Liberal Education

Labor Day and the Start of the Semester

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This year our first day of the semester is also Labor Day, which has certainly caused grumbling among some of us who have to show up for class on Monday rather than enjoying the last long weekend of summer. And of course it’s not just a matter of showing up Monday. Syllabi need final preparation, lectures must be written, and advisees are looking for guidance.

But on this Labor Day we should remember those who won’t have to report this week at all because there aren’t enough jobs. With official unemployment stubbornly remaining between 9% and 10%, there are many around us who are suffering from the poverty and despair of not being able to find work. Bob Herbert’s column in the New York Times on September 4 underscores the plight of a group of custodians recently laid off from their jobs at a luxury office building in Los Angeles. Closer to home, the Middletown food bank Amazing Grace reports a red alert because of the low level of supplies on their shelves. Right here at Wesleyan, we have made a small number of position reductions over the last 18 months. Each job is personal not just institutional, and each position elimination was painful.

As students plan their courses for the fall, and as faculty plan their curricula, how should we connect the reality of labor and unemployment to the broad liberal learning we so value? It can be done very specifically, as with Claire Potter’s Frosh History Seminar on Poverty in the United States, and it can be done more generally by thinking through how a liberal arts education is related to how one will support oneself. As I have said many times now in various venues, I believe a liberal education has never been more relevant to work in the world than it is today. This has little to do with the specific choice of concentration by an undergraduate. I was recently talking to a Wes parent who told me that in interviewing over a thousand people for jobs over the years he has never asked what somebody majored in during college. Instead, he has been looking for the ability to think creatively and critically, to imagine possibilities and to solve problems. This is the kind of ability cultivated by liberal learning.

A liberal education teaches that rigor and innovation, far from being in tension with one another, can often go hand in hand. Patience and diligence — practice and method — are qualities developed across a liberal arts curriculum. The American pragmatists celebrated inquiry as a mode of experience, and teachers and students today continue to believe that we must reflexively look back on our own inquiries to assess the learning process and whether the results are relevant to life beyond the specific questions being pursued. Self-criticism need not be navel-gazing. The practical is not the enemy of the true.

For years I have been saying that an undergraduate education should help students to discover what they love to do, and to get better at it. I’ve recently realized that it is important to emphasize a third goal: to develop the capacity to share what one loves to do (and has gotten a little better at) with others. This third goal, let’s call it “engagement,” connects what one has learned with what one can do with the communities to which one belongs.

The education that our students begin on Labor Day doesn’t promise a specific kind of job, but it does promise to expand one’s possibilities for meaningful work after graduation. Learning to learn also means learning to work, to engage with others in getting things done, creating opportunities and solving problems. Engaging with others also means being aware when we can be helpful to those in need, those who may not have the same opportunities we are enjoying while at the university.

My hope for Labor Day and the beginning of the semester is that through study and engagement we will eventually learn to create more jobs so that the perils and anxieties that mark this year’s holiday won’t become permanent parts of our economy and culture.

[tags]unemployment, Labor Day, Bob Herbert, New York Times, Amazing Grace Food Pantry, Claire Potter, Poverty in the United States, liberal arts education[/tags]

Summer Balance, Educational Balance

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This summer Kari and I are spending a good deal of time away from campus on a “working vacation.” It’s a vacation because we get to play a bit of tennis, swim with Mathilde in a lake, attend lots of theater and concerts. It’s a working vacation because we spend most of each day hovered over papers and computers. We both have book projects to finish (Kari’s on Animal Studies, mine on [what else?] making sense of the past), and we also have classes and lectures to prepare. It’s been a great summer thus far (lots of writing that hasn’t yet been thrown in the waste basket), and we have been visited by, or in conversation with, several of our Wesleyan colleagues. They, too, appreciate the change of pace that summer brings, but they, too, are working on research projects, classes, scholarly presentations. The list is really impressive.

