Another NYT Op-Ed from Susan Engel

Playing to Learn:

The Obama administration is planning some big changes to how we measure the success or failure of schools and how we apportion federal money based on those assessments. It’s great that the administration is trying to undertake reforms, but if we want to make sure all children learn, we will need to overhaul the curriculum itself. Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike. [...]

While I love the approach, I'm not sure how to set it, as a matter of policy. Thoughts?

Sometimes, Williams is amazing

It's when I'm sitting for hours in the Gibson room, discovering the depths of a new friendship.

It's when I sit surrounded by friends on all sides and 130 more people, just to hear someone tell their story.

It's when I can knock on a near-stranger's door and have a pleasant conversation at 1 am.

IMAGE: It's when I can get academic credit for snoeshoing into a beautiful back-country camp, and writing about the interesting people I met there.

It's when I see Goodrich filled to capacity, just to hear a few students of varying ability play their original works of music.

It's when I'm sitting with graduates of the early 1940s, and hearing their stories of Williams from an era so long past.

It's when I can have a real conversation with a trustee at my college.

It's when I and joyful when friends return from abroad, and when the thought of them leaving gives me a tear.

It is NOT when I am scrambling to finish the requisite work for said project. But that's where posts like this come in.

Haiti Relief at Williams

To the Williams Community,

The devastation in Haiti and especially the horrible human suffering there have touched us all. The news has been almost heart-stopping.

No Williams students were in the country at the time but at least one student appears to have lost family members. On a special online discussion group set up for alumni, many have reported that their family members are safe but that is not true for all.

A news story about an alumnus now providing medical help there, Hernando Garzon '84, can be read at http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/story/2460673.html .

Students, faculty, and staff are organizing Williams-based responses. You can follow the plans and join in through http://haitirelief.williams.edu .

Many organizations are taking donations to support relief efforts, including:

The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund at http://clintonbushhaitifund.org/
The American Red Cross at http://www.redcross.org
Partners in Health (Paul Farmer's organization) at http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti
The Boston Foundation (where donations are being matched dollar for dollar) at
http://www.tbf.org/Giving/GivingDetail.aspx?id=13244

I trust that in this time of such unimaginable human suffering we will each of us be moved to do all that we possibly can to help.

With regards,
Bill Wagner
Interim President

Sondheim coverage

From the Albany Times-Union:

Perhaps most entertaining were a series of questions Rich posed about the craft of songwriting. At one point Sondheim ruthlessly took apart the work of Lorenz Hart, proclaiming the frequent Richard Rodgers collaborator to be "genuinely lazy lyrics writer." But Sondheim was also willing to turn the glass on himself and his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein - pointing out weaknesses in their material as well.

What might have been a dry conversation about craft or simply a troll through the highlights of an impressive life was instead a thrilling event full of unexpected revelations and useful information.

Info on College Finances

The Provost's Page is here, with lots of neat facts and figures.


Here's an example chart of data (total budget represented : $205 million)

 

Saturday Night

In Goodrich, getting paid to protect the light board from giant beach balls while dancing/working on a fellowship application. Oh, Williams.

Rapaport '11 in Gaudino Style Class

A real-world education in Portland:

Rapaport is Jewish – the first Jewish person that Nkulu, a devout Christian, has ever met. Rapaport's grandparents fled Germany during the Holocaust. They came to the United States with nothing and settled in Kansas City, Mo.

"They had to build themselves up from square one," Rapaport said. "So, we're both relative newcomers to this country, and we both want to make America a stronger place."

Rapaport is one of six Williams College students who are living with local immigrant families and working with students who are learning to speak English in Portland's public schools.

KAOS

Yack. Kaos.

I am being hunted. I am hunting. I have partners. I have enemies. One of them is probably going to come to get me in 3 hours, exactly.

Wheeeee.

2009 - the best time-lapse video I've ever seen

Williams College Honors Nine Students as Gaudino Fellows

This press release is near and dear to my heart:

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - Nine Williams College students have been named Gaudino Fellows and will spend January Term abroad pursuing projects in honor of Robert Gaudino, professor of political science at Williams from 1955 to 1974, who promoted the idea that to truly learn students must confront uncomfortable ideas and situations and take the intellectual and emotional risks inherent in a search for truth.

Read about the projects - each one is an amazing opportunity, and I can't wait to hear about them.

Feel Good Story

Sometimes life is like the movies:

Angel leapt a full 1.5 metres above the ground, sailed over a lawn mower and intercepted a cougar mid-air, just as it was about to pounce on 11-year-old Austin Forman.
The cougar got Angel, a golden retriever, around the neck and the two animals fell to the ground, the cougar’s jaws clamped tight around the dog’s neck.
Austin ran inside, frantic and screaming.
“I was terrified,” said Austin. “My dog saved my life, but now the cougar had him.”

h/t: Dish (I think)

Winter Study

Today is the beginning of Winter Study, that grand month of Williams festivities and oddball learning. My theory for Winter Study is that you either stay on campus and do something interesting/easy or go off campus and do something immersive/useful. I'm attempting both by going to Vermont for a study trip and politically blogging, which is technically a double load. I figure it will be a good chance to learn something about how to write better blog posts with a prof's help, and I will enjoy the freezing cold SO MUCH that I will probably never have to venture out again.

