This New Yorker article raises some interesting questions about the merger of entrepreneurship culture and the university at Stanford. Some potentially provocative pull-quotes:
The leadership of a university has encouraged an endeavor in which students drop out in order to do something that will enrich the faculty.
Shouldn’t [college] be a place to drift, to think, to read, to meet new people, and to work at whatever inspires you?
What do you all think?
By Jonah Kagan
Statement on Grade Point Average - College Curriculum Council
Evan Schwartz found this document, which is Brown’s official stance on grade point averages. It probably matches what you’ve heard — that Brown doesn’t calculate GPAs. But some people seem to think that means that students have to calculate their GPAs themselves. According to the statement, these self-computed GPAs are not actually endorsed by the university (they aren’t actively discouraged, though).
So is it appropriate to put a GPA on your resumé without, say, putting an asterisk next to it and referring to this document? Is it ethical?
Or what about a student who doesn’t calculate their own GPA — who simply omits it from their resumé? Should they have to staple this document to the back of their resumé just to have a fair shot at employment, or should Brown be actively promoting its stance on GPAs?
Is this document even enough to convince employers to look beyond a GPA? Or is Brown’s stance fundamentally unrealistic?
Nik Kalyanpur
Our first dinner of the semester marked our one year anniversary. With the momentum from Re-Orientation, it was our most attended event. 51 students broke up into four groups to discuss whether the fact that we get to choose all our classes actually ensures that every student wants to be in each of his/her classes. This past weekend, we were joined by Daniel Sobol ‘09 and Mary Crane, the Dean of Liberal Arts at Boston College. Boston College is in the process of renewing its core curriculum so we sat down to discuss: “What is the value of a core curriculum, if any?”
By Aparaajit Sriram
“So who’s dad is the hypothesis dad, again?” asked Professor Sheila Blumstein, who was participating in the second major group discussion of Reorientation, titled “How has the New Curriculum changed since its inception?” I sheepishly raised my hand. “Yeah, that’s me.”
We were a group of about 20, mostly freshmen and sophomores along with a couple older mentors, and we had spent much of the discussion sharing what the New Curriculum meant to each of us. What had it meant when we applied to Brown? What had it meant during, what most agreed, were lackluster freshman years? And what did it mean to us now as participants in a Reorientation program dedicated to understanding it and applying its tenets?
By Brett Anders
When was the last time you had a conversation that lasted several hours? How many of your conversations are less than 30 minutes, and how many of them don’t move past superficial, day-to-day questions? What if you factor in digital communications — some small fraction of your writing may exceed 140 or 160 characters in length, but rare indeed are communications exceeding one page.
We live in a world that pulls us in too many directions. Variously termed the Age of Interruption, or the Age of Distraction, today’s world makes it difficult to focus. The surface-level risk here is a lack of productivity, because a lack of focus makes it difficult to get stuff done — “multitasking” is often an excuse for doing a subpar job on multiple tasks at once. But there is a far deeper risk, too.
By Evan Schwartz
One of the big lessons I’ve taken away from this past year of Brown Conversations is the importance of just getting started on ideas. A friend just provided a perfect example of what I’m getting at with a “what if” about how Brown’s daily announcements newsletter, Morning Mail, could be improved.
This friend’s idea of including a Providence events section is great — and many other people have had good ideas about how Morning Mail could be improved, but too few have just gotten started. Right now the newsletter is an unsorted plain text email so almost any change would be an improvement, but the best way of making some change happen quickly would probably not be by going through the official newsletter curators.
By Jonah Kagan
This past semester we’ve started inviting people other than students to take part in the Brown Conversation. We’ve had faculty, administrators, alumni, and even members of the Providence community who aren’t explicitly associated with Brown. The idea was to improve the quality of the conversation by involving people with more diverse perspectives. After all, a discussion is not so interesting if everybody is just agreeing with each other. Since we focus on topics concerning the university, it makes sense to try to involve people with different relationships to the Brown.
In these recent conversations I’ve noticed a slight shift in the dynamic of the discussion. It’s hard to explain in exact terms, but it seems like our conversations tend to focus around our guests, as if they have some special kind of gravity.
By Evan Schwartz
The Brown Conversation provides a simple but powerful service just by existing.
Tonight we had a conversation with the Financial Aid Strategic Planning Committee, next Monday (12/3) we are going to have one with the Re-Imagining the Campus Space Committee, and the following Saturday (12/8) we’ll have another with the Education Innovation Committee. The most amazing part of this to me is that two of those committees actually reached out to us to ask if we would do an event with them.
Why did those committees reach out to us and why does this matter?
RE-ORIENTATION 2013
Educate Yourself, about Your Education
Date: January 20th-22nd
Venue: Brown University Campus
Hosted by: Brown Conversation
For: Brown University Freshmen and Sophomores
University Dorms open on January 19th. Meals will be provided.
Apply by Sunday, December 9th!
Are you getting the most out of your Brown education? How do you know?
Do you feel lost? Or are you not sure if you’re lost?
Join us for RE-ORIENTATION 2013 to learn more about learning!
Considering the fact that approximately 54% of Brown students pay full tuition, there is virtually a guaranteed socio-economic divide on campus. No doubt this can be a controversial, touchy subject for many, so the Brown Conversation collaborated with $ocial Classmates, who specialize in this type of discussion. The evening started with a step-in, step-out activity where questions related to class were asked, such as, “Did both your parents graduate college?”, “Do you consider yourself upper-class?”, “Have you ever lived somewhere you didn’t feel safe?” to name a few. If you agreed with the questions you stepped in, otherwise, you stayed where you were in the circle. Although some felt that the activity was reductionist, it definitely gave us a clearer understanding of where each of us was coming from.
The first topic of discussion was why students often feel the need to downplay their economic class. It seems “cool” to be from a lower class. Where this notion comes from is very much debatable and few of us had adequate answers. Some felt that when identifying with a lower class than their own, it affirmed a prior belief of theirs that they worked harder than their peers to get in to Brown. This naturally transitioned into a conversation regarding the role that “hard work” plays in our admissions policy. Do we want students who are better prepared for Brown or those who have shown the right ethic to succeed here? Of course you would ideally have a combination of both, but the harsh reality of the situation is that several students come from weak institutions while others have been able to skate by at Brown after walking-in from an elite prep school. This brings to mind the debates about affirmative action and legacy students. The former is often discussed and few say it is a negative policy. However, the role of legacy is rarely up for debate. The conventional narrative for many students is that it provides Brown and universities with greater potential remuneration. However, some students argued that the legacy has allowed their families to bond over a shared experience. Nonetheless, is that enough to merit special treatment when it comes to selection?
The end of our conversation discussed what kind of life Brown is preparing us for after college. We are told we are the best of the best. We take classes to sharpen our critical thinking instead of skills because this is the only place where that is possible. Is any of that true? And is any of that actually important to help improve society? Can a student with loans or weak financial background really afford to spend four years dedicated to this intellectual indulgence?
This weekend clearly raised a lot more questions than answers so it will be exciting to continue the conversation in the future.
2