I’ve been putting together a collection of my essays on memory disorders, psychoanalysis, photography, and education. I wrote some of the pieces several years ago, and it makes me reflect on the strange pace of change in the humanities and social sciences. I’ve been focused on considering which research concerns from many years ago are still alive, and which ones were merely of the moment. Sometimes what seemed like a “cutting edge” turned out to be just a dead end, while in other cases new paths of research have been extraordinarily productive.  I believe in the importance of traditional scholarship, and I know that the research of our faculty enlivens their teaching. I also can see how much “traditional scholarship” has changed over the three decades I’ve been teaching. Whether we focus on social history or critical theory, cultural anthropology or film studies, deconstruction or the ethical turn, we can see that the shape of professional study is continually being reconfigured.  This is a good thing, and the Wesleyan faculty who participate in this reconfiguration of scholarship give their students a dynamic sense of the vitality of intellectual life.

One of the great challenges in higher education is how to manage the balance of traditional and cutting edge scholarship as forces that shape the curriculum. We want our undergraduates to develop a solid base of inquiry that will continue to inform their lives after graduation, and we also want them to experience active research on issues that matter to contemporary scholarship and cultural life. At Wesleyan we are committed to revisit this balance on a regular basis so that our students engage with deep traditions of learning while also working through key issues of current concern. Our alumni — whatever their chosen endeavors — tell me that they continually find that their education is informing their work and their lives. That’s another balance, of course, that we all strive to achieve.

[tags]”traditional scholarship”, “cutting edge” scholarship, professor research, Wesleyan curricula[/tags]

Wesleyan in Washington

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Before heading off for some summer vacation, I spent the early part of this week in Washington, D.C.. The American Association of Colleges and Universities was hosting a gathering of presidents to discuss the impact of liberal learning on participation in the political sphere. This is a group devoted to the liberal arts experience, and led by President Carol Schneider AAC&U has presented very compelling information showing the public and private importance of the broad-based, participatory education offered at institutions like ours. Since I have been writing about these issues on the Huffington Post and elsewhere, I was glad to touch base with colleagues eager to make the case for liberal learning.

Since my stay in steamy DC was brief, I only had an opportunity to touch base with a few members of the Wes family doing interesting things in our nation’s capitol. We have alumni working in various sectors of government, but during this trip I met with a new Wesleyan parent, Mark Tercek, who is running The Nature Conservancy. TNC is one of the great international environmental organizations, and we talked about ways that this group might work together with our new College of the Environment. Mark was excited to hear about our plans for this interdisciplinary program, and I am confident we will find ways to make common cause. I also met with Dan deVise ’89, an education writer for the Washington Post. Dan and his wife Sophie ’88 met at Wes, and they have been pursuing journalism pretty much since graduation. I also had the chance meet with Col. Dunbar Gram and other members of the board of the James M. Johnson Trust. This foundation has generously supported Wesleyan’s financial aid program for many years, and I was delighted to report on our efforts to maintain need blind admissions in the face of all the economic pressures that challenge us.

I had interesting conversations about economic pressure, politics and education with our star Congresswoman, Rosa DeLauro. Rosa has been an energetic ally for educators for many years, and she continues to fight the good fight. I was so happy to see that she has a couple of Wes interns in her office this summer. Before returning home, Carol Scully and I had a productive meeting with a program officer from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Some say that the humanities are declining or are under siege, but I was pleased to share information on some of the real innovations going on at the Wes campus, especially at the Center for the Humanities.

During our time away Kari and I hope to finish a few writing projects, hear some great music and spend as much time outdoors as possible. That way we’ll be ready to greet the class of 2014 at the end of the summer!

[tags]American Association of Colleges and Universities, liberal arts education, Huffington Post, Mark Tercek, The Nature Conservancy, Dan deVise ’89, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, Col. Dunbar Gram[/tags]

How to Choose a (Our) University

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Last year in mid April I posted a blog about the challenges of choosing a college or university now that students know into which schools they have been accepted. I thought it might be useful to re-post, with a few revisions.

