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Post by reformation on Sept 14, 2009 21:33:11 GMT -5
Are you saying that donations exceed the cost of the program? Is that really true---seems unlikely. Also most univ's consider the biggest cost to their football program to be the academic cost of admitting a big class of recruits--Gtwn is not unique in this regard, though I'm not sure if the univ really measures the academic costs of its sports-stanford, the ivies, e.g., definitely do.
I'm not arguing for cancelling the program but to evaluate football, baseball etc properly you have to look at it comprehensively including donations as you mention, academic costs, financial costs, what other uses there are for the $ and other factors.
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Post by reformation on Aug 21, 2009 23:02:28 GMT -5
A Jesuit, university education is not supposed to be primarily a pre-professional training, but a broad intellectual cultivation.--CWS
I'd like to offer the following: 1)There shouldn't really be a conflict between academic rigor and broad intellectual cultivation, both are achievable simultaneously 2)There is no need to reinvent the wheel-checking out what others do and adopting best practices is a quick and practical way to achieve real improvements in finite time--Stanford B-school completely revised and implemented a new curriculum in slightly more than 1 year-it looks like Gtwn is looking at 5 yrs or so-Adopting best practices does not mean Gtwn can't try to innovate on its own, but I think its impt to recognize that very little change actually occurs in the absence of competitive pressure/goals.
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Post by reformation on Aug 21, 2009 22:35:55 GMT -5
From a course sequencing + degree structure point of view probably a lot fewer gtwn students write real thesis/conduct any real research though I know that the univ is trying to addresss this. Good points in general, but I do not buy this research tact that some at GU suggest. It's not practical. I was in the business school-what "research" or thesis makes practical sense for an accounting major? Do we really expect a 20 year old to be turning in a document titled "An Integrated Maintenance, Overhaul, and Replacement Strategy for Equipment Subject to Deterioration, Obsolescence, Inflation, and Tax Effects By Individuals and Limited Liability Entities Implementing FASB 25?" A business curriculum (and I would offer, a SFS one as well) is not going to be guided by research and post-grad fellowship opportunities to be successful. DFW, good point. I agree with you re: the B School and rsrch-though I disagree re: the SFS. The MSB has some pretty clear competitors-it should simply take an appropriate best practices approach like any business would--I've employed few MSB undergrads as interns recently and would offer that a better quantitaive sequence and probably more well thought out liberal arts(non business) integration in the curriculum wouldn't hurt-those are course content and sequencing issues, though as you point out they are not rsrch/thesis driven.
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Post by reformation on Aug 21, 2009 11:15:45 GMT -5
reformation: What can Georgetown do to make it's undergrad academic program on par with it's academic peers? What are we lacking exactly? I explained in another thread a bit about how a psych class of mine with the chair of the psych department discussed the academic life report a lot. For the most part it seems that relative to peer institutions Georgetown Students appear to be studying less and yet getting higher grades. We discovered though that Georgetown Students are under-reporting their study hours due 1) to the poor phrasing of the evaluation forms( i.e we're supposed to be including time in class in the hours of study according the people who read the forms, but this isn't made clear) 2) apathy in filing out the forms( most students don't read the forms and just bubble in random numbers and don't realize their importance. This all leads to the perception of grade inflation at Georgetown, which I'm sure is part of the reason for our peer review status. What else needs to be changed besides things like this perception?( I'm not denying the existence of grade inflation, I just believe it is less rampant as it's being perceived.) Is it our lack of Majors? or what exactly? or is more just the nature of the type of student Georgetown attracts i.e. more students in foreign service, Peace Corp, TFA, less students applying to the top PHD programs Making our undergrad program competitive with peers is not about study hours or grade inflation(though grad schools will subjectively haircut your GPA based on how difficult that they think the school/your specific degree is--). I guarantee you that nobody outside Gtwn's knows or cares about the study hours issue--Gtwn shld care about academic rep however as it affects people who want to go to grad school. To answer your question directly, Gtwn needs to address course content, course sequencing and degree structures if they want to make the undergard program more competitive academically. From a practical perspective what the univ should do is look in "detail" at what its top competitors do in their comparable degree programs and adopt best practices where changes need to be made--its really not that difficult to do--its standard operating procedure at other elite schools--Gtwn just doesn't do it very consistently. Just to provide a bit of perspective on comparative course content Gtwn has a couple of new masters programs in Math and Intl History. While both these programs are fine, they are really taught primarily at the level of an advanced undergad program at har/Yal/Prin/Penn/Col/Stan/etc. Also, I'd say across the board there's a pretty serious lack of attention to quantitative + problem solving skills. Also on a relative basis Gtwn also has a lot of redundant classes on unique but pretty insignificant topics that are crowd the curriculum -using the net its pretty easy to compare classes at different schools-if you want a few I'd be happy to show you a couple offline From a course sequencing + degree structure point of view probably a lot fewer gtwn students write real thesis/conduct any real research though I know that the univ is trying to addresss this. The degree stucture at most top univ's would sequence courses to provide the students the background to write a good thesis/do real research when they are juniors/seniors-in order to do that however;, students need to take serious courses that introduce them to the methodology of their respective discipline when they are freshman + soph's--its hard to just start more rigorous stuff when you are a junior/senior especially when so many Gtwn students study abroad as jrs(which is a good thing). i suspect that cramming the theology/phil stuff into the first year has an effect on crowding out continuation of math e.g., which is not helpful for a lot of degrees/students as an example. Making positive changes to the undergrad program to make it a bit more challenging and competitive is not that hard; however, the admin has to decide to actually do something--not just "blame the students" for not studying--it also seems like they blame the students for grade inflation too--the students don't set the course content, sequencing, or degree structure as I outlined above. Fixing the problem requires admitting that there is a problem, which the Gtwn admin has a tough time doing. Other schools like a Northwestern, eg., are much more candid with students, alumni, faculty about where they stand on a relative basis to their peers have been much more successful than GU for instance over the past 20 yrs in raing both money and their academic profile.
