The Crush

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Students always talk about the “feel” of a college campus being that indescribable and critical deciding factor that influences their decision to apply and eventually to enroll at a college. Are colleges supposed to feel a certain way? Why? Where’d this feeling come from and what are today’s designers thinking about when designing spaces of higher education? Nader Tehrani, former head of the architecture department at MIT and current Dean of the School of Architecture at Cooper Union helps me answer these questions and more.

It’s April in the college admissions world (in the rest of the world too I guess) and that means that admitted students and their families are visiting campuses across the country in the final effort to make up their minds about where to enroll. This always involves fairly heavily-curated and well-produced dog and pony shows meant to display all the glory that is any given campus. The “feel” of a campus is one thing that really won’t be the same at any two places. So what’s behind that feel?

In this episode, Nader Tehrani of gives us a heady explanation of the art, history, and sociology involved in helping design spaces for learning in a community. We talk about the differences between colleges in the middle of a city (like his alma mater the Rhode Island School of Design) versus the more traditional “New England Campus” (like RISD’s neighbor down the street, Brown). We talk about how the history of collegiate instruction and how that has shaped learning space, the value of “brick and mortar” campuses in the era of MOOCs and online learning, the value of “the spaces in between” those which are designed, and how elements of campus space can in themselves be offensive.

The post Episode 06: Nader Tehrani on the Look and Feel of College Campuses appeared first on The Crush.

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The International Baccalaureate, or IB, is the hardest and most thorough preparation for college out there today. Not only is it out there, but it’s really out there as a global curriculum in almost 150 countries, and it’s growing. Dr. Siva Kumari is the leader of this complex and fascinating entity, and she is also an utter delight. She spoke to me via Skype from The Hague…which is not a bad place to have an office.

Here is the study I reference in this episode, demonstrating that the IB is doing great work in low-income communities.

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Tests suck and they suck real bad. I know because I cried the day I got my SAT scores in the mail. BUT- we need them in our lives in the college admissions world…or do we? Adam Ingersoll, is the co-founder of the west coast’s leading test prep company, Compass Education Group, and he helps us think about the value of these tests, their present and future, and whether grownups like me should take the new SAT. And then cry about it for old time’s sake.

So, as referenced in the interview, here’s a fun look at what an already-smart person can do when it’s also this already-smart person’s job to take the SAT.

Behold: Adam’s recent score history, and the tragedy that is a nearly-perfect SAT score on multiple exam sittings, but…never quite getting there.

Let’s all weep.

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Bob DeMars lived the dream of kids in streets and backyards everywhere when he played college football for the University of Southern California. He paid a heavy price, and entered into a fraternity he didn’t see coming. With the release of his new documentary “The Business of Amateurs,” which has been met with wide-ranging acclaim, which includes being used in John Oliver’s absolute The People’s Elbow-ing of the NCAA on “Last Week Tonight,” Bob hopes to spread the word to kids before they make the decisions he and the film’s subjects did.

Here’s the speech that Junior Seau’s daughter, Sydney Seau, would have delivered had the NFL Hall of Fame had the guts to let a daughter honor her father, the first Polynesian to make it into the Hall of Fame.

Here’s some data direct from the NCAA about the probability of making it pro after college (consider playing Powerball instead…?)

(Click photos to enlarge…especially the one where Bobby has someone’s brains in his hands)

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Emily Harris has an incredible job as the Jerusalem correspondent for National Public Radio. How do you get a job like that, and how do you prepare for it in college? (Hint: You kind of don’t.) Being a radio correspondent in Jerusalem requires a pretty diverse skill set. How did college prepare Emily for her job? (Photo credit: Ahmed Abuhamda for NPR)

I know Emily tangentially, which is to say, not really at all except for email correspondence and our conversation for the show. She was a student’s of my dad’s at Lincoln HS in Portland, OR and is still in touch with him. My fondness for NPR has grown over the years from it being that background buzzing noise in my kitchen growing up, to it being the same thing now, only I tend to actually pay attention to it. At any rate, I’m fascinated by these personalities, why they do what they do, what it’s like working in a war zone, and how it is to be far away from home (if such a thing even exists as an international correspondent). I asked Emily about all this stuff last summer (yeah, it’s taken me that long to get this done) and the result is a fun and informative conversation.

The post Episode 02: Emily Harris, Jerusalem Correspondent for NPR appeared first on The Crush.

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So what’s the point of college? Bill Deresiewicz wrote the book “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life” which I’ve come to regard as one of the most important books about college available today. The nature of going to college has changed dramatically from its early inception, and economic forces have shifted the conversation away from developing people into better human beings and citizens, to one based on “return on investment.” What’s the point of going to college, anyways? Bill Deriesewicz has some compelling ideas. WARNING: The F-word gets said one time. By me. Sorry. 

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