0 Faculty Senate to hear progress report on new undergraduate requirements

Stanford Report, November 8, 2012

Starting this year, freshmen are required to take a Thinking Matters course, and the class entering in the fall of 2013 is required to take 11 courses in eight Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing categories to earn a bachelor's degree.

By Kathleen J. Sullivan

At today's Faculty Senate meeting, Harry J. Elam Jr., vice provost for undergraduate education, will talk about the progress Stanford has made implementing the new Thinking Matters courses for freshmen and Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing breadth requirements for undergraduates.

The requirements, which Stanford has begun implementing this year, were recommended in the 2012 Study of Undergraduate Education at Stanford (SUES) and approved last year by the senate in separate votes – in March and May.

"I will be providing a post-SUES strategy for implementing the recommendations, including Thinking Matters and Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing," Elam said, adding that the primary focus of his report would be on the new breadth requirements.

Starting with the class entering in fall 2013, Stanford undergraduates are required to take 11 courses in eight categories to earn a bachelor's degree.

The eight Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing categories are aesthetic and interpretive inquiry; social inquiry; scientific method and analysis; formal reasoning; applied quantitative reasoning; engaging diversity; ethical reasoning; and creative expression.

Elam also will discuss the work of the Breadth Governance Board, which was created to establish the Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing breadth system. The board, which is composed of 22 faculty, staff and students, is chaired by Chris Edwards, a professor of mechanical engineering and a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy.

Elam will speak for 20 minutes. A 20-minute Q&A will follow.

The senate meeting will begin at 3:15 p.m. in Room 180 of the Law School. Discussion is limited to members of the senate, but members of the Stanford community may request to attend the meeting by contacting the Academic Secretary's Office at 723-4992 or Trish Del Pozzo at delpozzo@stanford.edu.

The senate will reconvene in executive session at 4:30 p.m. in Room 180 of the Law School.

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0 J-School Student Clip Report: Spring 2012

     

April 12, 2012

Columbia Journalism School students publish often and widely. Here is a collection of their work from the spring.