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Post by reformation on Aug 19, 2009 22:15:40 GMT -5
What we need is the new science building. I suspect our peer assessment tends to be relatively low because we are not seen as well balanced between liberal arts and hard sciences. An engineering school would really help with that, of course, but it ain't gonna happen. We could also stand to have an endowment of $30 billion. I don't think that the science building really has any impact on outside peer asessment--if the people doing the peer assessment actually knew the state of facilities they would rank us even lower---some of the things that probably hurt our perception in peer academic rankings include things like the small # of gtwn students that apply(get in) to top phd programs. Also I don't think that there is a lot of focus from our admin on trying to make sure that Gtwn's undergrad academic program from a pure acdemic viewpoint is on par with our peer universities(which we compete with from an admissions standpoint). I think that our admin place more emphasis on the overall "georgetown experience" than the strict academic experience and are content with the status quo unless we actually fell out of the US News top 25--which would be a big deal. Given the actual lack of focus on the pure academic side of things(rightly or wrongly), our mediocre review on peer assessments is not surprising and is probably not all that out of step with what a lot of our own faculty think--witness the recent academic life report that was leaked to the voice/hoya last yr.
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Post by reformation on Aug 15, 2009 9:28:38 GMT -5
Don't think we'll get any respect on either men/women's side until we make some kind of breakthough, e.g., big upset win, winning a game in NCAA tournament. Hopefully this year will be the year. I think that the coahing staffs + full schollies have been in lace long enough to begin to expect seeing some improvement in results.
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Post by reformation on Aug 13, 2009 16:26:30 GMT -5
I didn't know where to put this.... UCLA recently tied Inter Milan 2-2 in an exhibition in L.A., and yes Ibra played, etc. Now, this is good cause it means UCLA is a quality opponent, but I was more wondering what the odds of us scheduling a similar summer match against a European club team were, considering this is their pre-season.... link to this? interesting if true.....Gtown played the US national team in a friendly a few years ago so not completely unheard of..DC United regularly plays UMD and UVA in preseason I remember last yr te women were supposed to get a striker from the icelandic natl team--i chked the roster and did not see her listed--does anyone know what happened to her
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Post by reformation on Jul 25, 2009 20:59:28 GMT -5
We recruited a lot of elite women's sprinters this year--Hopefully they will stay with the program if we can find someone good to replace her--I would have to imagine that Burrell was the track draw for them at least. Unfortunately it is late in the year and there is probably nobody on the existing staff who could step into her role. Hopefully we can also get someone who can work with the 400-800m men.
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Post by reformation on Jul 18, 2009 11:41:05 GMT -5
Sorry to hear that Toby was a DNS. I hope he is not badly injured. Perhaps some NCAA rules and regulations kept him from competing in the semis. Have to wonder why the mens team seems to frequently dns/dnf in champioship meets--the pattern is getting a bit ridiculous . Is it random bad luck, bad training strategy or something else?
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Post by reformation on Jul 17, 2009 13:18:46 GMT -5
Unfortunately Toby was a DNS in the semi final round at the European U23 champs. I would assume that he must have gotten injured in round 1--hopefully nothing significant.
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Post by reformation on Jul 16, 2009 20:37:41 GMT -5
Current Soph Toby Ulm moved on to the semi final round in the 400h at the European U23 Athletics champs in Lithuania. Toby is representing great Britain(2 years ago he got a bronze in the Euro U20 champs.
