terrapinsanity.com

We learn in this morning’s Diamondback (which, by the way, continues to report real news like it is a real newspaper this year, so bravo) that the City of College Park has “concerns” that cause it to hold up the campus receiving state funding (monies that are associated with some facility relocation costs in preparation for moving forward on the East Campus effort.)

Like this ‘concern’ was not always in the cards.

The concern is only that these officials have yet to get their piece of the action. There is no official request for approval based on zoning, construction or other before the city. Instead it is an artificially created opportunity for the city to hold up (in every criminal sense of the term) the campus. They are asked to simply sign a letter as a pro forma administrative step so campus can proceed with its own dealings with the state, yet instead of being good neighbors they take this as yet another chance to put their hand out in a demand for tribute before service like they’re some corrupt third world functionary fleecing tourists, which, in effect, they are.

It is the Prince George’s County (and by extension, City of College Park) way. “You can’t lose with the stuff we use.” Cash. Payola. Mother’s milk of politics and all that. How did the inflated “concern” fabricated over the Post plant sale get resolved? Cash. How did a high-rise pop up in the path of the landing pattern at College Park airport? Cash. What is transforming Route 1 from an ugly campus access artery with small old buildings into an ugly campus access artery dense-packed with tall new buildings? Cash. And how will sign-off on use of relocation funds get accomplished? Cash.

Parking permit holders on campus today received a cheerful announcement that next week will kick off a “Share the Road” campaign for bicyclists. (Memo is reproduced below.) The key text to focus on is “During the week of April 5 – 9 the campus police will be stopping drivers and cyclists to provide information about sharing the road.”

Nice to know in advance that the state will be exercising police authority in order to actively distribute advocacy materials. Wonder what other measures are so important for our own good that they warrant being forced on us by armed agents of the state?

Dear Permit Holder,

During the week of April 5 – 9 the campus police will be stopping drivers and cyclists to provide information about sharing the road. This is part of a larger Share the Road Campaign that is a collaboration between DOTS, ERC and Campus Police.

Events include:

BIKE FAIR: information, meet a commuter, bicycle and helmet fittings, prizes and giveaways, test rides, food and more!

BIKE FILMS: Unicyclist Mountain Bikes, Rage on New York Streets, DC Metro Extreme Commuters and more!

BIKE RALLY: Ride in a group to try out existing bicycle facilities and weigh in on upcoming improvements. Get some fresh air, have fun. Ride ends at RJ Bentley’s for a social get together.

For information about prizes, raffles and events during the week of April 5th:

http://www.transportation.umd.edu/share.html

For information about sharing the road:

http://bikeumd.wordpress.com/share-the-road/

To begin a commute journal that will help you think about other ways to get to campus, sign up or login for your personal commute calendar:

http://zimride.umd.edu/

An opinion piece in the Diamondback this morning gets dangerously close to taking note of how the emperor wears no clothes.

Speaking about potential down sides of taking unpaid internships, Malcolm Harris (a senior in both English and Gov’t and Politics) questions the ecosystem that evolves when campus programs and companies/agencies collaborate.

Let’s make the harder point than did Harris: The proposed Gen Ed requirements just unveiled would institutionalize “experiential learning” (translation: “unpaid internships” for most of our students), wherein students will pay increasingly-costly tuition bills to College Park in return for some employer or government bureaucrat signing off that they did the free labor.

This does the state’s mandated volunteerism requirement for high school graduation one better – we get to charge for it, and presumably curry favor with select area businesses or agencies by steering students to one or the other.

It is no wonder that this refactoring of CORE became such a priority for the Provost – if admissions reins supreme then budget is its handmaiden, and a requirement that students pay for credits delivered by someone other than an expensive faculty member has clear appeal.

Thanks to this morning’s Diamondback Article for highlighting – perhaps inadvertently – something of which many faculty have strong concerns: The lack of balance between research and educational needs on this campus.

The article reports an estimated $500 million in backlogged repairs needed on this campus, for which present budget plans do not provide for the first red cent. No surprise there – economy and all that.

But the capital budget does appear (at this time) to include funding for a new Physical Sciences Complex, a priority of the Dean in CMPS (College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences) who is well known as someone who doesn’t consider undergraduate education as one of the missions for his college. The present priority of a research building over an even longer-standing request for facilities for mathematics education drives him his – and the rest of leadership’s – priorities.

Thanks to the Concerned Faculty email list for the forward of that link about the Math Building plight.

Congrats and a tip of the hat to students at Towson who won regionals in the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, according to today’s report of results. Nice to know Maryland is on the cutting edge!