The thick envelopes (or weighty emails) arrived a couple of weeks ago, and the month of April is decision time. Of course, for many (especially this year) the decision will be made on an economic basis. Which school has given the most generous financial aid package? Wesleyan is one of a small number of schools that admits students irrespective of their ability to pay and seeks to meet full financial need according to a formula developed over several years. There are some schools with larger endowments that can afford to be even more generous than Wes, but there are hundreds (thousands?) of others that are unable even to consider meeting financial need over four years of study.

After answering the question of which schools one can afford, how else does one decide where best to spend one’s college years? Of course, size matters.  Some students are looking for a large university in an urban setting where the city itself plays an important role in one’s education. In recent years, campuses in New York and Boston, for example, have become increasingly popular. But if one seeks small classes and strong, personal relationships with faculty, then liberal arts schools, which pride themselves on providing rich cultural and social experiences on a residential campus, are especially compelling. You can be on a campus with a human scale and still have plenty of things to do. Wesleyan is somewhat larger than most liberal arts colleges but much smaller than the urban or land grant universities. We feel that this gives our students the opportunity to choose a broad curriculum and a variety of cultural activities on campus, while still being small enough to encourage regular, sustained relationships among faculty and students.

All the selective small liberal arts schools boast of having a faculty of teacher/scholars, of a commitment to research and interdisciplinarity, and of encouraging community and service. So what sets us apart from one another after taking into account size, location, and financial aid packages? What are students trying to see when they visit Amherst and Wesleyan, or Tufts and Middlebury?

Knowing that these schools all provide a high quality, broad and flexible curriculum with strong teaching, and that the students all have displayed great academic capacity, prospective students are trying to discern the personalities of each school. They are trying to imagine themselves on the campus, among the people they see, to get a feel for the chemistry of the place — to gauge whether they will be happy there. Hundreds of visitors will be coming to Wesleyan this weekend for WesFest (our annual program for admitted students). They will go to classes and athletic contests, musical performances and parties. And they will ask themselves: Would I be happy at Wesleyan?

I hope our visitors get a sense of the personality of the school that I so admire and enjoy. I hope they feel the exuberance and ambition of our students, the intelligence and care of our faculty, the playful yet demanding qualities of our community. I hope our visitors can sense our commitment to creating a diversity in which difference is embraced and not just tolerated, and to public service that is part of one’s education and approach to life.

We all know that Wesleyan is hard to get into (even more difficult this year!). But even in the group of highly selective schools, Wes is not for everybody. We aspire to be a community committed to boldness as well as to rigor, to idealism as well as to effectiveness. Whether in the sciences, arts, humanities or social sciences, our faculty and students are dedicated to explorations that invite originality as well as collaboration. The camaraderie around the completion of senior theses this week says a lot about who we are. We know how to work hard, but we also know how to enjoy the work we choose to do. That’s been magically appealing to me for more than 30 years. I bet the magic will enchant many of our visitors, too.

[tags]liberal arts college, WesFest, Tufts, Amherst, Middlebury, campus feel[/tags]

Trustee Meetings: A Grand Gift, MoCon, Tuition, Liberal Arts

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This past weekend the Board of Trustees was on campus. Despite the blizzard in the Northeast, trustees managed to get here for key meetings, engaging conversations and for some important decisions. One of the great moments of the weekend was the dinner to honor Wesleyan volunteers. At this celebration I was delighted to announce that Joshua Boger ’73, P ’06, P’09 and Amy Boger, M.D., P’06, P’09 have pledged 12 million dollars to our fundraising efforts. This will establish the Boger Scholarship Program and the Joshua Boger University Professorship of The Sciences and Mathematics. The first recipient of the chair appointment will be David L. Beveridge, professor of chemistry.

Here are some other highlights from the Board’s meetings.

