Here are some things at Cornell that I find annoying. Some could be fixed in
a flash, some are deeper.
Please correct me if I am wrong about something. Let me know if you have additions.
I'll post them if I agree.
Please don't take this list to mean that I have no positive thoughts about
Cornell, especially concerning the diversity of people and resources.
There are great things at Cornell too, as one can best tell when visiting other
places.
The "W" grade.
Students who drop out of a class after midsemester, if allowed to do so by petition,
are branded with a scarlet "W" (for Withdraw) on their transcript.
That is, a student has already wasted time, done worse in their other classes,
and is getting less credit, and then Cornell insists that their transcript has
to show how they in effect failed the class. Why not give a person in trouble
like that a break and put nothing on their transcript? They suffered enough
already. Actually, why should an F grade show on the transcript ever? Shouldn't
the record show what a student did do successfully?
Cornell Student grade consciousness.
So many students seem to be more interested in their grades than in learning.
Given a choice they would learn less to get a better grade and wouldn't learn
more if they thought it wouldn't improve their grade. Students often say the
equivalent of "I don't have time to learn the material, I'm too busy
studying."
(Or doing homework.)
Expensive classroom renovations that don't work.
One third of the blackboard space in Olin 255 is not visible from all seats.
One third of the black board space in Hollister B14 is not usable, it is too
low or blocked by the other board.
The electronics, lighting and room controls in almost all new rooms are hard
enough to use that it is an issue in almost every seminar that uses the electronics.
The new ventilation noises preclude the occassional but thrilling intensity
of a really dead-quiet classroom (as well as precluding
some demonstrations
that involve quiet
sounds).
No path between car garage and baseball field.
Gorge trail people and people walking West on 366 from various neighborhoods
naturally want to cut, approximately, through the car garage. But walking
through the car garage isn't nice. Why not just West of the car garage, just
outside the baseball field center-field fence? Because there is no space.
Some suggestions: move the baseball field west 3 feet. Or put a gait on the
fence that lets walkers through but is closed for ball games. Or make the
center field home run distance a bit shorter, and fence a bit higher. IS THIS
FIXED IN THE NEW FIELD??
The promotion to full professor.
Its only negative. Its not a useful carrot to improve performance. As a stick
it only works to cut at people's self esteem. Evaluating people for this promotion
is a waste of time. If carrots are needed after tenure there needs to be a longer
stream of them than this one for that 30 year period.
The fraud of "distribution" classes in Engineering.
Actually, there is almost no opportunity or requirement for breadth in the
undergraduate Engineering curriculum. Why not have a common broad
engineering curriculum for the first 2 years? It couldn't hurt for a Mat
Sci major to know a thing
or two about a circuit, or a CS major to know in general terms how to figure
out whether a bridge willall down. If not that, then we should drop the
pretense
and call distribution classes what they are, prerequisites. TO BE FIXED IN SPRING
2007??
The language requirement for grad students. NEWS FLASH. In 2006 TAM
dropped its language requirement, finally.
Some departments (not comparative literature) have a language requirement
for grad students. No history requirement, no music requirement, no philosophy
requirement. T&AM, for example, requires that Ph.D. students pass a test
in one of these languages: French, German, Russian, Chinese or Japanese.
How is it that Hindi and Swedish are not counted as foreign languages? If
graduate students need breadth, why narrow it to one of a few languages?
Or why not require something likely to be useful to all students, that they
learn to write in English? Or if that is too narrow, require or allow breadth
in a wider range of topics.