Introducing foreign grad students to US culture

Mike Sullivan of the Math Department suggested that I point readers toward a draft document he's prepared suggesting things that foreign graduate students, especially those planning on staying on in the US after their education, might want to bone up on. Compare the Beloit College "mindset list" meant to introduce faculty to their students--though that list is devoted to what humanities types call "little c" rather than "capital c" culture (i.e., popular rather than fancy pants culture). This is a nice diversion from our more divisive fare, so I'm happy to oblige.  Here's Mike:

This Summer I will become the graduate advisor for the Math Dept. A large fraction of our graduate students are from overseas. I started thinking about how to acclimate them to American culture. Many students in math, science and engineering are foreign but will stay here and become apart of our technological elite. Foreign undergrad students will be taking courses in the humanities, but foreign grad students in the STEM fields will not. So, I put together a web page I'm calling "An Introduction to American Culture for Foreign Graduate Students." It is just a series of lists of mostly books and movies that students or young academics could pursue when they have time over the next few years. It is pretty haphazard.

I'd like to get feed back on it either here or by e-mail (look me up). It is really a job for people in the humanities after all. I want to keep it short and be something a busy grad student or young academic could get through in a few years. I did not include recent movies that were widely seen overseas. I wanted to include both important literary novels and popular novels. So, here is the link, let be know what you think:

http://galileo.math.siu.edu/~msulliva/us4grads.html

It is easy to think of things to add - but harder to decide what to prune. You may want to think about it yourself for a while before looking at what I have done.

New finals week policy

The Provost has sent out a memo requiring faculty to give final exams or "final unit examinations" only during exam week (the full memo is embedded below). The expressed purpose is "to ensure that students have the time to do their very best work" by not overburdening students during the last week of classes. If you aren't giving a final exam in your class on the regularly scheduled date (including if you are not planning to give any such exam at all) you are now "expected to provide an explanation" to your Chair, and the Chair will report you to the Dean, save in cases of "seminars, internships, studio classes, and independent work, where exceptions make pedagogical sense".  The Dean then submits a list to the Provost by the tenth day of the semester. So Chairs are being asked to gather syllabi, and if you're not giving a final as scheduled, your chair has to decide whether that makes pedagogical sense, and if the Chair decides it doesn't, you're getting reported to your Dean and the Provost. Just what they will do with such reports is not said.

Less Bad Budget News

The Southern reports today that the governor is now saying that he hopes to hold funding for education, including higher education, steady, despite his gloomy outlook on the budget over the medium term (an outlook that may in fact not be gloomy enough, according to one Springfield insider). This would be far better news for SIUC than the prior report that state funding might be cut 4.25%.  We will of course have to see what the legislature comes up with--as they seem to wield the real power in this state.

Library Dean Carlson off to Texas A & M

[Update:  The Southern ran a story Friday on Carlson's move, and reports that he is disappointed that 2/3 of our books are still in McLafferty; Carlson is reported to say that failure is due to the lack of state funding for the sixth and seventh floors of the library.]

SIUC's Dean of Library Affairs, David Carlson, is moving on to Texas A & M, the DE reports.  Carlson's departure won't come as a surprise to those in the know (a group I am a marginal member of after having conversations with various librarians on the picket lines), as Carlson lost a major turf battle when Instructional Support Services was transferred to University College.  Now many of the offices housed in Morris are not run by the library; I suppose it is natural that after having overseen the renovation of Morris Carlson may have been irked to find that control over much of the building was given over to another unit. 

Carlson won an award as Illinois Academic Librarian of the Year in 2010, but will be best remembered, at least by this blogger, as the guy who emptied the library of books. Most of our collection remains in McLafferty, which I continue to consider outrageous; while it would have been expensive to return the books, the expense involved was a relative pittance in terms of the overall renovation of the library, and should have been made a major priority from the get go. The new Morris building is admittedly a vast improvement over the old one, and does provide a "campus center" to rival the student center. And of course digital resources are increasingly important, making texts less so. But texts still matter, even old ones, and by consigning them to exile in the vast shed on McLafferty Carlson sent the message to our students that books don't matter.

Southern Opposes Housing Upgrade

The Southern, usually a reliable source of support for the SIUC administration, has editorialized against the planned upgrade of campus housing, arguing that SIUC needs to turn around enrollment and somehow secure stable state funding before embarking on a major new construction project. I'm not sure, frankly, how to evaluate the housing plan. My understanding is that the new construction is to be paid for via housing fees; what is unclear is how much said fees will need to increase in order to pay for the new construction (a question I would have asked in the Faculty Senate had I been on my game). The new housing will be more attractive--not a hard bar to cross when the comparison is with the towers. And it does seem to me that more human scaled housing could well result in a better experience for our students. Finally, it is foolish to argue that we need to wait for stable state funding to do anything--state funding will not be stable any time soon. It will presumably continue its long-term decline, at least in real (inflation corrected) terms.

But the standard concern expressed on this blog--that money will be steered toward amenities rather than academics--may still apply. Student fees that are increased in order to pay for new housing could have gone elsewhere, including, as always, remaining in our students' pockets; though here students will at least have the option of living off-campus. Given the glut of student housing, cheap options are no doubt available off-campus, though they will not always be of the most attractive kind.

Okay, a brief last of 2011 post will have to do. Now I have to go see if my nine year old son needs any assistance in helping his cousins build a fort of blankets and pillows--what counts as a rockin' New Years Eve for this blogger.