Feb. 20: Olivia B. Waxman's '12 article about social polling -- startups that track public opinion using social media and what that means for the future of polling -- was published on TIME.com's Techland.
Feb. 16: Federick Bernas '12 reported on Al Jazeera English, and also on an ABC television scene that riled Hispanic New Yorkers (Mar. 12), for Monocle 24 Radio.
Feb. 23: Donna Kim '12 talked with NBC's New York Live about 50's-inspired trends and how to incorporate pieces into one's wardrobe.
Feb. 24: Dalal Mawad's '12 look at how news organizations are vetting the flood of citizen journalist videos coming out of Syria was published on Columbia Journalism Review's website.
Feb. 25: Annie Claire Bergeron-Oliver's '12 piece on journalists sneaking across the border illegally to cover Syria was published by the Huffington Post.
Feb. 26: Billy Shannon '12 reported on a Brooklyn woman winning the North East Barista Competition, and on city sanitation agents seemingly writing bogus tickets (Feb. 27), both for the New York Daily News.
Mar. 1: Chitrangada Choudhury '12 profiled historian and preservationist Sharada Dwivedi for The Caravan, an Indian journal of politics and culture.
Mar. 2: Gabriel Stargardter '12 profiled boxer Edgar Santana in a feature for Sports Illustrated.
Mar. 5: Theodoric Meyer '12 brought the Torosaurus to light in "Triceratops' Quiet Cousin, the Torosaurus, Gains New Legitimacy" for the New York Times. The piece was published online and in print.
Mar. 5: Hiten Samtani '12 reported on a special expo of work by seniors at Harlem Renaissance High School for the New York Times' SchoolBook. Samtani also had reporting credit on "To Be Black at Stuyvesant High" (Feb. 26), a top story on the New York Times website that also appeared in print.
Mar. 7: Brian Patrick Eha '12 wrote and photographed "Romantic Kitchen - A Chili Night" for The Walkin Kitchen. Recipe included.
Mar. 7: Billy Shannon '12 explained the "reverse American dream" - retirees selling and moving to smaller, simpler homes - in a piece for the Boston Globe.
Mar. 8: Esteban Illades' '12 story on drug war statistics in Mexico, and how those numbers will play into upcoming political campaigns, ran on Univision.
Mar. 8: Frank Runyeon '12 tracked the fates of Bryant Park fountain coins for the New York Times City Room.
Mar. 14: Theodoric Meyer '12 reported that teachers at a French American Charter School in Harlem will be allowed to unionize for the New York Times SchoolBook.
Mar. 20: Andrew Katz's '12 master's project "The Occupiers: A Liberal and a Radical Struggle for the Soul of a Movement" was published by The Atlantic. The piece -- an inside look at where Occupy Wall Street has been and where, following its six-month anniversary, the movement is going -- was published almost immediately after Katz turned it in.
Mar. 21: Brian Patrick Eha '12 considered the "effect the sound-culture is having on our self-awareness and faculties of thought" in a piece for The Atlantic, "The Sound of Solitude." Earlier this spring, Eha reviewed Gregor von Rezzori's "An Ermine in Czernopol" for The Rumpus (Feb. 13), a piece that was featured by the New York Review of Books.
Mar. 23: Frederick Bernas '12 wrote about the Sundance-winning documentary "Putin's Kiss," about the pro-Putin youth movement, for openDemocracy.
Mar. 26: Emily Judem '12 took the lead story on Columbia Journalism Review online for her piece on Ecuadorean journalists.
Mar. 29: Daniel Medina '12 reported on a sprawling digital network helping the Syrian uprising for the New York Times. His piece was published online and in print.
Mar. 29: Marc Weinreich '12 followed the arc of a Jeremy Lin trading card for the New York Times.
Mar. 30: Mohammed Aademo '12 published a piece in the New York Daily News about the city's Senegalese expat community and its recent voting in the country's presidential race.
Mar. 30: Dalal Mawad '12 published a news analysis on the Palestinian effort to gain United Nations recognition with Your Middle East, a Sweden-based, independent news site.
Apr. 3: Theodoric Meyer '12 chronicled an Education Department computer glitch that sent Queens girls scrambling for high school admission for the New York Times SchoolBook.
Apr. 4: Mollie Bloudoff-Indelicato '12 looked into the rise of Wiccan Studies students at the Academy of Pagan Studies for the Village Voice.
Apr. 5: Fatima Muneer '12 published two pieces on Huffington Post in one week: "Does the Egyptian Media Need a Revoluation" (Apr. 5) and "How is the U.S. Dealing With the Arms Proliferation in Libya After the Revolution?" (Apr. 3). Additionally, her coverage of 10x10, an NGO, was published as part of Social Media Week coverage and in Differences magazine.
Apr. 6: Eddie Small '12 profiled an art teacher in the South Bronx for the New York Times SchoolBook.
Apr. 8: Neha Tara Mehta '12 and Hoda Emam '12 published "In the Shadow of Silvio's Saint" on the cover of New Delhi's Mail Today. Their reporting was conducted as part of the "Covering Religion" course trip to Italy in March.
Apr. 9: Celia Watson Seupel '12 wrote " 'Do You Know Who Died?' " for the New York Times. It was published in the Science section and online.
Apr. 10: Marc Georges '12 published a version of his master's project with Mashable: "StarCraft II and the Rise of American Pro Gaming," an exploration of the world of "e-sports."
Apr. 11: Monica Alba '12 and Angela Reese's '12 story and video "Personal Benchmarks of Central Park" were published on Channel Thirteen's website. Alba and Reese's piece is the first in a new partnership between Thirteen's MetroFocus and the Journalism School.
Tom Lewis '12 was interviewed live, on both BBC Radio and Television, for Welsh-language news services about Super Tuesday. He has reported regularly for them throughout the year, on subjects including Hurricane Irene, the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Occupy Wall Street and the UN Palestinian statehood bid.
Hiten Samtani '12 published additional clips earlier this academic year: "Qaddafi Eulogized in Bed-Stuy" (Nov. 4), picked up by the Wall Street Journal, Vice Magazine, and more; "The Anarchivists: Who Owns the Occupy Wall Street Narrative" (Dec. 26), also picked up by the Wall Street Journal and more; and "Strong Opinions About Reading and Testing" (Jan. 26) and "For Two Queens Schools, More Money and No Strings Attached" (Feb. 10), both of which ran in the New York Times SchoolBook.
Alexa van Sickle '12 published a story and photo essay on "The Last of the Midtown West Cigar Factories" (Feb. 4) with Fotorater Magazine, a London publication.
Lambert Mbom '12 reported on the Week of Christian Unity (Feb. 6) for the English version of L'Effort Camerounais, the newspaper of the National Bishops' Conference of Cameroon.

Read more student clips from 2012

Students: If you've published work, please send your clips to Miriam Beyer, Web Editor (mb2428@columbia.edu), for inclusion in this digest and communication on the Journalism School's social media sites.

View the original article here

0 Report on horse deaths by adjunct Bogdanich and Miles '10 takes NYT front page

     

March 27, 2012

Four years ago, after a horse running in the Kentucky Derby broke two ankles on national television and was euthanized, New York Times investigative reporter Walt Bogdanich told his editors that it was time probe the horse racing industry. But that didn’t happen. So two years later, Bogdanich, who teaches the Investigative Reporting Workshop at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, told his class to take on the story. And they did.