The Campus Affairs Committee has an extraordinarily wide portfolio of concerns. They receive reports on Admissions (plenty of good news there!), co-curricular initiatives and core academic affairs. We discussed some of the current departmental models for assessing student learning and heard a report on the summer session pilot program. This committee also forwarded its recommendation to grant tenure to two stellar young scholar-teachers: Matthew Kurtz in Psychology and Typhaine Leservot in Romance Languages and the College of Letters.  Matt works on the neuroscience of cognitive rehabilitation for schizophrenia, and Typhaine’s research concerns changing modes of literary analysis (postcolonial, feminist) for contemporary Francophone writing. Congratulations to both!

The Finance Committee has a lion’s share of the work at the February meeting because it’s here that we propose our tuition for next year in the context of our budget projections. For next year the Board approved a 5% increase in tuition and fees, and we also project an 11% increase in our financial aid expenditures. We had plenty of discussion about how we might find ways to reduce costs so as to restrain future tuition increases without sacrificing the quality of student experience. This is a high priority going forward.

A topic that came up in various venues throughout the weekend concerned the future of McConaughy Hall. I knew the building well as a student, living just across from its front doors as a frosh. I remember with real fondness its grand staircase and wonderful light, and I also think back to some great parties and concerts I attended there. The building has been empty since I began my presidency, and since that time I’ve been trying to find an alternative use for it. The structure turns out to be terribly inefficient, and in great disrepair. Still, I had hopes that we might transform it (as we have done with Davenport and Fayerweather, and will do with Squash) for some community use.

I haven’t found an alternative use for MoCon. But given all the strong feeling, which I share, about trying to find alternative uses, I’ve delayed signing contracts for its demolition. The building has been here for almost 50 years, and I don’t take this decision lightly. But I also will not spend significant university funds every year without having a real function for the building. So, I am reviewing options (with appropriate professional guidance) one more time. I appreciate the input I’ve gotten, and I will be writing again soon on this subject.

At the main Board meeting we held an open discussion concerning changes in the liberal arts curriculum. How should we steer liberal arts learning in the future? I was particularly interested in hearing what fields the Board thought should be added to a liberal arts education, and which areas should be cut or reduced in importance. For example, I’ve been exploring the possibility of developing a liberal arts approach to engineering, and I’m also interested in how design thinking can have a more prominent role in our curriculum. Integrating our arts programs more fully into our academic programs (as with our new efforts in creative writing) is an important priority for many of us at Wes. I can ask readers here what I asked the Board: What would you like to see Wesleyan doing more of, less of?

Our conversation centered on three main areas for growth, and, truth be told, no real places for cutting: (1) public policy domestically and internationally, (2) engineering and design, (3) and the study of the impact of technology on culture and society. Dean Don Moon reminded us that while it might be good to have these general conversations at the Board level, each year the Wesleyan faculty develops dozens of new courses. The curriculum has been evolving and will continue to do so. We can thank our scholar-teacher model for that! It’s through their research that our professors develop new ideas that energize the classroom, and we are all the better for it!

Freeman Travels 2010

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For the last week I’ve been in Japan and Korea with Graeme Freeman from the Freeman Foundation and Terri Overton from Admissions interviewing students for our Freeman Scholarship program. The program has now been going for 15 years, and it has brought to Wesleyan many exceptionally talented young people from 11 different Asian countries. Year in, year out they arrive on campus with a thirst for learning, faith in a liberal arts education, and an extraordinary capacity for focused, challenging work.

This was my first trip to Tokyo and Seoul, and it also included a number of alumni gatherings. I had the pleasure of meeting Katsuhiko Hiyama ’60 (Kay) who is hoping to come back for his 50th reunion this year. Kay described to me how his Wesleyan education has been a lifelong resource for him as he worked in four different continents, and he also shared with me his love of jazz. I also met some recent alums, including Joyce Haejung Park ‘04, who majored in math and is now working for Chartis in Seoul. Although Sam Paik ‘90 and Professor Jung-Ho Kim ‘85 are frequent visitors to campus, it was great to see them on their home turf. And I met with alumni working in media, finance, education and public service. All described to me how they continue to draw on their Wes education.

