Word: mentor
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...word 'mentor' if you want to reform undergraduate education at Yale...
Some of the report's suggestions are just now being adopted, mostly in diluted forms and through other committees. But its major recommendations, particularly the bold "mentor plan," an elaborate residential college-run program that marched students with faculty tutors, have been forgotten. The impetus for the mentor program, Dahl says, was the need to change ineffective advising and counseling that students received. But Dahl says the plan, which would have provided 15 mentors per college ruffled the feathers of the faculty, who viewed it as "a threat to departmental programs" and as "raising the danger of declining standards...
Nancy Hoskins, secretary to the committee, remembers well the discussion on the mentor plan, which left her deeply disappointed about the possibilities for change. "It was the word 'mentor,'" she says. "'Mentor' just didn't go over well with the faculty. We even tried to discuss other words to call the program in committee because we thought something like this may happen. But we came up with nothing else new, and it hurt." Hoskins adds that the plan was a way to get more faculty-student interaction, but it was seen as a criticism of the current system of advising...
...faculty greeted the report - particularly its mentor recommendations - with "massive indifference," Hoskins remembers. If anything, only a small appendix note on a possible change in the lengths of the school term to save money caused any stir. But that stir was strong enough to distract the faculty from the other 117 pages of the Dahl Report. The appendix suggested that the school should remain open all year to try to increase tuition revenue without crowding classes. "The debate on the report waged on that appendix," William Kessen, Yale professor of psychology and committee member, recalls. Ironically, after all "that vigorous...
...pleased with our ball-control improvement," the rookie mentor commented, "but we have to work on coordinating our rushes better...