“I’m very enthusiastic about summer programming and the opportunities it will provide,” said Associate Dean of Faculty and Professor Lisa Cody, who worked closely with Dean of Faculty Greg Hess to develop the program.  Cody and Hess worked with the Curriculum Committee, charged with the development of new courses, major requirements, and programs such as the Robert A. Day School of Finance, and the Board of Trustees to develop the structure and goals of the summer school pilot program.

Chief among the committee’s concerns were to provide students with more options in completing their General Education requirements and to assess the long term feasibility of summer programming at CMC.

The decision to start the pilot program was based on research examining how many students have already taken summer transfer courses and interest levels from both parents and students.

Lisa Cody will teach a course this summer, as will Manfred Keil, Brock Blomberg, Gaston Espinosa, and others.  Planned summer courses will satisfy General Education requirements and include some 20 offerings across economics, math, natural science, philosophy, psychology, religious studies, French, and an intensive Arabic program.

The Arabic program will be an intensive immersion program with students spending the full day together, with class, lab, lecture, and other activities.

Tuition is estimated at around $3750 per course ($7500 for the intensive Arabic program) plus room and board. Federal loans (Stafford and Perkins) may be applied to the summer semester, but there will be no institutional financial support (i.e. grants from CMC).

A summer program has been under consideration by the Curriculum Committee for some time now, previously discussed in another form as The Dartmouth Plan which consists of a mandatory semester off in addition to summer courses. In addition to giving students a leg up in terms of internships, the Dartmouth Plan is also viewed as a cost-saving measure.

When asked if the pilot program could eventually evolve into a Dartmouth Plan at CMC, Cody did not rule it out, saying, “We’d need more people—staff, faculty—before a Dartmouth Plan would be possible. Students have had mixed reactions.”

Until now, Pitzer and Scripps were the only schools to offer summer courses at the Claremont Colleges, with Pitzer offering a range of classes drawn primarily from the school’s social science specialties and Scripps offering science classes through Joint Science. CMC’s summer school pilot program would directly compete with the Pitzer and Scripps programs, which CMC students attend every year.

Billed by both the Ath and her own website as “the last protege of Ansel Adams,” Cook is clearly a talented photographer, and her work reflects her studies with Adams. For example, like Adams she shoots in black and white and does some landscape work. Beyond those base similarities, her work echoes the clean style, high contrast, and simple subject matter of Adams. Even if I didn’t think her art was notable — lots of important museums do; her works are part of the permanent collections at the Met, MoMA, and the Smithsonian, to name a few. Her art is not in question here, but rather her (in)ability to reveal something about herself and her work.

For her talk, Cook showed a number of her portraits (most of which, if not all, were readily available on her website) and said a few words on each photograph, sometimes only mentioning the subject’s name and occupation. That was it. Though her commentary revealed some clues as to her methods, working style, and occasionally short anecdotes about her notable subjects, she gave almost nothing of herself to the audience.

Katherine Graham, Jorge Louis Borges, Francis Crick, Merce Cunningham, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jamaica Kincaid, Lillian Hellman, Sidney Janis, Philip Johnson and David Whitney, Francois Mitterrand, Dorothy Norman, Mirium Rothschild, Steven Spielberg, Dorothea Strauss, Maya Lin and Daniel Wolf — do those names mean anything to you? I only knew about 7 out of 17 of those names and I consider myself to be at least moderately culturally literate. How about a little context? A good speaker neither overestimates nor underestimates the audience’s intelligence (or in this case, cultural literacy). For an address to a school with limited theater opportunities, no arts programs, almost complete neglect for creative talents (save Ath events like this one), Cook might have tailored her comments to a more ignorant, but curious crowd.

Her background as a fine art photographer was also unclear. To have had the opportunity to photograph really important, influential individuals, such as the publisher of the Washington Post, a founding member of the Beat movement, the former president of France, and a three-time Academy Award winning director, one must ask– how? why? Cook never addressed how she was able to gain access to these individuals. For example, Cook photographed Michelle and Barack Obama in 1996 as part of her book featuring images of couples– how did the young politician and his wife come across her radar?

These were the only facts I could gather about her:  she had a wealthy background as her parents collected art and owned a De Kooning, she speaks excellent French, she’s well-traveled, and most importantly, she has friends in high places.  Now clearly not all speakers come to the Ath to talk about themselves, but at least they speak at length about their work, their research, their industry, or something, no?

