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Written by Archer Dacomb on November 19, 2011.
We conclude our feature on Stalking by Nabokov, by Brian Boyd with a video of Boyd discussing Nabokovs unfinished final work The Original of Laura. As he discusses in his talk, Boyd initially thought the book should not be published but later changed his mind, recognizing the importance of the novel.
Written by Archer Dacomb on November 11, 2011.
Speakers at the recent EduCause conference, an event dedicated to “the intelligent use of information technology” in education, put a spotlight on mobile, social, and cloud-based learning technologies. These offerings address the desire for “convenience, affordability, 24/7 access, and flexibility” that is driving the 21% growth in online post-secondary enrollment. forbes.com
Written by Archer Dacomb on November 5, 2011.
I got an email this week from a California mother who was happy that her child would be a attending St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a wonderful public liberal arts college, in the fall.
Her husband, however, remained skeptical. He worried that his daughter would be jeopardizing her chances of going to graduate school if she went to an obscure liberal arts school. He thought shed have a better shot at attending graduate school if she earned her bachelors degree from a large state university in California or elsewhere.
Here’s my answer to that: Nonsense.
Students who attend liberal arts colleges enjoy many advantages that students at large public institutions often dont.
At liberal arts colleges, there is a much greater chance for undergraduate research. Classes are routinely small. Instead of 200 or 300 in Calculus II, you may have 15 or 20 students. Students have more opportunity to develop bonds with professors because the learning is in small settings and not lecture halls. And remember, its the professors who are writing those graduate school recommendations. My son, who is a sophomore who intends to major in math and minor in physics at Beloit College, is certainly experiencing the benefits of connecting with his professors.
Okay, you might be wondering, but where are your facts to back up your claims?
To answer the email from the mom, I tracked down a report produced by the National Science Foundation that examined where scientists and engineers, who had earned PhD’s, had obtained their undergraduate degrees. The majority of schools in the top 50 list of PhD-producing schools were liberal arts colleges.
When the NSF looked at what schools were producing the most PhD’s, per 100 undergraduate degrees granted, only three public institutions made the list – University of California-Berkeley, William and Mary College and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
Without further ado, here are the top 50 schools where graduates ultimately received a PhD in science or engineering:
Read More:
Written by Archer Dacomb on October 28, 2011.
For the past 10 years, Kim England has sent her “Geography of Cities” class of 150 students to the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), located right past Husky Stadium and across the Montlake Bridge — just blocks away from campus.
The museum, England said, tells a “people’s history,” combining art, technology, industry and commerce with the personal narratives of those in Seattle’s past.
In the class, which studies the historical development of cities, MOHAI has provided an ideal visual history to accompany the concepts she teaches.
But beginning next year, England’s students will have to travel just a bit farther to make the visit: In November 2012, MOHAI will relocate to a new location in South Lake Union. The move is the first ever for the museum in its 59-year history; its current building in Montlake is being demolished for SR520 road expansion.
“It’s a bit of a bummer from the perspective of sending the students across the bridge [to visit], but it’s not like it’s moving to Canada,” England said.
In the spirit of the move, an exhibit titled “MOHAI Moves History” is currently featured at the museum, which tells the six-decade story of the museum’s past and includes information about the new location.
“It recounts the history of the building and the institutions that use it — like the King County Historical Society and Seattle Historical Society — as they move out of that building,” MOHAI art historian Paul Dorpat said.
Dorpat is one of the art historians of another currently featured exhibit titled “Now & Then,” which is one of the last exhibits in the Montlake building.
This exhibit uses “repeat photography” to compare the same point of view of historical images with contemporary photos and visually illustrates changes in Seattle’s past.
Despite the inevitable move, Dorpat said those at MOHAI are optimistic about the potential for more foot traffic at its new location.
“I think [those at the museum] are happy about moving to a new location which is more centrally located,” he said. “I think maybe they think they’ll get more people coming to the museum at the south end of the lake.”
Some popular attractions of the museum include the pink “Toe Truck,” a Rainier Brewery commercial beer-man suit, and the Alki Landing Diorama, depicting settlers from 1851 first arriving at Alki.
But its resources extend well beyond the typical collections of photographs and historical artifacts — MOHAI also features off-site summer walking tours and short video segments called “MOHAI Minutes” that cover local spots like the Admiral Theatre in West Seattle and Schmitz Park near Alki. “MOHAI Minutes” even has its own YouTube channel.
