Author: profhainline

Professor of Psychology at Brooklyn College;former Dean for Research and Graduate Studies; neurobehavioral/developmental psychologist by training; Principal Investigator of grants for both research and institutional programs to increase STEM diversity and improve STEM teaching; UG degree from Brown University; MA and PhD degrees from Harvard University

Final Paper (Exam) Assignment – Design your own College

Seminar 4, Spring 2016
Final paper 2016

Final Paper Assignment:  Design your own College

If you were creating an institution of higher learning from scratch, to survive and thrive in the coming decades, what would it look like? The final assignment in the course, in lieu of a final examination, is for you to design what you consider to be the ideal modern college or university for the future of New York City. You should use the information and analyses from this semester to create what in your view is an ideal institution of higher education to further the viability of NYC. You should not simply describe a current college or university, even Macaulay; try to be innovative within some practical boundaries. You can give your institution a name, a logo, a motto, and even a mascot if you want and decide where to put it.

Points to consider/cover (not exhaustive)

What will your institution’s mission be, and what is the rational for this mission?

  • Will it be a public, private or for-profit institution?
  • What type of institution will this be (community college, 4-year college, masters University, Research University)?
  • Will you have a “bricks and mortar” campus? Where?
  • If “bricks and mortar”, will your institution be residential or commuter?
  • Who will run your institution? What kind of governance will you have?
  • How will you fund your institution? (more on budgets later)
  • Who will be your target student audience, and what entry characteristics will they have?
  • How many students will you have at your institution?
  • Will the preponderance of financial aid be merit or need-based?
  • If you provide other financial aid or resources for students, where will the funding come from?
  • Will you have academic departments?
  • What will your curriculum be like (areas, general education, majors, something else)?
  • How will your students be graded?
  • What kinds of pedagogy will you ask your faculty to use to teach this curriculum? (assume you do not have to fight with accrediting or state agencies about changing any rules about the method for delivery of instruction)
  • What kinds of credentials will you be seeking for your faculty and what will they spend their time doing?
  • Will faculty be able to obtain tenure or not? Why/Why not?
  • Will you have serious (Division 1) inter-collegiate athletics?
  • How will you know if your institution is realizing your mission? This is called “Outcomes Assessment”.
  • How will your institution advance the goal of improving the future of New York City?
  • You can deal with other issues and questions as well but you should explain why you are making the decisions you are making. What problems or challenges will your institution be designed to address?

You will also have to run an institution that can cover its costs by income from tuition, donations, endowment income and research recoveries. I will give you some guidelines for budgets at a later date, but as the stock market is in good shape, I will make a donation for your endowment to get you started (see below).

  • Keep in mind the following NYS Department of Education Rules: For a bachelor’s degree, you need a major and some general education requirements, but students must in some way accumulate 120 credits, which traditionally has represented forty 3-credit courses or the equivalent. The state says that a 3 credit course must meet for 45 contact hours (an hour is generally 50 minutes but that’s a detail).  There may be other ways of meeting these requirements.
  • You must deal with the economics of your new college and will need to develop a basic annual budget for your college.
  • To start your college, I will give you a donation of $100M which is your basic endowment (if you want you can name a building after me). You can figure that the endowment will generate approximately 5% in income a year. In general, you want to keep from spending your endowment, and if financial times are good, you may want to reinvest some of the income from the endowment to increase the base for generating future endowment income.
  • You will have to generate the resources to run your college from tuition, overhead from research grants, and donations (“Development income” in college-speak) if yours is a private college, and from local or state funding if your college is public. Tuition can come from student grants or loans as well as direct payments. You can calculate overhead from faculty grants, if faculty do research at your college, at 50% of each dollar brought in for research. If you are a public university, you may also get some money from your state or city. You can calculate getting about 25-30% of your total budget from public funding if yours is a public college.
  • For the purposes of calculating the cost of faculty, you can figure an average annual salary of $100,000 for each full professor, $75,000 for each Associate Professor, and $50,000 for each Assistant Professor. Adjuncts will cost you $3,000 for each course.
  • The President will make $300,000. Each Vice President will make $200,000. Each Dean will make $150,000.
  • Health benefits will cost about 40% of your total salary expenditures.
  • The costs of running the buildings (lights, power, toilet paper) do not have to be estimated but these are real costs in the real world.
  • Develop ratios to explain the number of administrators, staff, and faculty costs, etc. based on the number of students you are serving and your overall budget.

Standard syllabus stuff

Attached is the “main” syllabus for the course, with rules, regulations and a list of topics by dates. Readings will be posted on the website for these as I get them ready, but at least 1 week in advance, and hopefully more. I will update this syllabus throughout the semester with readings, so by the end, there will be one complete syllabus but in the meanwhile, it will be a bit fluid. If there are any topics you think we should cover that I have not included here, let me know.

Syllabus-for-Spring16_latest

Class Discussion Leader Assignments

Here are the discussion leader assignments. If there is something that prevents you from doing a particular week, please speak with me, and we’ll see if we can get someone to swap with you. Or you can arrange a swap yourself, but do not do this without letting me know.

