Posted by
Parks, Raymond on
Oct 12, 2010; 7:47pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/vol-88-issue-12-tp5627122p5628209.html
Nicholas Thompson wrote:
...
> Whenever I give the elevator talk on CUSF I get three responses,
> immediately:
> (1)” Get back to me when you have 200 million dollars.”
Get $200 million (or some reasonable amount). The Free University of
Berlin got started with a Ford Foundation grant. Find (or become) one
of the grantsmanship elite. This will work better if you get something
started to which you can point.
> (2) ”Are you accredited? “
Catch-22 time. You can't get accredited until you teach something and
you can't teach until you get accredited. See suggestion below.
> (3) “I’m smart, I don’t have a PhD. Why should anybody want a [bleeping] Phd?
As you point out, those folks would grab at a PhD if there was a
decent one available. Many of those folks, like myself, just don't
think they can learn anything or think they'd be bored stiff learning
from the usual PhD mill. I last attended grad school in about 1990 and
even then, after 12 years of real-world experience since earning my BS,
I thought some of the course material was too basic. If I tried to get
a Masters or PhD in my field, I'd be taking courses from people I work
with and advise - my peers. That doesn't work.
Suggestion: Pick a single course, divide and conquer the syllabus,
and conduct it with a team of volunteer instructors.
Choose a course for which you think you can get volunteers (in this
group it would probably be best to choose complexity). The course
should be one from an established university (outside of New Mexico for
the sake of non-competition) taught by professor who's willing to share
the syllabus and, possibly, material. For this first course, don't pick
something that requires computational capacity beyond that of an
individual student.
Take the syllabus and divide it into subject areas that fit the
interests of your volunteer group. Most syllabi are organized into
subject sections, just like textbooks.
The course should have roughly 45-50 one-hour lessons. If each
instructor teaches two lessons you'll need about 22 to 25 volunteer
instructors. The time required from the instructors is a little high
(two hours of teaching plus about twenty of prep), but if each
instructor teaches something about which they are passionate they'll be
willing to give it.
You may have to go through a couple of candidate courses before you
find the ideal one for your trial. The whole point is to get something
going - if you can show a graduate-level course equivalent to one taught
by an accredited university, you should be able to win the grant war.
--
Ray Parks
[hidden email]
Consilient Heuristician Voice: 505-844-4024
ATA Department Mobile: 505-238-9359
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http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:505-951-6084
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