creating a campus historic district that limits development in other areas, and so on) to achieve those benefits. And GW is also subject to enrollment limitations, though they have both higher undergraduate and graduate limits compared to GU. (GW also has faculty/staff caps, which GU has managed to avoid.) I look at it this way: given limited resources, GU's made a conscious choice to focus on areas other than the applied sciences, while GW chose to invest heavily in them. I don't think GU "missed" on the AAU because it really wasn't part of its plan, but I do think that it is a good "win" for GW to secure invitation to the AAU as an affirmation of their strategic direction and investment.
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RusskyHoya
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Jun 5, 2023 19:52:00 GMT -5
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 5, 2023 19:52:00 GMT -5
Russky: GW’s “non-campus?” It is very much a campus, even with it being integrated into the street grid. University Yard, Midcampus and Kogan Plaza are major open spaces. And most of the campus is zoned for educational and institutional use, not commercial. Sites that are exceptions include investment properties along Pennsylvania Avenue, at Washington Circle and near the World Bank. The development of the Foggy Bottom Campus has been regulated by a DC-approved campus plan for decades. The Mount Vernon Campus is also guided in its development by a DC-approved campus plan. And the Virginia Science and Technology Campus in Loudoun County is regulated by a County-approved Campus Plan. I kid, I kid. These days I commute to and from work via the Foggy Bottom Metro four days a week, so I am very familiar with GW's physical layout. It's a great urban campus. Don't get your Colonial Revolutionary pantaloons in a knot hoyatables is, of course, a DC land use attorney, so you should take anything he says on the topic as rock solid. It's a fair point that most of GW's campus is technically zoned RA-4, and they're able to do what they do through negotiated PUD and subject to their own Campus Plans. Obviously, both the GW neighbors (most of them apartment/condo-dwellers themselves) and the District authorities (not to mention the Old Georgetown Board and U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, whose authorities do not extend outside the historic district) treat the Foggy Bottom location very differently from a development and intensity of use standpoint than they do the Hilltop.
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Jun 5, 2023 22:16:15 GMT -5
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Post by buffandblue on Jun 5, 2023 22:16:15 GMT -5
Russky: point taken. I hate the restrictions placed on DC universities such as enrollment limits and ANC review of campus plans and projects. I wish GW, GU and the other DC colleges and universities would fight the current restraints on their growth and development - how about a class-action lawsuit!
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RusskyHoya
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Jun 6, 2023 22:29:37 GMT -5
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 6, 2023 22:29:37 GMT -5
Another good example of the costs associated with bulking up doctoral and associated research programs: an increasing expectation that the University will provide below-market rate housing (in addition to paying a stipend and charging no tuition):
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Jun 7, 2023 18:16:28 GMT -5
Post by reformation on Jun 7, 2023 18:16:28 GMT -5
A couple of points: 1)Not sure how many people really care about the AAU--certainly would rather have it than not, but not sure that really specifically hurts us--just not sure that many people really think about it 2)Gtwn's relative weakness in STEM and a lot of other research generally is more due to strategic decisions on the part of Univ admin vs space considerations. Most recent research advances are based on applying computational techniques across many fields--requires skill in comp sci/data science etc-applications obviously range widely. Gtwn is in a perfect location to attract star researchers but never really took the risk to try to build up world class research efforts in any specific discipline. 3)From an endowment perspective we probably could have raised $ to support top research in computational bioscience like U Chiago did for ex (Pritzker Molecular Engineering at U Chicago) --but we would have had to take a bigger bet on that one field rather than try to support numerous marginal efforts in areas that a lot of big donors don't really consider impt to support. 4)I have always wondered but never asked any of the top admin if Gtwn ever reached out to Johns Hopkins to try to do some joint research projects-or even let our undergrads take classes at each other's campus--it would help us attract more non-pre-med stem focused undergrads. Seems like an obvious route to try to address Gtwn's STEM weakness.
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SSHoya
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Jun 7, 2023 18:35:09 GMT -5
Post by SSHoya on Jun 7, 2023 18:35:09 GMT -5
A couple of points: 1)Not sure how many people really care about the AAU--certainly would rather have it than not, but not sure that really specifically hurts us--just not sure that many people really think about it 2)Gtwn's relative weakness in STEM and a lot of other research generally is more due to strategic decisions on the part of Univ admin vs space considerations. Most recent research advances are based on applying computational techniques across many fields--requires skill in comp sci/data science etc-applications obviously range widely. Gtwn is in a perfect location to attract star researchers but never really took the risk to try to build up world class research efforts in any specific discipline. 3)From an endowment perspective we probably could have raised $ to support top research in computational bioscience like U Chiago did for ex (Pritzker Molecular Engineering at U Chicago) --but we would have had to take a bigger bet on that one field rather than try to support numerous marginal efforts in areas that a lot of big donors don't really consider impt to support. 4)I have always wondered but never asked any of the top admin if Gtwn ever reached out to Johns Hopkins to try to do some joint research projects-or even let our undergrads take classes at each other's campus--it would help us attract more non-pre-med stem focused undergrads. Seems like an obvious route to try to address Gtwn's STEM weakness. I guess this is not the same thing that you're talking about in point 4 but it seems largely unknown. Or am I incorrect about that? college.georgetown.edu/academics/majors-minors-and-certificates/science-engineering/
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RusskyHoya
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Jun 8, 2023 9:40:55 GMT -5
Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 8, 2023 9:40:55 GMT -5
2)Gtwn's relative weakness in STEM and a lot of other research generally is more due to strategic decisions on the part of Univ admin vs space considerations. Most recent research advances are based on applying computational techniques across many fields--requires skill in comp sci/data science etc-applications obviously range widely. Gtwn is in a perfect location to attract star researchers but never really took the risk to try to build up world class research efforts in any specific discipline. Running those computational techniques often requires massive computing power that is not practical to house on campus due to facility constraints. While most scientists compete for Federal grants of time on the most powerful supercomputers, like the ones at the National Laboratories, the major STEM powers have their own significant in-house computing operations. See, e.g., NYU's Green Supercomputer, GWU's Pegasus, or Tufts' HPC Cluster. Georgetown's equivalent is offered through Google Cloud Platform and is... good, not great.
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Jun 9, 2023 7:33:28 GMT -5
Post by reformation on Jun 9, 2023 7:33:28 GMT -5
The current lack of a big time HPC on campus for Gtwn is more of an outgrowth of bad strategic choices made in the 90's-early 2000's than the cause. The head of the faculty senate and a meaningful group of colleagues suggested 20-25 years ago that Gtwn invest to develop world class capability in comp sci data science etc to support both those subjects specifically and the obvious spillover effects on computational bioscience and social science. The macro trends by the early 2000's in this direction were already very clear and places like NYU Courant(math data science etc) were offered as specific models to follow. This had implications for how to do the new science center etc, academic hiring, fundraising etc. O'Donovan + Jack I guess made the wrong call and we are where we are. It's not mainly a "space" issue, it's more of a "judgment" issue.
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