Month: August 2018

Exactly how tough are the academic requirements at Harvey Mudd College, an elite California school that focuses on engineering, the sciences, and mathematics?  A recent headline in The Chronicle of Higher Education indicates that the institution “is rethinking its ‘soul crushing’ core curriculum.”  Indeed, an external review team concluded that “there is general agreement that the core [at Harvey Mudd] is an exhausting and dispiriting slog for too many students.”

To investigate this claim, University Life sent a team of student reporters to the Harvey Mudd campus to sample the school’s core courses.  Here is what they found:

Toby:  “I took a course called Rising Tides Calculus.  It’s held in a large grain silo on the edge of campus that has been converted into a water-storage tank.  At the beginning of every class session the tank is empty and you’re just sitting at your desk.  The instructor comes in and gives you a complex problem set that must be completed in 50 minutes.  Then the water starts flooding into the tank through a bunch of side panels, forcing you to work on the problems while you’re also trying to stay afloat.  Unfortunately, the desks are metal and bolted to the floor, so they’re no help.  As the water level gets higher and approaches the dome of the silo, the whole scene becomes an absolute sh*t-show: panic, screaming, and a lot of flailing about. 

“I’d never enroll in a course like this again….ever!  I got a B+, but it wasn’t worth it.  It’s way too cruel, even if you’re a good swimmer.”

Marlene:  “I thought it would be nice to take an Art History course, so I signed up for Post-Impressionism with Professor Spencer.  A nightmare!  At the beginning of the final exam you stare for 15 minutes at Seurat’s classic pointillist work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte [see above].  Next, you close your eyes and estimate the total number of dots in the painting, and how many dots of each color there are.  If any of your estimates are off by more than 10, you receive an electric shock to the back of your neck and repeat the test with another pointillist painting.

“During this exam I developed the most horrible headache of my life!  A guy next to me, his head actually exploded!  What a freakin’ mess!  Does this course really teach you anything about art?”

Graham:  “I made the mistake of taking the English course, Team-building and the Construction of Literature.  It’s a one-week residential ‘lived experience’ offered during Spring Break in a cabin on Timber Mountain in the San Gabriel range.  On the first day, your group of 10 is given a huge sack of tiny refrigerator magnets, with each magnet containing a single word.  It turns out that they’re the words for the complete text of Middlemarch by George Eliot.  By the end of the week you‘re supposed to recreate the entire novel on the floor of the cabin, chapter by chapter, by placing the magnets in the proper sequence.  What makes it worse is that we didn’t even have a copy of the book to guide us.  How insane is that?  Middlemarch is over 900 pages!

“I have no idea how this circus turned out.  I just left and hiked back to campus.”

There you have it.  Are these courses too intense?  Excessively demanding?  Fundamentally unfair? 

Or are today’s kids just whiners and snowflakes?

It’s your call.

 

A recent study by researchers from the U.S. and Iceland indicates that stimulants such as Adderall are unlikely to elevate the academic performance of non-ADHD college students, even though many such students take the drugs for this purpose (no joke). 

Now what?  Have researchers “hit a wall” with respect to identifying strategies that will enhance the achievement levels of students here and abroad?  As Texas A&M Psychology Professor Fritz Mandible observes, “we could ask students in our courses to complete the assigned reading, attend class, and study, but can we do that with a straight face?  We know they’re not going to do any of those things, so we’re pretty much screwed.  Drugs were our last hope.”

Maybe not.  A team of researchers at Georgetown University is investigating the potential of prayer for boosting performance.  In a randomized study of three sections of a Calculus I course at the Jesuit school, one section of students will pray to St. Ignatius of Loyola, Patron Saint of Higher Order Functions, for good grades.  Students in a second section will be prayed for by a group of retired Catholic nuns in Bowie, Maryland, with half of the nuns focusing on in-class exams, and the other half on term papers.  Finally, a third section of the course will serve as a control, with students participating in the course as they normally would — drunk and/or asleep, with no prayers.  According to the study’s principal investigator, Professor Ezeriah “Izzy” Claiborne, “we’re curious to see if God is willing to step up to the plate in the name of education.”

Amen to that.  Are you there, Big Guy?

 

It’s been a tough few months for Papa John’s founder John Schnatter, who was caught using the N-word during a conference call in May.  A number of schools have severed ties with him and/or his company.  A prominent example is the University of Utah, which proclaimed that the racial slur was in “direct opposition to our values.”