Lname First Discussion Second Discussion
Abramowitz 2/17/16 3/30/16
Beda 3/9/16 4/27/16
Cali 2/24/16 4/6/16
Cao 2/24/16 4/20/16
Caruso 3/16/16 4/6/16
George 2/17/16 4/20/16
Gooding 3/2/16 4/6/16
Iuni 3/16/16 5/4/16
Jiang 3/2/16 5/4/16
Khalfin 3/9/16 4/6/16
Mahmud 2/24/16 4/13/16
Mendez 3/16/16 4/13/16
Miranda 2/17/16 5/4/16
Moreno 3/16/16 4/20/16
Park 3/9/16 4/20/16
Saad 2/24/16 5/4/16
Salem 3/30/16 4/13/16
Sleiman 3/2/16 3/30/16
Stein 3/2/16 4/27/16
Sutton 3/9/16 4/13/16
Tam 3/30/16 4/27/16
Zami 2/17/16 4/27/16

How to Lead an Effective Class Discussion

How to Lead an Effective Class Discussion
(adapted from a document from the Hamilton College Oral Communications Center – of value in graduate school as well as in this class)

As one of the leaders of a discussion of assigned readings in the course, your general objective is to help your classmates better understand that material by facilitating a conversation about concepts and issues expressed in or implied by the reading. Working with your group, you should plan a brief agenda that will help the group achieve this goal. Below are suggested elements of the agenda.

  1. (Optional) Plan a brief “check-in” period. Give group members an opportunity to speak. For a classroom discussion, the check-in might give people a chance to mention briefly things that are on their minds and relevant to the topic, such as an item in today’s news, a personal experience that occurred since the last class meeting, an issue that came up in an earlier class in our seminar or another class, a general reaction to the assigned reading (e.g., it was difficult to read, you didn’t understand the context or were missing some key background information), etc.

Allow individuals only 20-30 seconds each to make these comments, and use this time as a way to let them get engaged and “warmed up” to talking about the reading. Some of the comments might be used as a bridge to the main part of the discussion. Not every individual needs to contribute each class, but all should feel obligated to help out the discussion leaders with getting discussion started.

  1. State the objective of the discussion and provide any needed background or orientation. Keep it brief. Do not waste time giving a complete overview and summary of the reading as you can assume that group members have done the assigned reading. If they haven’t, your summary probably won’t be sufficient to produce a very satisfying discussion anyway.
  2. (Optional) Select someone to keep a record of the group’s ideas. Specify what method of recording you want to use (e.g., whiteboard/blackboard, PPT from console computer projected) and be prepared with the proper materials.
  3. Start the discussion. Guide it, keep it on track. Get members involved. Write out the key questions you plan to ask to stimulate thinking and discussion. Arrange them in a sensible order.

In general, avoid asking yes/no questions and questions that simply ask members to recite or recall a detail from the reading as a check on whether anyone actually read it. Questions that make for more interesting and engaging discussion are those that ask people to clarify, interpret, or extend points made in the reading; to exemplify and apply concepts; to compare and contrast; to offer judgments about the accuracy, relevance, or usefulness of the author’s observations; to agree or disagree with positions expressed in the reading or in the discussion; and to suggest theoretical or practical implications.

  1. When the discussion has either run its course or run out of time, summarize what you understand to be the group’s major conclusions, the points of agreement and disagreement. Give group members an opportunity to correct or clarify these for the record.
  2. (Optional) Conduct a brief “check-out.” Give group members an opportunity to comment on the discussion itself or where this experience leaves them or directs them personally.

New approach to seminar readings, and another required book

In general, in the past, students have enjoyed this seminar (they said), but they thought the reading was too heavy. This is a side-effect of the fact that higher education is a complex endeavor and requires quite a bit of background reading as context. I have been contemplating how to deal with this, and am going to try another solution that will reduce significantly the reading compared to the last few semesters. I am working on redoing the syllabus, but it will take me more time compared with just tweaking the old one.

I have decided to reuse a book I used last year, American Higher Education in Crisis?: What Everyone Needs to Know by Goldie Blumenstyk (Oxford, 2015). It’s a well-regarded book chock full of up-to-date information, although it also isn’t as lively and journalistic than the Selingo. But it has a lot of statistics and packs in a fair amount of info which reduces the amount of other reading you will have to do. You may be able to borrow a copy from someone who took last year’s seminar with me, and it’s on Amazon and also available Kindle. Get it as soon as you can, but we probably won’t use it until week after next.

Tahir is looking into whether I can have you post assignments that only I can see on Word Press, but it appears it was not designed to do some of the things that Blackboard does. I may set up a simple Blackboard page for your work products as I can’t really handle them in my already over-the-top college email, but for the questions you are doing for the Selingo book, just post them on the blog Tahir set up. He says you will all know how to do this.

See you on Wednesday. Come ready to discuss.

Prof. Hainline