Last year, I was in DC for the month, living truly alone and working on Capitol Hill. While I'm glad to have had that experience, it's not one I want to repeat, though I hope to intern at a think-tank this summer.

Also hoping to go to the gym more, but that might not be in the cards. :D

Happy New Year...in one minute.

Yes, this post is pre-scheduled. :D

From Class, to Television

The Advocate has the story:

Williams students get real with new TV show - By REBECCA DRAVIS
"The Mountains" premiered Dec. 17 at the college before beginning a six-week run on WilliNet on Jan. 4 (check willinet.org for show times). And indeed, the students appeared to be having fun making the show, even though it wasn't what Lane had in mind when she first created the film class.

Lane said she thought the class would focus more on traditional live television, utilizing the equipment and studio the college already had, but the students changed direction.

"It became really obvious they were more interested in a reality TV format," she said. "Television is changing, and they wanted to represent what contemporary television is all about."

Ephs top Learfield Sports Directors' Cup competition after fall season

CLEVELAND, OH -- The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) announced today that the Williams College Ephs lead the NCAA Division III Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup standings at the conclusion of the 2009 fall championship season.

Points are awarded in the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup competition based on an institution’s finish at NCAA Championship events. This fall the Ephs scored in five of the seven NCAA team championship events.

Williams, winners of the last 11 consecutive Directors’ Cups and 13 of the 14 awarded in NCAA Division III, tallied 367 points to post an 18 -point lead over runner-up Calvin College (MI), which has accumulated 349 points. Washington University (MO) holds down third place with 319 points. Messiah College is in fourth place with 290 points and Johns Hopkins University is fifth with 278 points

Archrival Amherst and Middlebury are the other two NESCAC teams in the top 10. The Amherst Lord Jeffs are sixth (225), while the Panthers of Middlebury are in 10th with 197 points.

Leading the five Eph scoring teams was men’s cross country, which accumulated 90 points based on its second place finish at the NCAA Championship Race. Men’s soccer’s third place finish added 83 points, while the women’s cross country team contributed 66 points with an 8th place finish.

Women’s cross country is the only Eph fall team to score in all fifteen years of the competition. The Eph women harriers have finished in the top 10 every year except 1997 when they came in 14th. Additionally the women’s team has finished in the top five nine times and won the NCAA title in 2002 and 2004.

Women’s soccer and women’s volleyball both chipped in 64 points with 9th place finishes.

This marks the seventh time in the 15 years that Williams has led at the end of the fall season and it is the first time since 2004 the Ephs held the lead this early in the academic year.

The Ephs 367 points is just nine short of their all-time fall best of 376 posted in 2002.

Top 10 NCAA Div. III Teams – Fall 2009

1.   -- Williams -- 367

2.   -- Calvin  (MI) -- 349

3.   -- Washingtion U. (MO) -- 319

4.   -- Messiah (PA) -- 290

5.   -- Johns Hopkins -- 278

6.   -- Amherst -- 225

7.   -- Christopher Newport (VA) -- 224

8.   -- Salisbury (MD) -- 214

9.   -- Lynchburg (VA) -- 200

10. -- Middlebury -- 197

Left: Volleyball 9th at NCAA

Right: Women's Soccer 9th at NCAAs

Women's Cross Country 8th at NCAAs

There's something about having a physical letter in your hand....

...that makes it all the sweeter. I won't get one of my presents, a letter from Germany, until I get back to Williams. There are amazing people all around the world.

Weston Renovation to begin ASAP

From the Berkshire Eagle:

There should be a new football facility under the tree at Williams College.

The long-awaited renovation to Weston Field should begin as soon as possible, perhaps as soon as the college can unwrap the gift.

A lighted turf football facility could bring Super Bowl or playoff games to Williamstown, and will be great for the football Ephs, for students to play intramurals on, and for the local high school teams to practice and play.

Adam Smith

1. Because the division of labor is born from the power of market exchange, it is also limited by market exchange's limits. For example, a very small market offers little incentive to specialize, and some industries can only be in cities. In some rural areas, each farmer has to be butcher and baker. Those who specialize do so broadly: carpenter is also "joiner, a cabinet maker, carver, wheelwright, ploughwright, a cart and wagon maker." Thus industry complicates near areas of easy transport: waterways make it cheaper, and land travel is can prohibitively expensive. The division of labor is splitting different types of work so that people can specialize in a specific kind of work, and allows production technologies to only be needed once than for everyone. However, mental mutilation is a factor, though Smith recommends education as a rectifying formula. Human propensity to truck, barter, and exchange. Better to create one good, though this isn't possible in small markets.

So goes my study guide, through #40 and beyond. I'm ready for you, POEC final.

Faculty House

Richardson writes about Williams Track

From the Salem News:

Joel Richardson has written another book, this time focusing on the Williams College track program. The name of the book is easy to remember: "Williams Track", and is available on Amazon.com.... [I don't see it there yet -Will]

"I wanted to tell how the athletes could integrate the values and what they learned in class to putting that into practice in their performance (in track)," said Richardson, who ran for the Ephs from 1978-80, competing in the 440, 600, and 880 meters. His name is on the school's all-time indoor list at 500 meters (600 yards).