The museum also shows movies in the basement and has regular speakers, like bestselling author Steve Berry, who is scheduled to lead a writer’s workshop August 6.
“Those are things that will sustain them,” England said.
As a student in England’s class last year, Junior Tiffany Oh visited MOHAI for the very first time. Before her visit, Oh said that she was somewhat unfamiliar with the museum.
Yet on that visit she particularly remembers being wowed by the “Boomtown” exhibit, a town of buildings displaying facets of Seattle’s history beginning from the end of the 19th century. She also retained some interesting tidbits about Seattle’s history, like learning the names of the first African American and Chinese American who lived in Seattle.
“There are a lot of things in Seattle’s past that I didn’t know about before,” she said. “It’s an important history museum, stuff you don’t get to see at [places like] the Pacific Science Center and the EMP.”
Experiences like Oh’s are what England hopes for when she assigns her students field assignments for the course, like visiting MOHAI.
“I want them to come away thinking that the city is not something in terms of a built environment, … the city is not something that is neutral,” England said. “Most of the time, there are reasons why some things in the city look the way they do, why some buildings look the way they do. By having them go do this they get a sense of how it looked previously. I’m trying to give them different ways of thinking about a city.”
Senior Taylor Youtsler also visited MOHAI as a part of England’s class and, to his surprise, found the museum enlightening.
“I thought I knew most of the history of Washington and Seattle, but when I went in there it was kind of amazing the fact that I didn’t even know half of what I should have and I was living here the whole time,” he said. “Everyone [who visits] is going to learn a whole lot, that’s a given. Just by going in there, it’s a good experience.”
Written by Archer Dacomb on October 20, 2011.
We conclude our week-long focus on Critical Children: The Use of Childhood in Ten Great Novels with a special offer for the book and by ending where we perhaps should have begun.
First of all, we would like to extend a 30% discount on Critical Children. To save 30%, add the book to your shopping cart, and enter code CRILO in the Redeem Coupon field at check out. Click on the redeem coupon button and your savings will be calculated.
In previous posts, weve mentioned a few of the children Richard Locke discusses in Critical Children but heres the full list:
Oliver Twist David Copperfield Pip Huckleberry Finn Tom Sawyer Miles and Flora (The Turn of the Screw) Peter Pan Holden Caulfield Lolita Alexander Portnoy
As Richard Locke points out in his introduction, literature provides us with many examples of memorable children, so why these characters and why did he choose the particular ten novels:
But why these particular ten novels? Because I’ve read and reread them with ever growing admiration and discovery. Because I’m not alone in my enthusiasm—general readers, writers, and students as well as scholars share it. And, as I’ve said, these characters still command instant recognition, though, of course, some of this may be because eight of the ten novels were turned into movies, often more than once. But it’s noteworthy that these characters are recognized not as figures in classic books for children (like Tom Brown’s School Days, Little Women, The Little House on the Prairie, Charlotte’s Web) but as children in classic books for adults. The books by Dickens, Twain, and Barrie were read by Victorian or Edwardian children, and high school adolescents are often assigned Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye as socializing rites of passage: both rebels are ultimately tutelary spirits of American democracy. (That both books are often denounced or banned as well as required confirms their continued cultural centrality.) But these ten books are not primarily for children. And, of course, these characters are not the only great children to be found in novels, nor are these ten novels the only great novels about children—think of Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, What Maisie Knew, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Still, these characters command a wider extra-literary force-field in popular consciousness than Cathy or Jane or Maisie or Stephen. And although these characters are fictional, they exert normative authority in ways that rival or exceed that of the nonfictional characters of, say, Father and Son or Black Boy or Memories of a Catholic Girlhood or The Woman Warrior. That nine of the eleven central characters are boys, that all are white, and that all of the authors are male and white reflects the race, class, and gender priorities and prejudices of the society that found them—and despite political progress still finds them—so compelling. There are many other books of great distinction that feature nonwhite children, and many by nonwhite and female authors.
Written by Archer Dacomb on October 15, 2011.
The Growth of Community Colleges in the American States: An Application of Count Models to Institutional Growth by William R. Doyle & Alexander V. Gorbunov The authors use a panel data set covering all 50 states from the years 1969-2002 to investigate the growth of community colleges. They find that community college expansion was driven in large part by changes in state populations, while growth was slowed by competition from other institutions. Source: Teachers College Record On Line