On Sunday, March 25, The New York Times ran “Death and Disarray in American Racetracks” on the front page. The story, which took off from the research Bogdanich’s class did, was written by Bogdanich, New York Times reporters Joe Drape and Griffin Palmer, and Journalism School alumna Dara Miles '10, who was Bogdanich’s student. Miles continued working on the story after graduation, with support from the Stabile Center.

“One semester wasn’t enough to find the right focus for the story, so we suspended our reporting,” said Bogdanich. “At some point, Dara (who did not have a job) offered to keep working on the topic. I said ok, but I made no promises. It wasn’t until I figured out a way to quantify the breakdown rate by using race results that we decided to go forward.”

The investigation found that 24 horses die each week at racetracks across America. The deaths are seldom examined, with the corpses ending up in landfills or rendering plants. As The Times reported:

[I]ndustry practices continue to put animal and rider at risk. A computer analysis of data from more than 150,000 races, along with injury reports, drug test results and interviews, shows an industry still mired in a culture of drugs and lax regulation and a fatal breakdown rate that remains far worse than in most of the world.

If anything, the new economics of racing are making an always-dangerous game even more so. Faced with a steep loss of customers, racetracks have increasingly added casino gambling to their operations, resulting in higher purses but also providing an incentive for trainers to race unfit horses. At Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, the number of dead and injured horses has risen sharply since a casino opened there late last year.

More news from the Journalism School

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0 J-School Student Clip Report: Late Spring 2012

     

May 16, 2012

Columbia Journalism School students publish often and widely. Here is a collection of their work from the final weeks of the semester.

Apr. 11: Maya Schwayder ’12 asked “When Will Bridal Magazines Invite Same-Sex Couples to the Party?” for Gawker.
Apr. 16: Dalal Mawad’s ’12 master’s thesis, “Lebanese Jews in New York: Longing for Home,” was published by the English version of Al Akhbar, one of Lebanon’s most prominent news sources.
Apr. 16: Your Middle East, a Sweden-based, independent news site, led its website with Michael Wilner’s ’12 story on Israel’s “existential crisis.” Wilner published another piece, about Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, with the news site on May 8.
Apr. 16: Olivia Waxman ’12 explored haute sauces and spreads in “Will Artisinal Condiments Become Widespread?” for the Daily Meal.
Apr. 16: Also for the Daily Meal, Alexa van Sickle ’12 looked into the industry of eco-friendly “green wines.”
Apr. 16: Theodoric Meyer ’12 broke the story of Brooklyn’s I.S. 318’s win at the National High School Chess Championships for the New York Times SchoolBook. The story was published on the Times’ A1 the following day, where Meyer got additional reporting credit.
Apr. 17: Brian Browdie ’13 reported for Next American City on the battle over bike lanes in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
Apr. 19: Frederick Bernas ’12 aired a story about a bronze statue of Lenin that appeared suddenly on the Lower East Side for Monocle 24 Radio. He also attended and reported on a training session for Occupy activists (Apr. 23), and on Occupy protesters at Frieze art fair (May 7), for the station.
Apr. 20: International Newsroom students reported on how Kony 2012 failed to convert their Internet activism into street action.
Apr. 21: Salim Essaid ’12 published “Hamas-Fatah divide is affecting local journalism” with Your Middle East.
Apr. 26: Lucy Pawle ’12 published “Oil disputes highlight growing divisions in Iraq,” also with Your Middle East.
Apr. 27: Lucas O’Neill ’12 profiled and produced a video about an autistic junior basketball player who had a crowning moment in this year’s New York state playoffs, for ESPN.
May 2: Olivia Waxman ’12 wrote about schools using cell phones and text-messaging for education purposes for TIME’s Techland.
May 4: Asia Society published “Dueling Narratives: The Death of Osama Bin Laden in U.S. and Pakistani Media,” a video produced by Sarah Alvi ’12 and Celeste Owen-Jones ’12. Students in the Covering Education seminar spent the spring semester reporting inside New York City’s public schools, in suspension centers, and in children’s homes,telling the education story through a variety of lenses; their work is collected at school-stories.org. The class also teamed up with the New York Times SchoolBook, where several of the students’ stories were published, including by Jackie Mader ’12, Rebecca Moss ’12, Hiten Samtani ’12, and Aidan Gardiner ’12, among others.

Read more student clips from 2012

Students: If you’ve published work, please send your clips to Miriam Beyer, Web Editor (mb2428@columbia.edu), for inclusion in this digest and communication on the Journalism School's social media sites.

View the original article here