09-17-2006, 03:29 PM | #11 | |
Demiurge
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Later events only confirmed this. I understand he was a good fundraiser however. I guess the key question is whether the BOT considered him a success. Hence the desire for another water-carrier? |
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09-17-2006, 04:16 PM | #12 | |
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"Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; " 1 Thess. 5:21 (NRSV) We all trust our own unorthodoxies. |
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09-17-2006, 04:41 PM | #13 |
Demiurge
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Sky room stunk. My wife used to work there.
Of course, I didn't realize back then that almost all food in Provo/Orem is bad. |
09-17-2006, 04:49 PM | #14 | |
Charon
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Location: In the heart of darkness (Provo)
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Yes, Kim Clark is a great addition to BYU-Idaho (I am still puzzled as to why they would pull him from his former job - but that is a different story), but things are far worse (academically) for BYU-Idaho. Their honor code is even more strict than the one at BYU-Provo. They pay their faculty a small fraction of what they get in Provo and there is almost no opportunity for scholarship. It is simply a glorified junior college. If you think that having Clark at the helm is going to substantially change things, or that they are now in a better position than BYU-Provo, you are naive. I am not sure where your dept. rankings are coming from. The law school, accounting program, and business schools are still quite strong. The college of engineering was recently given their highest rating ever. Far ahead of the University of Utah and (IIRC) ahead of USU (which has traditionally had a strong engineering program). BYU still has a long way to go, but I have a hard time believing that things are getting worse. One of the best and most standard methods of measuring scholarhip is the annual number of publications in peer-reviewed journals. I can state with confidence that the publication rate at BYU is higher than it has ever been in history. Mainly due to the fact that older (dead-wood) faculty are retiring and being replaced with younger faculty who have been given higher expectations for scholarship. Finally, the notion that the honor code has supplanted focus on research and scholarship is laughable. What do you envision? Faculty being asked to give up research time to patrol the halls looking for coeds whose skirts are too high? Faculty being ask to spend substantial class time lecturing on honor code compliance? Other than the athletic program (which has absolutely nothing to do with academics), there has been no "academic retrenchment" at BYU and certainly no honor code jihad that has had any effect on scholarship. The oversight of scholarship is primarily accomplished at the dept. and college level. That is where the pressure comes from, and it is largely tied in to the advancement in rank process. The university president has lots of power, but his impact on the day to day operations is limited. Yes, Oaks was a good president. Rex Lee was not so great, IMO. His main initiative was a multi-year "self study" that required a substantial amount of effort by the faculty and staff. He promised that he would cut dead wood and redistribute resources as a result, but almost nothing happened. Massive waste of time. Bateman was clearly the most controversial of the recent presidents. He was an intellectual lightweight in many ways and made several errors, IMO. But he raised a ton of money and his impact on the day to day scholarship of the faculty (as a whole) was neglible. The faculty were enthused about Samuelson when he came, but he hasn't done anything so far to warrant that enthusiasm. No major change of any significance.
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"... the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice." Martin Luther King, Jr. Last edited by Jeff Lebowski; 09-17-2006 at 09:52 PM. |
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09-17-2006, 04:53 PM | #15 |
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BYU needs to decide what its mission is. Perhaps it is to be a funnel for LDS to kids to excel elsewhere. That's what it is now.
Of course my opinion is that the church should divest itself of BYU. I don't know why it should be subsidizing secular education for the wealthiest Mormons on the planet. |
09-17-2006, 05:00 PM | #16 | |
Charon
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"... the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice." Martin Luther King, Jr. |
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09-17-2006, 05:03 PM | #17 |
Demiurge
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what is an excellent undergrad institution? I guess that means you have great teachers, who are not leaders in their field and don't do research, but somehow despite that have gained a great understanding and are able to teach it.
And oh well, if there is no exposure to good research experience when you are an undergrad. I just don't buy the model. You are either after excellence or you are not. |
09-17-2006, 05:33 PM | #18 | |
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Regards, Brian
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e^(i * pi) + 1 = 0 5 great numbers in one little equation. |
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09-17-2006, 09:09 PM | #19 | |
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I agree with you Mike. I think one of the church's primary functions should be education, but not secular education. Too many inherent conflicts. Not the least of which is the poor of the church subsidizing the education of the elite of the church. Imagine a world where the church pours the money currently going to BYU into institutes and all of those bright LDS kids go to a university near where they grew up, building the church there. There ought to be an institute at every major university. They will never put me in charge, but if they did one of my first acts would be to pull the trigger on that idea.
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The Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. -Galileo |
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09-17-2006, 09:39 PM | #20 |
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Here's my program:
http://www.cougarboard.com/noframes/...html?id=812210 BYU would enter a golden age were it to cease its role as the linchpin of the Church's program for indoctrinating youth and divest itself of all institutional relationship with the Church. The occasional squabble between BYU's secular president and the First Presidency, after BYU refused to fire a heretic professor, would, for me, evince healthy tension.
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Interrupt all you like. We're involved in a complicated story here, and not everything is quite what it seems to be. —Paul Auster |
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