Interviewing Freeman finalists is a great cure for cynicism. These high school seniors display a love of learning and a devotion to education that is truly inspiring. Although in many cases they have already registered significant success in school (I’ve never met as many perfect 800 scorers in a short period of time), the dominant theme was the desire to explore new areas of inquiry and to encounter a variety of cultural experiences. They were interested in CSS, COL and the new College of the Environment, in addition to our offerings in music, science, philosophy, and, yes, even East Asian Studies. One young woman was led to her interest in the liberal arts through reading Aristotle on her own; another student was passionate about break dancing and religion. All in all they are an amazing group!

In my first year as President I set a goal of doubling the number of international students at Wesleyan. The financial crisis has slowed this down, but after a trip like this one, I am more convinced than ever that bringing students from outside the United States is a great benefit to them and to the entire Wes community.

Here are a couple of pictures of my recent alumni guides, who also helped out with interviews.

Alumni guides in Tokyo
Kohei Saito ’09 & Toshihiro Osaka ’09
Seoul Alumni Guides
Hyung Jin Choi ’07 & Sunho Hwang ’05

[tags]Freeman Scholarship Program, Katsuhiko Hiyama, alumni[/tags]

Education: From Condescension to Respect

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Today I put this up on the Huffington Post and thought it might also be of interest for readers of this blog:

This week political science professor Gerard Alexander hit a chord (or was it a nerve?) with his Washington Post essay on “why liberals are so condescending.” Despite the recent successes of the Tea Party movement, Scott Brown, and a filibuster-happy Senate, Alexander repeats the old refrain: We conservatives get no respect. Rather than enjoy the intellectual disarray of the Left, Alexander seems to long for recognition from his liberal colleagues: You liberals think you have all the answers, and you never listen to us conservative voices, no matter how much education we have! Although many have recognized that the conservative movement did become “the party of ideas,” Alexander complains, liberals still see the Right as mired in false consciousness, hypocrisy, or both. What’s a faculty member got to do to earn some credibility? Publishing a provocative lecture for the American Enterprise Institute in the Washington Post isn’t a bad start.

But is the Left really more condescending than the Right? When Sarah Palin mocks Obama’s supporters with “How’s that hope, change thing working out for yaw?” is that not a form of condescension? Palin’s populist condescension toward those who don’t live in “the real America” pales before the patrician variety famously mastered by William F. Buckley. Woe to the liberals who carelessly strayed into his firing line. Two examples can stand for dozens of great zingers: “I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said,” Buckley sneered. “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views,” he observed, “but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” Alexander cites Paul Krugman as a prime offender of looking down his nose at conservatives, but why is this any different than Chicago-school economist Eugene Fama saying “My attitude is this, if you are getting attacked by Paul Krugman, you must be doing something right”?

No, liberals have no monopoly on condescension or intellectual and social smugness. Mocking people who drive Priuses (it used to be Volvos) is just as common as sneering at people in supersized pickups. But there does seem to be an easy association between elitism and progressivism that conservatives are able to reactivate at the drop of a hat. Why do we jump at the accusation? Is it because condescension is indeed a temptation for a politics that depends so much on education and on faith in the powers of knowledge? Liberals prize education – valuing it as a vehicle toward a more just and hospitable world. Education means enlightenment, which Kant famously defined as “freedom from self-imposed immaturity.” Confidence in the power of education can lead to arrogance because people in the know feel that they ought to be able to fix things. As people pursue education, they often feel that they are leaving false beliefs behind, that they are becoming freer as their illusions and dependence are dissolved. As this happens, many look around and see others who haven’t yet shed their old ways of thinking and are still mired in falsehood or reliance on authority. “I used to think like that, too,” says the advanced student to the frosh, “but now I know better.” This is what Eric Voegeli [it’s actually William, see comments below] was getting at when he wrote last year’s version of the condescension essay, “The Roots of Liberal Condescension,” published in the Claremont Review of Books (and found on the Wall Street Journal online). “Thus, if patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” he wrote,  “snobbery is the last refuge of the liberal-arts major.”