How did our College Park team fare? Errr … apparently we were not even in the game. Seems certain colleges on campus are too good to encourage undergraduates to participate in local activities, outreach, team building …

This morning’s Diamondback reports on yet another inexplicable (to the point of being random) emission from Mount Main Admin (though one not characterized as such by the reporter.) We refer to target graduate program sizes dictated by Central.

Last academic year the Graduate School decisively made all college grad directors nuts with new collection and reporting obligations, which led into creation of a master PowerPoint deck that in turn was used to bludgeon all the rest of the administrators who suffered through its presentation this year.

Based on deep analysis illustrated in that PPT material, the School has set target enrollments on a college by college basis (which is what the Diamondback reported.) If followed, this will entail cuts to all except Engineering, the College Computer Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and School of Public Health, which are all directed towards increases of varying sizes.

Why?

What drives this and how will it work? Well, what drives anything out of Main Admin these days? Money and recruiting. You will never find this from the PowerPoint slide pack, of course. In fact, check it out here and see if you can divine any useful information that would suggest changes. As usual, to outsiders not in the rarefied atmosphere of Main Admin the decisions might as well have been based on a consult with Madam Flora up at her Route 1 Palm Reading emporium. (Tea leaves and chicken bones might reasonably have been involved, of course.)

What’s really going on is that someone figured out that almost all graduate students in these three colleges get external funding, based on the nature of their areas. The other colleges set for reductions? Main Admin figures these have too much deadwood requiring support through the campus, not funding agencies that can be milked.

To make things sweeter, the three they want to grow are all colleges that contribute strongly to the school research reputation. They have national stature, and the belief is that increased student base will lead to more papers and results, and, of course, more stature. Ahh, and that means recruiting too.

But how will the changes work? Darn good question. The edict comes with no indication of what will be either the carrot or stick to implement changes. Today, individual departments will admit only students they think they can sustain. Does Central think these units will be willing to stretch and do even more with even less by admitting over their capacity? And going the other direction, does Central think it will intervene in an individual department’s admissions by saying no in areas it has targeted for reduction?

We have likely started down a rocky road.

The campus committee on revising General Education requirements has been busy at work most of this and last academic years, so far without much of a hint about what might be in our future, except for the I-series courses which have already rolled out. (So we know pieces of the puzzle without yet knowing what picture they are intended to fill in.)

Behind the scenes, though, there continues to be a sense that almost anything can be “core” – we’ll know it when we see it. Or at least Admissions and the Provost will, when they see it serve enrollment management and recruiting needs, and good luck to departments trying to plan workload with hard-pressed faculty and a suite of offerings that might not be the same in any pair of adjacent needs. (Good luck to students who might want to avail themselves of ‘freshman forgiveness’ in a course repeat, if the course was a one-time unique construct.)

Bringing this to mind is today’s news (see Washington Post) about national efforts to identify a ‘core’ set of expectations for all school systems. Not the ceiling, but at least perhaps the floor – what ought all students know at various mileposts in their early years in order to succeed?

Good bad or other, this doesn’t have the feel of being accepting of almost anything, and there’s the rub. Planning about baseline expectations at College Park are proceeding completely independent from any analysis of what may soon be a standard expectation of the input to our undergraduate programs. More’s the pity, if the campus committee continues on its present trajectory, nobody after us will be able to plan what to rely on from our graduates since, of course – core can be “anything.”

We note this morning in the Sun that Baltimore County schools inadvertently spent $300,000 on purchase of grammar books for … well, it sounds like everyone there.

Gosh. Maybe they need a law to ensure everyone in the system there signs off on an acknowledgment that he or she understands how expensive books are for tax payers and what is the impact of decisions they make. Yeah, that’s it. That’ll eliminate problems like this.

“For students, their first College Park riot was anything but a disappointment.”

Thus reported the Diamondback this morning, which went on to describe at least one student’s expectations of the place when he applied to Maryland.

How special this always coincides with recruiting season. One wonders how many top scholars we yield for the next arriving cohort after a win over the Dukies and a good riot on Route One. “Forget that business about lining me up for a Fullbright. Can you promise me I’ll get a souvenir street sign after a championship basketball victory?” Yup, those are the students we want. (Not.)

By a vote this evening of of 44-0 the Maryland Senate supported a resolution declaring University of Maryland College Park Terrapin Pride Day.

Cool! But … someone should have been shouting in the background “show me the money!”

We’ll see how much Terrapin Pride there is to go around when they vote on the budget shortly.