Technology to Turn Gestures Into Song

J. Robert Oppenheimer’s title in his capacity of scientific head of Los Alamos is my personal favorite: Coordinator of Rapid Rupture.

I am particularly fond of the ubiquitous “dean of summer school.”  “Director” would be closer to the truth and need not impact pay grade.  But if one really wants to explore the messy inner recesses of muddled administrative thinking in academe, s/he should take a good look at the titles sported by associate/assistant provosts and deans.  At my institution, one interesting and revealing phenomenon is what happens when one searches for these light-sensitive creatures in the online directory.  They are almost never listed, nor are they found on the units’ web pages.  How about, within a college (at another university), a doctorally prepared but non-faculty “associate dean for student academic life”?  And s/he is only one among eleven associate deans in that college:  too much.

I would love to see a university where the titles reflected the real nature of the job. There would be no provost: instead, their would be a “president’s minder,” “president’s hatchetman,” “pesident’s flatterer,” or “president-in-waiting,” as the case required. And the faculty would give up all professorial pretentions and because simply “fireable teachers” and “malcontents.”

I wouldn’t want anyone to jump to the conclusion that any of us might know anything about the porn industry–but how about “the president’s fluffer”?

Excellent Mark.  Your rumination asks us all to reflect on what has become casual language and questions whether trite terms really serve our students well.

Well said! This essay demonstrates that “fit” can be easily be code for “whatever pleases my palate.” Sadly, this plainly consumerist approach to education may eliminate the exquisite pleasure of surprise, the encounter of the unknown. Yvon Chouinard, the environmentalist founder of Patagonia, said, “Adventure is the uncertainty of outcome.” Here’s to adventure.

Very well done, Mark. 

Amadis, Beatrice, the Holy Grail.  Somehow kids–and their well-meaning parents–have romanticized university life to the point that we have to remind them that university life is mostly just “life.” 

I force a lot of my students to read Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken.”  We talk about how one cannot know what is down which path.  We talk about how life is full of choices, and many choices have to be made in conditions of relative uncertainty.  And that what makes “all the difference” is how one takes advantage of whichever path one choose.

When I talk to parents, I generally compare the selection of a college to a choosing a spouse:  is there only one person to whom you could be happily be married?  Is there one ideal “fit” for you?  After 20 or so years of marriage (or divorce), do you still hold on to romantic notions of the ideal spouse?  Not surprisingly, most parents will shut up about “fit” at that point and talk about more important things, like “general compatibility.” 

Thanks for demolishing the ideal of “fit.”

Although speaking as a Girard scholar, I am thrilled to see mimetic
theory applied in such a cogent and insightful way, I would not dismiss the
concept of “fit” out of hand.  Key to
determining a solid fit is in getting inside the college experience rather than
looking at it from the outside.  Tour guides and
admissions offices  tend to focus on “fit”
as described in this article.  But if a
visiting student (or the parent in tow) can cut through a student guide’s
canned speech to ask about the guide’s current classes and interactions with
professors and students in those classes, enormously revealing insights are
often forthcoming.  So also can visits to
at least two classes during the campus visit be revelatory.  Student guides’ attitudes about their classes
were THE deciding factor in my own daughter’s quest for “fit.”  At one college, the tour guide’s passion for
learning (confirmed in her classroom visits as she observed other engaged
students) matched my daughter’s own desire for learning.  Was it mimetic?  Yes, but in embracing the inner scholar in
herself, my daughter drew on what should count most in making a decision for
college.  Unfortunately, admissions
offices are often complicit in advocating fit for the wrong reasons.  At my own institution, the academic experiences
of students are all but missing from the campus visit.   An admissions office film featuring one of
my gifted students—a model for the kinds of students faculty wish dominated our
campus—shows my student talking about ice cream in the dining center, not about
how his classroom experiences and co-curricular leadership activities have
supported his extraordinary academic achievements.

Thank you for the very kind comments. It is a nerve-wracking thing for a civilian like me to throw around scholarly concepts in the Chronicle!  All the points made in these comments are valid– we tease some of this out to a greater degree in our spoken presentation.  There are many directions to go from here.  Reineke, it is exactly that distinction between “inside” and “outside” that we try to explore– the challenge in our work with kids is to guide them to an understanding of the things that will shape their lived “inside” experience in college. I’m still working on strategies to accomplish that!  What I can say is that I think that the work of admission and guidance counselors should be rooted in an awareness of adolescent development, and that it should seek to encourage personal reflection and a growth in self-knowledge– even if it takes some discomfort to get there. The college decision process is for many students a significant rite of passage to maturity and a chance to gain some resiliency and a tolerance for healthy uncertainty and risk.  As adults around them, we can very effectively derail that or we can work to support a process that allows for personal growth.  Josephofoley– fair point. The most correct thing to say is that we never encounter Dulcinea as readers.  Thanks again for reading carefully and commenting on this!

That is so interesting!