Category: Education
Saturday, 8/30/14
Sunday 8/17/14
Friday, August 1, 2014
Meet the Modern Research University
I got a letter today that says a lot by what it doesn’t say. For all I know, the letter has a “sell-by” date and will disappear down the memory hole when that arrives, so I reproduce it in full:
July 31, 2014
Dear Purdue friends,
Your university is setting records — thanks to our brilliant faculty and our dedicated staff, and thanks to you, our engaged alumni, who have helped us to significant achievements over the past year.
This month, we are reporting a record-setting fiscal year with new marks in commercialization activity and charitable donations, and the second-highest total ever in external research funding.
Already known as an important engine for economic development and growth for Indiana, Purdue announced that a record-breaking number of startups — a total of 24 new companies created from university innovations — launched during the 2014 fiscal year, which ended June 30. These startups, triple last year’s number, are based on patented Purdue University intellectual property and they are a direct result of our efforts to aggressively cultivate a climate of entrepreneurship and to foster technology commercialization.
The creation of the Purdue Foundry last year was a significant step in the process. This startup hub in the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship provides a team of entrepreneurial experts who assist with business plans, product ideation, market analysis, grant writing, legal counsel and more. Along with the Purdue Technology Centers, the Purdue Foundry won the 2014 Incubator Network of the Year award from the National Business Incubation Association, its highest distinction.
The results of this year’s startup activities are a testament to the dedication of Boilermaker researcher-entrepreneurs and the strong support system developed here on campus. As Indiana’s land-grant university, one of Purdue’s most important missions is to move its innovations to the public where we can help our global society and create jobs for Hoosiers. We are making strides on this front as never before.
This news comes along with record-breaking research funding during the past fiscal year as well. External research funding to Purdue saw its largest annual increase during the just-ended fiscal year — a jump of $70 million — to a total of $389 million. These dollars are pouring into our labs and classrooms, into our infrastructure, and into the future of the university. Through this significant investment in Purdue, our researchers are hard at work on projects focusing on converting plant biomass into fuel, reducing hunger and poverty by improving the processing and marketing of key crops, and developing methods to mass-produce new nanomaterials for advanced sensors and batteries, to name just a few.
Supporting these significant gains, we recently announced the merger of our research and global offices into one organization, the Office of Research and Partnerships. This change will facilitate further growth in research funding, which last year included significant awards from Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense, among others.
The close of the 2014 fiscal year also brought a celebration of the many generous gifts our friends, alumni and partners have made to support our great university. This year’s giving was historic in several ways. Our first-ever Purdue Day of Giving in April raised $7.5 million from more than 6,500 gifts. This figure contributed significantly to the more than $235 million we raised for the year — our 13th consecutive year of more than $200 million — and to a record number of new donors and record funding for student support. It’s clear to me that our faculty excellence and our goals for student success are resonating with our greatest supporters — you.
Some quotes from our generous donors describe their reasons for giving:
“Today is Purdue Day of Giving. My opportunity was granted by my Purdue Promise Scholarship. I love Purdue. Again, thank you so much, Purdue Promise! I couldn’t do it without you and the donors.”— Sophie O., student
“Please accept this gift to the Ag. study abroad department. Our daughter Abbey Amos is in Australia now and wouldn’t have had this opportunity to do this amazing trip without scholarships like this!! Paying it forward so someone else can do the same!”
— Frank and Michele Amos, Purdue parents“Purdue has given me more through academic, social and professional experiences than I have given to the school monetarily or could ever give in any way. Education opens opportunities for individuals to change their lives and the lives around them. I wanted to give because I want to see other students have the opportunities I have been privileged to have through Purdue.”
— Barnard Mondal, a recent graduate and alumnus of Purdue’s Science Bound programEvery gift to Purdue, large and small, means an investment in the future of our university, whether that is research, student success, or facilities. Loyal alumni, friends, corporations and foundations, faculty and staff — and students, too — have given back to Purdue in a truly spectacular fashion. Thanks to this generosity and foresight, we are strengthening Purdue’s leadership in the STEM disciplines, pursuing world-changing research, and transforming how students learn — all while keeping a Purdue education affordable for our students.
As alumni, your remarkable gifts, your reputation for excellence and your inspiring stories are what make our university so great. Thank you for the part you play in our success.
