April 2013
4 posts
“The AAC&U survey also shows employers’ support for the idea that students should be broadly educated and should apply their learning to the real world during college. More than half of employers indicated that recent college graduates should have “both field-specific knowledge and skills and a broad range of skills and knowledge.”
—Employers Want Broadly Educated New Hires, Survey Finds - Students - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Lindsay Wells is the Liberal Arts Commencement Speaker
The College of the Liberal Arts does have a commencement speaker: our student marshal, Lindsay Wells. Lindsay is a triple major in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, Art History, and Medieval Studies.
What we don’t have is a second commencement speaker from inside or outside the University. Although we have traditionally had two speakers, this year colleges were given the option not to have a non-student commencement speaker. We in the College of the Liberal Arts decided to give that a try this year in order to highlight our student marshal and to try to limit the length of the ceremony.
We grant over 2000 degrees each year and call out the names of over 1500 students at the spring commencement ceremony. Calling individual names is important for the many families who have gathered to celebrate the accomplishment of a specific, unique individual.
I believe we are the only College that still has a student speaker at commencement, and we decided that was the tradition to continue as it expresses well the student-centered spirit of the ceremony and of the approach to education we take in the College of the Liberal Arts.
February 2013
10 posts
Broken Door at a Graduate Apartment Buidling
Entrance to the Graduate apartment building.
via: https://twitter.com/MeghanHartley2/status/305470543853912064/photo/1
Book Review of 'Disrupting Class' by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson →
elearnmag.acm.org
This should have been a clue to the obvious. Public education is fundamentally different from business, so to what extent can disruptive innovation theory actually apply? It falls apart in the second phase precisely because education is not business. “Market share” is largely irrelevant, “performance improvements” are multi-variant and not amenable to easy categorization, and teachers are more than just “labor.”
January 2013
6 posts
“But our innovation must be fueled by rigorous academic research, our curriculum made relevant and compelling by engaged and engaging public scholarship, and our attempts to reach out beyond the physical campuses of the university ought to be animated by a vision of education rooted in a commitment to the transformative power of academic research.”
—Research and the Penn State Vision - The Long Road
“The recession took a toll on recent college graduates, whose employment rates and earnings dropped from roughly 2003 to 2011. But they still fared quite a bit better than their peers with less education, suggesting that college degrees continue to protect even young workers.”
—Recession Hurt Young Graduates, but Not as Much as Less-Educated Peers - Students - The Chronicle of Higher Education
“If you’re among the lucky who can factor more than cost and proximity into where you decide to go, college is a ticket to an adventure beyond the parameters of what you’ve experienced so far. It’s a passport to the far side of what you already know. It’s a chance to be challenged, not coddled. To be provoked, not pacified.”
—
How to Choose a College - NYTimes.com
For those of you considering coming to the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State, this passage captures something of the spirit of the education we offer.
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Too many students (and their parents) think of college as the place that will grant them the degree they need to work at X job. The problem is, X job might not exist 10 or 20 years from now. Or X job might be transformed into something else, something that requires critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills.
When that happens, and it happens all the time, humanities majors find that their degrees were good investments after all - and that they are employable anywhere in the economy where there is thinking to be done.
” —My View: What will you do with an English degree? Plenty – Schools of Thought - CNN.com Blogs
If you have to go with an economic argument, Bérubé makes a good one.
Play
“Throughout all four years of college, I managed to hold it together at school. I got a job as a contributing reporter, worked at an internship, and maintained a GPA of 3.8. On the outside, I seemed to be doing fine. But behind closed doors, I was becoming a mess.”
—All my wasted New Year’s - Salon.com