Does education necessarily breed elitism and condescension, and does it necessarily give rise to political liberalism? A little education very well might promote the intellectual arrogance many conservatives see in their caricature of a professor on the Left, but liberal learning is, after all, supposed to make us aware of how little we know. That’s what Socratic insight is all about: we need to learn because we understand so little. Education should lead to intellectual humility as we become more aware of our own ignorance. Conservatives also prize education, after all, but they do so because it should deliver the lesson of intellectual humility. Education should prevent us from thinking we can solve our deepest problems with science, technology or political structures.

There is a parallel here with faith. Some believers, infused with confidence in their own righteousness, display a spiritual arrogance that is offensive to those who don’t share their beliefs. But many people of faith discover a deep humility through their spiritual life — a humility that leads to openness to others rather than a proud sectarianism.

So maybe condescension depends less on questions of ideology, learning and faith than it does on differences in character. Some people just find it easier to sneer at others rather than to try to understand people with different points of view. The satisfactions of condescension are a temptation for people who feel they already know so much, just as the pleasures of elitism are seductive for people who are certain that God is on their side.

It’s always easier to be condescending when you don’t spend time with people who think or live differently than you do. That’s why it’s so important to find possibilities for dialogue that cut across ways of thinking or modes of belief. Political diversity is crucial for universities, for example, because if we live in an echo chamber of the Left, then we will forget how much we can learn from conservative thinkers who have rightly questioned our ability to master public and private life through systems of knowledge or government. Diversity of belief is good for all of us because if we think that we live in a community of the righteous, we might forget our responsibilities to those whose different beliefs and practices give meaning and value to their lives.

As a teacher and president of a university, I remain committed to education as an antidote to elitism rather than as a progressive cultivation of snobbery. As we learn, as we become more aware of our own ignorance, we should also become more open toward others, toward what they have to teach us. Looking down on others is surely a sign of intellectual fear rather than of a willingness to learn. An education in the liberal arts, which can lead to a political position on the Left or the Right, should result not in condescension but in its opposite: respect.

[tags]Huffington Post, journal article, Gerard Alexander, politics, Eric Voegeli[/tags]

A New Semester!

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I’ve been on the road for Wesleyan most of the time since New Year’s, and I am delighted to return to campus for the start of the new semester. My first class in “The Past on Film” (a course on philosophy, history and the movies) is today.

While I’ve been traveling, people have been busy here on campus preparing for the new semester. Many of our athletes have been involved in regular competition since the beginning of 2010. The men’s hockey team recently recorded its first win over Williams at home in many years. It was a convincing victory! Our men’s water polo team was recently named “Team of the Decade” by the Collegiate Water Polo Association. Congratulations to Coach of the Year Mac Clonan ’05.

Our faculty have been busy preparing new courses for the spring, many of which are part of the Small Class Initiative that has added dozens of seminars to our offerings. Manju Hingorani and Katja Kolcio are offering a class called “Body Language: Choreographing Biology,” while inaugural Koeppel Fellow, alumna and editor of the Forward Jane Eisner ’77 is teaching one of our first journalism classes “The Journalist as Citizen.” Sonali Chakravarti is teaching a government class on political theory and transitional justice, while the great vibraphonist Jay Hoggard offers “Language of the Jazz Orchestra.” As I look through the catalogue, I wonder if I can find the time to audit even as I work on my own class.

