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Gordon Gee, con't
"I have a Department of English bigger than Swarthmore."
Regarding Brown's open curriculum, "I gave my first speech as President saying, 'Any institution that calls a 40-year-old curriculum The New Curriculum is an institution out of step.' That's why I left after three years."
"80% of our people are educated in our public university. A New York Times writer who went to Brown and has never left Manhattan except to go to Providence cannot understand the nobility of our great public colleges and universities."
"The most important institutions we have in this country in terms of higher education are our community colleges, far and away." This gets a murmur of agreement from the audience.
"Our economies are dependent on our ability to out-think. Universities are the smokestacks of the 21st century. Our students have to be able to out-think."
"The American institution is organized vertically. We are not a university. We are 18 colleges connected by a heating plant. As one institution we will succeed. As many we will not."
"Try re-organizing the way you reward and recognize faculty -- it will make an enormous difference. The secret to changing the curricular structure is changing the recognition structure. Provide the opportunity for people to re-think and they will. If you treat students like adults they'll act like adults. That is true of the curriculum. We live with students 168 hours a week if they're on campus. They're in class 18 hours a week. What about the other 150 hours? The most important responsibility we have is to create the intellectual and cultural environment to allow them to teach themselves."
Posted by Michael Pomeranz on November 05, 2010 at November 5, 2010 11:07 AM
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