Not so fast there, Utes.

The full story, at least at Utah, seems to be a bit more complicated. University Life has obtained an audio transcript of the June 15th meeting of the school’s Board of Trustees.  Here’s the relevant excerpt:

Trustee A:  “Our campus food court has a Papa John’s.  What should we do?”

Trustee B:  “Close it.  Holy crap, have you ever eaten one of their pizzas?  Tastes like cardboard that’s been left out in the rain and then dipped in store-brand tomato soup that’s two years beyond its expiration date.  And don’t get me started on the cheese!  Imagine a block of Velveeta having sex with a slab of kimchi-flavored Play-Doh.  Unbelievably vile.”

Trustee C:  “I was in the food court with my two grandchildren last year and ordered them a mushroom-and-onion pie.  Turns out that the place was using Destroying Angels mushrooms and didn’t even know it.  We ended up spending all night in the emergency room getting the kids’ stomachs pumped.  I actually think Tiffany may have suffered some brain damage, but it’s hard to tell because she’s always been a little dim.”

Trustee D:  “Why didn’t we end our contract with this outfit a long time ago?”

Trustee A:  “Our lawyers said we could get sued if we did anything that implied their pizzas sucked.”

Trustee D:  “That’s simply not true!  I told you we should stop hiring graduates of our own law school!”

Trustee A:  “Whatever.  Let’s just thank God for racial slurs!”

Trustee B:  “Shall we vote?”

The site formerly occupied by Papa John’s at the University of Utah food court is now Tiffany’s Kinder-Gym, a play space for children of the school’s faculty and staff.

FINAL NOTE:  One school that has not abandoned Mr. Schnatter is his alma mater, Ball State University (no joke).  According to BSU President Geoffrey Mearns, “here in Indiana, we love our pizza soupy and fermented.  It’s the Hoosier way!”

 

In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education essay critiquing the “Productivity Syndrome” in academia, Mitchell Aboulafia suggested that professors concerned about this problem should “stop publishing scholarship for an extended period of time.  Announce this decision to colleagues.  Be willing to say that this is for your good and for the good of your field.” 

Three days ago, at Duke University, Assistant Professor of English Elston Brillo stood up at a lunchtime department meeting and proclaimed that he was going to follow Dr. Aboulafia’s advice.  He encouraged his colleagues to join him in “stepping to the sidelines of this soul-killing publication rat race.”

The conference room’s audio-equipped surveillance camera, now in the possession of Durham, North Carolina police, recorded what happened next:

Professor Harold Frazley-Quint, age 72, screamed “Are you insane?”, grabbed his chest, and had a heart attack.  Eyes and mouth wide open, he died on the spot. 

Assistant Professor Penelope Kelso, seven months pregnant, gasped and immediately went into labor.  Thirty-five minutes later she delivered Gherkin, her first-born, in the hallway.  Gherkin is now in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Duke University Hospital, while Penelope resides in the psychiatric ward.  The only words she has spoken since the incident are “Where are the page proofs for Chapter 4?  I need to return them to the publisher by Monday!  Get that baby away from me!”

Associate Professor Kevin Gumrap began choking on his ham sandwich.  Professor Brillo applied the Heimlich maneuver to Gumrap in time to save his life, but not quickly enough to prevent the significant brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation.  As a result, Gumrap, a Melville scholar, will be teaching four online sections of E112 (Introduction to Verbs) in Fall 2018. 

Gretchen Stent, Assistant Professor, fainted and suffered a severe gash when her forehead struck the edge of the conference table.  Extensive plastic surgery will be required, and her upcoming TED talk on “Adjectival Patriarchy: Why ‘Many’ and not ‘Womany’?” has been cancelled due to photogenic impairment.  She is suing Brillo for $3.6 million.

Associate Professor Clive Taylor-Riesling lept across the conference table and grabbed Brillo by the throat while the latter was Heimliching Gumrap, yelling “What the _____ are you talkin’ about, you pissant?  I’m in the middle of researching volume 4 of my 12-volume authorized biography of Tupac Shakur!  Are you tellin’ me that I just spent the last 5 months of my life transcribing his dental records for nuthin’?”

Life Lesson: Announce whatever you wish to your colleagues, but anticipate their reactions.