I was in in Washington the last few days visiting with alumni there and in Baltimore. Kari and Sophie joined me for the weekend, and now we are all trying to catch up on our homework! A highlight of the trip was a tour of the White House on Saturday. It brought us back to the hopeful energy of a year ago, and it also reminded us of the challenges now facing the whole country. This morning, as I post this blog, I confess to a few doubts as to whether we will be able to pull together to meet those challenges, but then as I see the picture of Kari, Sophie and myself, optimism revives.  How happy we were to be there at the White House!

photo

[tags]men’s water polo, Manju, Hingorani, Katja Kolcio, Jane Eisner, Sonali Chakravarti, Jay Hoggard[/tags]

Studying Abroad

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I’m traveling with Board Chair Joshua Boger and his wife Amy this week to meet with some alumni overseas. We’ve been in Bangalore the last few days and had an extraordinary visit with Azim and Rishad Premji at their Wipro headquarters. Rishad graduated from Wesleyan in ’99, and just last year we awarded his father Azim an honorary doctorate for his outstanding philanthropic work. The Azim Premji Foundation is focused on making a national impact on the educational system here – with particular attention given to helping girls erase the literacy gap. I also learned about the Foundation’s programs helping very young children of migrant workers, as well as an ambitious plan to open the Azim Premji University in a few years. This university will have teacher training as its core mission. I’ve been deeply impressed by the foundation officers and their work.  They taught me so much in a short time, and I’m optimistic about their chances of success.

Wipro is a major international technology services company based in India, and it is increasingly taking on work in “green industries.” Joshua, Amy and I met with a group of Wipro executives responsible for the professional development of the staff (over 100,000 employees!). They are practically running a university at Wipro, and it was fascinating to hear about their approach to continuing education through seminars, lectures and mobile device access. I took plenty of notes!

Our conversations with Azim Premji and Rishad Premji focused on how to raise Wesleyan’s profile in India and on how a liberal arts education can prepare graduates very well to become imaginative engineers.  I look forward to continuing these conversations as we enhance internationalization at Wes and develop connections between our programs and the broad spectrum of engineering (from infrastructure to technology and sustainability).

We had the chance to see a bit of Mysore today, and we’re off tomorrow before dawn. Next stop, London, for a brief visit with the Wes community there.

india_palace

india_bull

[tags]Azim Prenji, Rishad Prenji, Wipro, philanthropy, Wesleyan overseas, internationalization[/tags]

Getting In… Checking things Out

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Last night admissions deans from eight schools gathered for an online forum at Wesleyan sponsored by Unigo and the Wall Street Journal. Thousands watched live as Jordan Goldman ’04 and members of the audience asked questions aimed at clarifying how highly selective institutions go about selecting a first-year class. Check out the video of the event (and some good footage of the campus).

The selection process is increasingly intense. Last year our applicant pool was as strong as ever, and it was more than 20% larger. Most university observers expected us to have some decline in apps this year, which is the normal rhythm at schools like ours. But the latest figures show that we have continued to grow — this year by more than 10% over last. The geographical and cultural diversity of the pool continues to improve, and the academic credentials of our applicants are truly impressive. I’m glad I don’t have to read the files!

One of the exciting aspects of last night’s event was the international web audience for it. The university has been using the web to share some of the great events on campus. Last year’s wonderful Navaratri Festival performance has now had more than 100,000 views on Youtube.

This weekend there are plenty of non-virtual chances to check out Wes culture. Friday at 8 pm, dance professor Nicole Stanton performs a piece created collaboratively with students and colleagues at Schönberg Dance Studio. Saturday at Freeman one can see several of our teams (track, swimming, squash, hockey) competing. I am looking forward to seeing Ariela Rotenberg’s ’10 senior thesis project, Our Day Will Come , at the Patricelli ’92 Theater. Maybe I can stay offline for a few days…

[tags]Unigo, Wall Street Journal, admissions process, applicant pool, Jordan Goldman ’04, Navaratri Festival performance, Professor Nicole Stanton, Ariela Rotenberg ’10[/tags]