Sincerely,
Mitchell E. Daniels Jr.<
(Emphasis added)
Greater Lafayette is a great place to make a living. I have no reason to think any of Mitch’s claims are bogus. It sounds as if Purdue is succeeding in producing not just cogs in productive gears, but hubs. This is the modern research university.
But I grieve that there is so little pride in actually producing educated individuals, not just entrepreneurs, who may be craven, shriveled souls for all their commercial success. Barnard Mondal is, by my count, the only donor who comes close to maybe valuing education for its own sake.
I guess education simpliciter just doesn’t fit the feedback loop of financial success breeding financial success.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Thursday 7/31/14
Tuesday, 7/29/14
Wednesday, 7/24/14
- The foes of conservatism
- “Liturgy” isn’t liturgy
- Friends don’t let friends matriculate in the Ivy League
- An expensive endeavor
- Imposing religion
- Gawd’s furrin policy
I happen to be on a bit of a run, but I’m still not ready to return to constant daily blogging. We’ll see. I, too, am trying to live well and balanced.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Metrics and the Ineffable
I have said from time to time that I’ve lost faith, and thus have lost interest, in politics. I now have objective proof.
In the 2008 Presidential cycle, I “clipped and saved” (digitally speaking), categorizing by candidate even, 1168 articles or columns. In the 2012 Cycle, 40. Total.
Barack Obama alone had 378 in ’08. John McCain had another 105.
It’s not that I think politics is utterly incapable of doing anything I’d care a little about. It’s that I don’t trust our national elected officials to do it (no, I do not make an exception for my own “conservative” Congressman) and, in an observation or attitude that is increasing in my thought, politics in the end is weaker than and subservient to the culture.
Conservatives and religious traditionalists are losing The Culture Wars because we’re losing the culture. And we’re losing the culture in part because when we try to do culture, we tend to produce drek.
Brandon McGinley at Ethika Politika has a plausible theory on why the many issues of the gay rights side are not only winning, but routing the opposition: stories, not logic. Not even stories from which logic can fabricate a good case, but just stories that effectively silence and trump logic.
I’m haunted by the insight. And if it’s right, there’s no point in my explaining how you can’t logically get from an attempted murder of a gay man in Arizona 6 years to the moral imperative of gay marriage. Indeed, the insidiousness of the situation is that it would look positively reptilian to make the effort. (E.g., “What kind of soulless creep are you?!”)
In the same vein, Rod Dreher laments that conservatives are all left brain, and we need some judicious – very, very judicious – funding of the conservative right brain:
[A]rt and culture should not be approached from an instrumental point of view. This is why, for example, so much contemporary Christian filmmaking is so bad: it’s designed to culminate in an altar call. It’s about sending a message, not telling a story. I’m personally aware of a conservative donor and investor who poured millions into an independent film because he thought it was wholesome, and would improve the character of its viewers. I watched the movie in a private screening, and it was terrible. A total waste of money. My sense was that the investor had no idea what he was paying for, and in fact he wouldn’t have paid for a film that was anything other than moralistic propaganda.
That model is not what conservative artists and writers want or need. What would it mean for the conservative donor class to become authentic and effective patrons of conservative writers and artists? They would need to have reliable advisers from the arts and humanities who could help them identify worthy causes and artists — and then trust those advisers. For example, if I had $100 million dollars, I would contact a conservative humanities professor like Wilfred McClay and ask him where my donation could do the most good in nurturing conservative talent in the arts and humanities.
…
If I had a pile of money to donate, I would probably cut a check to the Dante Society of America , and earmark it for the development of outreach programs to teach Dante to high school students and ordinary people. Why? Not because this will result in electing more Republicans to office, but because I am convinced that there is deep wisdom and beauty in The Divine Comedy that American culture would benefit from rediscovering. I would hope for some tangible result from my donation, but in general, it’s hard to predict where and when the tree of knowledge that one patiently waters will blossom.
Indeed. One of the things I have come to realize is that if we can cultivate a wise younger generation, they may have a few things to tell me about where I’ve been foolish. I’d welcome that (when I got over the prideful grumbling reflex).
Dreher, by the way, was riffing off a much longer article at National Review.
So I’m again affirmed in abandoning the Culture Wars for culture – most of the time some of the time occasionally. That seems to be the long game, which if I succeed will ramify in ways I can’t imagine.
UPDATE: I plan to write a support check to Image later this week. Is it conservative? I don’t know. But it’s faith-connected and has unvarying artistic integrity.
* * * * *
“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 