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Wagner College's Plan

Posted by tom | Jul 13, 2005

My Father recently passed along to me Wagner College's, his alma mater's, Annual Report. He thought I would have an interest in their Plan for the Practical Liberal Arts, which seeks to blend the skill-oriented attributes of a liberal arts college w/the service/teaching elements of public universities. This hybrid model of the New American College, was attributed Ernest Boyer, 7th president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of teaching (and a member of the Messiah College learning community). It's not surprising the presence of real world experience framed by a learning community of mentors emerges from a Christian intellectual. Let us hope that Wagner College at some point remembers its Christian roots in this application so that the faculty not only enter into dialogue but also have opportunity to profess the necessary truths to provide proper understanding of real world experience.

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    Unrelated to these topics, Tom, but I just wanted to say: Keep the blue.

    I'll be stopping by often--this seems like a thought provoking place, and I like the pix of my lady-girl neices. I did notice an errant apostrophe in one of the articles you linked to and I did want to mention that I once walked by a woman in a hotel and I overheard her say: "Superfluous apostrophes drive me mad!"-- a phrase that I think should be on a tee shirt!

    Great to see you and your fantastico girls this weekend.
    xokate

    Posted by Kate, Jul 14 2005, 00:45

    The opinion on keeping the blue header (over a yellow or orange) was universal. So we're sticking w/it . . . a rare moment of consensus on artistic/structural concerns :-) Your quote regarding the 'superflous apostrophe' reminds me of one of our campus book discussions in which we engaged in a tangential discussion regarding the advantage of footnotes over endnotes.

    In particular there was frustration that each page of the book did not have the chapter in the header, forcing one to remember the chapter (or turn back to find it) while exploring the back of the book for the correct endnote. Apparently, we were not alone as I came across this quote while reading a book review,

    "One final beef! Why must publishers, presumably with authorial assent, indulge in the unnecessary and most irritating practice of consigning the customary, reader-friendly footnotes to become endnotes? I suspect that I will not be alone in simply ignoring the notes altogether after fumbling pages for the first chapter or so."

    The frustrations faced by avid academics :-(

    Thank-you for joining the conversation Kate! Hope to post some more pics by early next week.

    Posted by Tom, Jul 14 2005, 08:36

    Whoa, just a New York moment here. What's all this about consensus. I like orange. (However, I will be more than happy to argue for blue if someone else will pick orange.) G-d I love a good debate.

    Posted by John A. Cantrill, Jul 14 2005, 16:04

    For a humorous look at the history of punctuation as well as usage guidelines, try "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss. (The title illustrates how drastically one comma changes a pithy description of pandas.)

    For a very dry set of guidelines for designing websites based on usability research, visit http://usability.gov/ They recommend black text on a high-contrast background for maximum ease of reading. That said, it is a lovely shade of blue.

    For a model of teaching that combines instruction with real-world experience, look no farther than the example of Jesus himself. The gospels very clearly show The Teacher sending his disciples out to practice the principles in which he had instructed them. And he frequently used parables as a commentary for the situations that his followers were experiencing at that moment.

    As a footnote, let me add that my biggest frustration with endnotes is when they serve as a catch-all for citations as well as asides, tangents and actual notes. There is little reward for tracking down those elusive endnotes when they are mostly bibliographic details that needn't interrupt the flow of the text; invariably the few nuggets actually hidden back there get overlooked. We've invented footnotes and endnotes both; why not let each do what they do best?

    Posted by Andy Walsh, Jul 15 2005, 16:20
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