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Post by reformation on Jun 27, 2009 19:14:02 GMT -5
GU's official athletic site is reporting that Biyerem has broken the school record in the110H. However, the wind was over the legal limit of 2 meters per sec (it was 2.8 mps), so IMO, it cannot be recognized as the school record. Also, I am not sure the junior hurdles (and this was a junior race) are the same height as the open hurdlers' race. I will have to check on that. A couple of other errors on the following link. The men's final of the 5000m was not a two-heat timed final, as originally planned, but a one-heat final. And Emily Infeld and not Maggie is running in the junior 800m today. guhoyas.cstv.com/sports/m-track/recaps/062709aaa.htmlYes I "think" the GUHOYAS report is bogus--Jr's go over 39" hurdles while college/sr national competitors use 42" hurdles--I am not completely sure on this one, but believemy post to be accurate and the GU post to be erroneous
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Post by reformation on Jun 27, 2009 19:11:12 GMT -5
GU's official athletic site is reporting that Biyerem has broken the school record in the110H. However, the wind was over the legal limit of 2 meters per sec (it was 2.8 mps), so IMO, it cannot be recognized as the school record. Also, I am not sure the junior hurdles (and this was a junior race) are the same height as the open hurdlers' race. I will have to check on that. A couple of other errors on the following link. The men's final of the 5000m was not a two-heat timed final, as originally planned, but a one-heat final. And Emily Infeld and not Maggie is running in the junior 800m today. guhoyas.cstv.com/sports/m-track/recaps/062709aaa.html
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Post by reformation on Jun 26, 2009 22:38:04 GMT -5
Bumbalough and Debole both faded in the 5k's --Bumby tried to stay with a fast pace early on and ended up running a 14:15--I'm sure he was unhappy with that--Bumby tried to hang on to freshman phenom German Fernandez but could not take the pace. Seems like all the gtwn distance guys other than Liam Boylan-Pett had trouble at the meet--have to wonder about their training/peaking strategy
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Post by reformation on Jun 18, 2009 12:48:28 GMT -5
I wonder if Toby Ulm has a shot to make the UK 400H team.
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Post by reformation on Jun 10, 2009 20:02:02 GMT -5
A couple of other recruits had big pr's in their state meets:
Tenille Stoudenmire 11.7/23.9 for a third/forth placing at the CA state meet--big perf, faster than anyone else on Gtwn's current team.
Kirsten Kasper: 4:49 mile to win the Mass state champ--5 sec for her--she swam rather tha run track in the indoors, so she still probably has a lot of upside relative to some of the other elite runners. For some perspective I think Renee Tomlin ran around 4:49 in hs and was also an all state swimmer, but was a lot faster at 800, maggie Infeld was around 4:47 and I think Emily Infeld was around 4:43. So if Kirsten can improve a couple of sec at the year end meets she would be right in the middle of the comp hs times of our top few mid distance runners. The newsppaer report I saw in her win also indicated that she ran her final lap in 64 sec, which is unbelieveably quick for a hs girl.
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Post by reformation on Jun 10, 2009 19:53:17 GMT -5
London Finley also advanced to the semi's in the 400H--advancing to the final will require a big PR for her, though I think she ran a pr in the prelim.
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Post by reformation on Jun 7, 2009 20:10:01 GMT -5
Christine whalen continues to make big pr's--the women have 3 returning runners at 2:06--they need one more runner to step up to have another shot at winning the ncaa dmr or at penn.
good run for bumbalough--it will be interesting to see what he does at the natl champs--it will be his first champ 5k--hopefully it will be a tactical race where he could be in contention
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Post by reformation on Jun 6, 2009 21:38:42 GMT -5
What you say is certainly true re: those two programs , but I'm not sure that they are ever going to be in a position to occasionally compete for a national champ or even go deep in their respective NCAA tourneys--also not sure what reaches we make academically in those sports--don't have the answers but I still think we'd have to look at those sports critically from a number of angles.
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Post by reformation on Jun 6, 2009 11:20:24 GMT -5
I would think the the new permanent AD would evaluate the more marginal programs--soccer seems to be improving and have a chance to be nationally relevant--
If it were me I guess I'd take a look at baseball/softball/football/women's volleyball/field hockey/golf/tennis--I wouldn't necessarily cut them, I might actually put more resources agaist some depending on the current situation + potential. Most elite colleges look at their sports commitments in terms of some combination of measures using $/competitiveness-significance/alumni support/academic cost to admitting marginal students. I think most people on the board forget about the academic cost aspect to various sports when discussing the costs + benefits of various programs.
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