Though Cook admitted that she chose an arbitrary title for her talk (“What is a portrait?”), her insight on what makes a good photograph was pretty unoriginal. “I felt like I revealed something of who he was,”  she said of photograph of a bookstore owner Jacob Zeiltin.  “He thought the portrait looked more like him than he did.”

Maybe I’m a jaded art history major, or maybe, Cook doesn’t have a whole lot to say and should stick to what she does best — taking beautiful portraits.

The first box shows the poor performance of the Google Voice transcription service (click on the image to see a larger version). The second box plays the actual voice mail he left me. As you can see, we checked the “X” in the lower right corner to indicate that the transcript was NOT useful.

Right now, Google Voice’s main functions are call-forwarding and voice mail. But how many phone lines do each of us have? One, our cell phones, and we can access voice mail with at most two buttons. Our primary use of phones is for texting and calling, so Google Voice for college students? Not terribly useful.

Possible flaws with college-age users aside, Google Voice may soon become infinitely cooler for all audiences as a result of Google’s acquisition of Gizmo5. As reported in TechCrunch by TechCrunch founder and 1992 CMC alum Michael Arrington,  the acquisition could mean that Google Voice would look something more like Skype or Google Talk, adding the all-important calling function.

I gave a talk not too long ago on a college campus. The event was sold out, so the administration started a waiting list for seats.

CMC Dean of Faculty Gregg Hess

The daughter of a good friend found herself on the waiting list. When I heard she still hadn’t gotten a ticket the day before the event, with just a touch of guilt for trying to bend the rules, I emailed a Dean at the college whom I know:

Dear G—-,

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. There is a young woman named B——- who is on the wait list. Is there any chance you can get her in?

Steve

The Dean called me back almost immediately, asking whether B—— had applied early-action or was going through the January admissions process.

Confused, I told him I had no idea and all I knew was that she was a freshman. Only then did he realize that I was just trying to get her a seat in the auditorium, and I realized that he thought I was trying to get her accepted into the college!

Could this anonymous Dean G— be none other than our own Greg Hess, Dean of the Faculty?  From their personal rapport and Levitt’s mention of going “way back” with Hess at the Ath talk, it’s likely the case.  If so, it’s the second time this week Hess and SuperFreakonomics have been linked in the national press; his review of Levitt’s book appears in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.

We invite you to sign up.  Invite your friends! If nothing else, it’s a chance to see some familiar faces in the Athenaeum, while enjoying a good meal and drinking some wine.

What’s more, you could be one of those faces. You suggested the topics and voted on them– now we’re asking you to debate the issues.  This is your chance to stand on a Forum-provided soap box and share your thoughts on a relevant topic with a captive audience.  Just send us an email if you’re interested.

Since none of us can be serious for too long, there will be a second debate that night on a lighter topic.  The topic could be anything from, “Should Abhi Nemani get the three piece suit or the two piece?” to  “True or false: Fulbright applications suck the life out of anyone who attempts them?”  We’ll announce this topic on the night of the debate.

E-mail us (forum@ascmc.org) if you’re interested in speaking on Debate Night.  Tell us whatever you want– just your name and why you’re interested, a summary of your main points on the theme, or whether you’re excited for the Foam Party this Saturday. Depending upon response, the Forum will select speakers as the format allows.

On Monday, September 28, The Forum will hold Student Debate night at the Athenaeum. CMC has already proven itself as a environment that encourages intelligent discussion and debate– whether it’s online or during afternoon tea at the Ath — and students have proven themselves to be knowledgeable and passionate about national and international issues. Student Debate Night would further cultivate that atmosphere of lively discussion, but redirect it towards campus issues, an area less popular but just as important for students. The topic and speakers will come from YOU.

Suggest a campus issue for debate below. The possibilities are endless, but issues could include such topics as the Dartmouth Plan, admission policy, or general education requirements. We’ll take suggestions for a week.  An ASCMC committee will select the three best suggestions and open a poll on the Forum.  Students will vote for the issue they want to see torn to pieces on the Ath stage.

Once we announce the topic, we’ll ask you guys to come forward as speakers.

If you’d like to share your suggestion and get more feedback, post in the Comments Section after the submission form.

