Retreat! Retreat!

Totally unrelated photo.  I just happened to think this was cool.  Can you spot the unicycle and the rhino?

Last week the HMC admission staff went on Part I of our annual retreat, spending time in not one but two exotic locales*.  I actually look forward to the retreat all year, and not just because there are endless snacks and homemade deanly treats for our delectation.  See, my favorite part of admission is tackling the meta questions.  Who are we trying to serve?  How can we best make this happen? 

In addition to the meta questions, there are also the Big Plans for next year.  Some will come to fruition, some won't.  The elaborate Communication Flow painstakingly crafted by Falone and Raissa?  Amazing if we can pull it off.  A second Fall FAST?  Maybe we can find the funding this year, maybe it won't kick off until 2013.  The entire staff blogging on a regular basis?  I'll believe it when I see it. :-P

By far my favorite moment of Staff Retreat Part I was the Travel 2012 Draft.  There haven't been significant changes to our travel and reading territories for five years, and so it was time for a complete all-cards-on-the-table overhaul.  Wow.  Intense.  And fun!  Most of us are keeping at least one or two former territories, but there were plenty of shakeups.  There were also plenty of impromptu geography lessons as various valleys were explained to the non-Californians (San Gabriel, San Fernando . . .) and those who had not been to Texas learned that Dallas is closer to Oklahoma City than to Houston.  It was also China's first time being an official draft pick geomarket, so go China!  (And yes, China is bigger than Texas.  I checked.)

Now we're back to our regularly scheduled admission lives, with plans for Staff Retreat Part II in the works (August, maybe?) and maybe even an Iron Chef Staff Social (#1 draft pick: Falone).  Good thing we have some leftover retreat snacks to power us through the upcoming busy-ness of two big summer programs and a soon-to-be-packed roster of interviews.  Dibs on the pita chips!

*A meeting room in the Pomona College alumni building and the Dean of Faculty's conference room at Mudd.  Not really "exotic," but the Dean of Faculty conference room is pretty swank in a sixties mod sort of way.

Wesleyan University Drops Full Need-Blind Admission

Read the article from Inside Higher Ed here.  What's surprising to me is how little public push back the school seems to be getting so far.

It certainly makes me appreciate how lucky I've been to spend my whole career in the rarefied world of need-blind admission.  I take it for granted, but it's not the norm; a 2010 article I found cites only 46 need-blind schools (and many, including Mudd, are not need-blind for international students). 

This ties in well to the current NPR series on the American Dream.  Personally, my American Dream is for all qualified students to have the opportunity to go to an accredited, nonprofit college, and for our public education system to become a priority so that schools produce nothing but qualified students capable of tackling college coursework. 

And if you think that all public schools are just fine and dandy -- well, you haven't read college applications for eight years.  One of our incoming first-years hails from a California school where six percent go on to four-year college.  SIX PERCENT, people.  In one New Jersey suburb, that same figure is ninety-six percent. 

Okay.  Off the soapbox.  Moving on to more neutral topics, here is a photo of a Western Fence Lizard (not the lizard in residence in Kingston, who is the Roadrunner of reptiles, and cannot be caught):

And another one of the construction:

It looks more and more like a real building every day.  And even with one floor it already beats the square footage of Thomas-Garrett by a significant margin.

Tuesday in a Nutshell

Failed attempts to catch a lizard in our office: 3
Number of people involved: 5
Number of days Pat speculates the lizard has been in residence: 30
Odds that the lizard is currently hunkered behind the water cooler: excellent

Peter Osgood, Poet

Our Director of Admission just got back from his little jaunt to China.  After giving about a gazillion successive presentations about Mudd, he found himself getting a tad bored (bored with the content of his presentations, at any rate -- he could have done with a little more boredom on the traffic/car accident front).  So naturally he decided to rewrite his talk about Mudd in rhyming couplets.  Awesomeness.

So today, we bring you the essentials of Mudd, distilled into poetic format by Mr. Peter Osgood.

Harvey Mudd College - what's that?  I don't know!
A response you'll receive wherever you go.

But tell them you want a science PhD
And most will concur -- think of HMC.

Harvey Mudd is a college where science is fun
We work very hard, and then play in the sun.

STEM subjects are king, but not simply bounded
30% in humanities so you'll come out well rounded.

For those who like teamwork, we may be the best
With an Honor Code working, you have take home tests.

We meet and join clubs with our neighborhood schools,
Take classes together, swim in their pools.

Mudd is so small you'll know all your peers.
Your arrival on campus will draw many cheers.

Our teachers use Facebook -- for them it's a game
To memorize faces and call you by name.

Our term for community "n+1" really means
You grow as a person; your work's done in teams. 

In labs and the workshops, you'll learn and get dirty
We're a great place for girls and boys who are nerdy.

Our research and projects, others try to mimic
But no one can quite do what we do in Clinic.

Big companies like Google pay money each term
Then four of our students team up for each firm.

The students solve problems, do original work
Then the firms make job offers -- it is quite a perq.

We apply then for patents, 8-10 is the yield.
You leave college having already practiced your field.

Grad schools will pay you to come to their school.
Employers will hunt you -- they'll think you're cool.

It's fun, and hard work -- you can't be a dud.
There's no place on earth quite like Harvey Mudd.

Innovators and leaders in science we raise;
Harvey Mudd College -- the name should be praised.

Progress!

The Teaching & Learning Building is coming along quite nicely.  Today I parked behind two trucks delivering more plastic balls for the BubbleDeck.  The other recent development is the height of the building; there is now clearly a first story looming over the top of the construction fence.  It's finally starting to hit me just how big the Teaching & Learning Building is going to be.  I mean, the first floor seems tall already, and there are still two more to go!  It also creeps a lot further south than I was expecting, so campus will be less linear when the new building is complete.  There used to be two parallel sidewalks running almost the entire length of campus, which was perhaps not the most interesting of landscaping, but it did make our minuscule campus feel quite spacious.

If you want to see the contrast, flash back to less than a year ago, when Thomas-Garrett was mid-demolition.  Wow.  This really is progress.  (And heavens, doesn't Thomas-Garrett look tiny.)

Here's the Teaching & Learning Building today:

As always you can see updated construction photos here.



Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer

Summer may not officially start until June 20, but with the academic year complete and the thermometer pushing ninety, I think it's okay to ignore the almanac.  The coffee cart and espresso machine are closed for the season (booooo), the workday now ends at 4:30 pm instead of 5 (yayyyy!), and "Summer Math" for rising sophomores is in full swing.  Sounds like summer to me!

Other hints that it might be summer?  Full-time student workers!  Big hooray!

Our intrepid Katie and Risa.  (Yes, we now have a Risa and a Raissa.  It's confusing.)  They have been extremely patient with "other duties as assigned" until tours get zanier.

We've also been able to hire a full-time Admission Intern!  If you interview on campus this summer, there's a very good chance it will be with Brianna Blanchard '12. 

But there's one little thing that this summer really needs to get started.



Please, Michael Edwards, revive the ice cream bike soon!  Your eager fans await.

Brilliant, Chet, brilliant.

For the comparison shopper.  Available here.