Word: existance
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...current professor Harry R. Lewis ’68. Lewis’ criticisms run the gamut, but the one that caught my eye was his description of student extracurricular involvement. With more than 300 student groups and 41 varsity sports, Harvard claims that this is a place where opportunities exist in almost any area imaginable. And students take them at their word, throwing massive amounts of time and effort into clubs, teams, and publications. Lewis can’t decide if the prominence of extracurricular life is good or bad. He cedes that extracurriculars teach important skills, but worries that...
...annual letter to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby wrote, “Through curricular review and renewal, we have recommitted ourselves to our students—for whom, after all, our College and University exist.” Yet over the past year, the priorities of the Faculty have appeared to diverge from those of its outgoing dean. The Faculty has addressed few of the critical problems facing undergraduate education in any meaningful way, including those of curricular reform and the need for better teaching. Instead, it spent much...
William Arrowsmith once lamented that precious few rewards exist at research universities for good teaching. “Universities are as uncongenial to teaching as the Mojave Desert to a clutch of Druid priests. If you want to restore a Druid priesthood, you cannot do it by offering prizes for Druid-of-the-Year. If you want Druids, you must grow forests.” We all know that it takes decades to grow a forest, and no institution can afford to wait decades to create an environment in which great courses will spontaneously emerge and good teaching will thrive...
...problems of leadership in a complex university,” says Jay W. Lorsch, the Kirstein professor of human relations at Harvard Business School. “That means you can’t get somebody who thinks they can dictate solutions to every problem.”There exist a number of potential candidates who have distinguished themselves in university management, but naming names at this stage of the search is a highly speculative sport. The field, however, is not broad.“Probably, one could write 5-10 names on a piece of paper today...
...Harvard without the Internet, cell phones, e-mail, instant messengers, and every other connectivity device. The proliferation of Blackberrys, Treos, and most recently, Moto Qs, have made our umbilical cords wireless, feeding off our addiction to mother e-mail. But life before these blessed, though burdensome, conveniences did exist. Without daily doses of Dems-talk, Throp-talk, Newstalk, and innumerable other e-lists, it feels as though we would never be informed of campus’ most important (and, alas, unimportant) debates. Procrastination would become more creative, and we would certainly be ignorant of the uncouthly candor that is brought...