Let’s take an example. A friend and I were looking for someone to drive us to the airport (from Palo Alto to SFO) and tried to think of all the people we knew in the area.  Rather than relying upon our multi-tasking and maxed-out memories, however, I wanted to turn to Facebook, the virtual Rolodex of my social existence. Using Facebook Search, it should be pretty easy to come up with a list of people I know who are in the Palo Alto (/Silicon Valley/San Jose/South Bay) area.  Whether that person is a Fan of the Palo Alto Jewish Community Center, attended Palo Alto High School, or simply lists Palo Alto as “Current City,” that information should be available to me.  All I have to do is type “Palo Alto” into the seach box at the top, right-hand corner of any page on Facebook, and I will be greeted with every mention of the phrase “Palo Alto” on my friends’ pages or otherwise, right? Wrong.

Even with the filters on the left, finding people I know with connections to Palo Alto was not happening.  If I wanted to know which friends of mine like the Rolling Stones, the results weren’t much better.  Status updates that mention the Stones were the closest I could get.  Rather than thinking of the new Facebook Search as Google search for all information on Facebook (i.e. complete, thorough, exactly what  you were looking for), it would be more helpful to think of it as a Twitter search — you can find topics your friends are talking about in their status updates. Facebook needs to be able to better organize the information that people share on Facebook. One of Facebook’s greatest assets, if not the greatest asset, is the information that people voluntarily share: interests, favorites, experiences, etc. Help us get to that information, Facebook.  In other words, be more like Google.

Before the emphasis on Search, I would have used networks to accomplish this task.   I used to be able to find a list of networks and the number of friends I had in each network. But Facebook has begun to phase out regional networks because they were pretty useless in general — were you really going to start up a friendship with someone who you didn’t know, but was in your same “network”?  No, probably not. Facebook is built upon the strength of social connections, and sharing a regional network was not a strong enough bond to truly connect you with another person. These networks were marginally useful, however, for grouping your friends by their location(/school/organization).  Palo Alto anyone?

In the end, we found a ride to the airport.  Ironically, it was someone who worked at Facebook.

Forbes, who worked with the Center for College Affordability and Productivity to compile the rankings,  explains the methodology:

To answer these questions, the staff at CCAP gathered data from a variety of sources. They based 25% of the rankings on 4 million student evaluations of courses and instructors, as recorded on the Web site RateMyProfessors.com. Another 25% is based on post-graduate success, equally determined by enrollment-adjusted entries in Who’s Who in America, and by a new metric, the average salaries of graduates reported by Payscale.com. An additional 20% is based on the estimated average student debt after four years. One-sixth of the rankings are based on four-year college graduation rates–half of that is the actual graduation rate, the other half the gap between the average rate and a predicted rate based on characteristics of the school. The last component is based on the number of students or faculty, adjusted for enrollment, who have won nationally competitive awards like Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes.

It’s easy to see how the emphasis on faculty prestige could have affected our ranking– not that CMC professors aren’t notable and award-winning, but because the school places more emphasis on a professor’s classroom responsibilities than their research pursuits.

Even more interesting is that Forbes cites Who’s Who in America as an influencing factor. Wasn’t it Forbes that published Tucker Carlson’s tongue-lashing on Who’s Who? Of course, it’s ridiculous to say that because Forbes published Carlson’s piece, they have to follow his decrees.  But I have to concur with Carlson — Who’s Who is kind of a joke.  And therefore probably shouldn’t be a factor in college rankings.

I was most surprised, though, by the school winning the top spot. Yes, West Point, otherwise known as the US Military Academy, came in at #1. Forbes offered a snapshot of life there: “The best college in America has an 11:30 p.m. curfew. It doesn’t allow alcohol in the dorms, which must be kept meticulously clean. Students have to keep their hair neat, their shoes shined, their clothes crisply pressed…” Now no question that West Point is a top notch and important institution, but that does not sound to me like my #1 college. And so the real takeaway from the Forbes rating is this: rankings are not always the best indicator of where one should apply to college.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

In its statement Thursday, SocGen also said that Robert Day, a nonexecutive director, also was under investigation for alleged insider trading by the French regulator and that he also rejected the allegations.

The bank said the proceedings against Messrs. Mustier and Day came in the wake of an investigation, started in 2008, into the bank’s financial information disclosure and the trading of its shares.

Earlier investigations came in 2008, just a few months after plans for RDS were announced. Some speculated on the possible connection between the sale of shares and Day’s $200 million donation, earmarked to fund RDS.

This investigation prompts the question, what would happen to RDS if Day were found guilty? How much distance would the College seek from one of its biggest benefactors?