20.340 attracting students

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 20, No. 340.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
  www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

         Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2006 07:45:01 +0000
         From: Richard Cunningham <richard.cunningham_at_acadiau.ca>
         Subject: Re: 20.336 attracting students?

Willard et al,

I've been working hard to create and run a humanities computing
option (not even as well positioned as a program) at a primarily
undergraduate institution for four years now. I know your question
is aimed mostly at graduate-level studies, but I wonder if there
might be some advantage to all if we could conceive of a
multi-institutional model, wherein students here, for example, are
guided to take undergraduate courses that will prepare them for, for
example, your program at the MA level. You might have a list of
preferred majors (criterion A), with a list of other courses they
should take (criteria B). If they satisfy criteria A & B, you and we
can promise them acceptance into your program. In my experience, a
lot of students would jump at the chance to have their student
experience last 5 or 6 years instead of 4 or 5, but know that a
Bachelors degree that they take longer to complete can be
intellectually rewarding but financially inexcusable.

I'm not sure this is a workable idea, but thought I'd throw it out
for discussion. It seems to me that your school and mine have an
extra advantage in that we are in a (painfully) rural setting and you
are in an urban setting, and we are in Canada while you're in the
UK. This could be potentially attractive to students who want to
experience city life, but not yet, and who want to live abroad. As I
said, it may not work, but might help start some other lines of discussion.

Cheers,
Richard
http://cunningham.acadiau.ca
Received on Tue Dec 05 2006 - 03:06:42 EST