Fri 28 Dec 2007
Three years ago, David Ramos ’00 wrote
If Williams wants to engineer additional communities, why not build real academic communities? Environmental Studies comes together every week for Log Lunch, and CS meets for pizzas and colloqiua. My department, English, did nothing of the kind, barring once-a-year socials.
Good question. Which departments/programs do the best job of creating an academic community? I have heard wonderful things about MATH/STAT. Is that still true? What departments do a poor job? English? What ideas could the bad departments easily steal from the good ones? Now is a good time for department chairs to start thinking of New Years resolutions . . .
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5 Responses to “Academic Communities”
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Anonymous says:
Environmental Studies is good at community-building efforts, but the group needs to be since they are so interdisciplinary and lack a major. It isn’t perfect but they work at it as a group, and get results. As you noted, they have the Log Lunches. They also have other speakers and programs during the year and work at publicizing them to both Williams and non-Williams people. Having Kellogg House helps give them a center. The CES email list is very active, with alerts for speakers, internships, jobs, conferences, and programs. They also benefit from (and work at benefiting from) programs, research, and resources in Hopkins Forest and from the Outing Club and its resources and email list.
Having an easy-to-use, appealing, updated department website is a very good place for a department (or a concentration, club, or team) to start. I won’t critique Williams department websites here but I’d make two general suggestions: 1) put the effort in to make sure that you update your department website regularly (and do more than just change the calendar dates and names: add articles or mentions about what people associated with the department are doing, what students and faculty are researching, factoids, extracurricular activities faculty are participating in, and such like); and 2) regularly test drive your website by having people outside of the department look at it and give you their feedback (the folks in the department may think the website is great or at least passable or it may not even be something they think about, but it is often the portal to the department for those from outside and it may actually be very difficult for newcomers to maneuver, off-putting, or just plain weird).
Mike E '04 says:
I was a history major minus one class, and a declared Geosciences major, lived and worked with a lot of Chemistry people, and took a lot of English and Economics. So I’ll speak for those departments. Without a doubt the sciences are much more down-to-earth and social, with cohesive groups of majors and majors in the same year. This might be because of having to work side by side more often (labs), as well as more opportunities to interact outside the classroom (Geo in my day had almost too many get togethers!) Chem is not too small a major, too, lest ye think that this is just because small departments work harder to foster cameraderie (which is probably true: people majoring in languages at Williams seem to share a lot of love). Of course, I had wonderful interactions with majors and faculty alike in English, Econ, and History. That was mostly unexpected luck, though. Despite a few brilliant exceptions, these profs seem more wedded to the image and hauteur of the aloof professor.
Anonymous says:
I would say the Japanese department has the most tight-knit community. Because it’s so small and the classes meet five days a week for the first few years students get to know each other and have their own adorable language to bond over. There are parties all the time, weekly department-wide dinners and lunches every week, and really personable profs. This was the case a few years ago any way.
Mike E '04 says:
One update, considering the Ramos ’00 posting: academic communities across dept. boundaries are indeed well-represented in CES, with Geosciences, some English and Econ, Chemistry, and Biology contributing. Aside from a few student-run groups like the Student Global AIDS Campaign or Students for Social Justice, when I was at Williams there were few places to consistently apply interdisciplinary undergraduate thought to real-world problems in a group — although sports faculty and students in sports did foster a lot of cameraderie for the entire school and alumni. It was a real shame, and one reason I think I grew to love the sciences more, albeit that I got lower grades in these classes. Scientific problems are often so immediately interdisciplinary that there is no room for people to wall themselves off into their corners. Perhaps more important, students are more primed (by their community?) to be aware of the vast knowledge they have not mastered or work they cannot do, and working together to make inroads into this knowledge. This fosters group learning and effort. I wish it had been similar in Div. I and II work — there are such interesting problems that require it. At times it was, such as when myself and two friends designed a class with professor Cleghorn (English) in which we tried as a group to analyze the historical path from cultural and biographical inspiration to poetry of a few writers — and to understand the historical frameworks of our own writing paths-to-work as well. But showing up to a class in English usually seems more to require individuals expounding on their views, rather than asking a million questions and exploring their ignorance. This might be a departmental cultural issue too, although it probably more reflects the fact that we’re sheepish to admit we don’t understand what novels are about while neutral about getting over our personal ignorance of viral biochemistry.
& says:
Thanks for your posts, Mike. I learned from you and got a better sense of what’s behind differences that were there even 30 and 40 years ago when I was a Williams student.
I would imagine that senior seminars would lead to some bonding among the seniors in a major (although I’m not sure how they work in the big departments).
Do outside speakers generate excitement/bonding/camaraderie? They seemed to in some departments when I was a student long ago. What about performances, concerts, and shows for those with academic interests in theater, dance, music, and the other arts?
Do majors in astronomy and the geosciences still go on field trips to other countries the way they did long, long ago (before my time)?
When I was at Williams, some of the most tightly bonded students who had bonded through their courses (as opposed to through sports or other extracurriculars) were the Gaudino program students who had studied and travelled together.