University Business - March 2012 - (Page S13)

UBTech: How are higher education faculty members doing in terms of successfully educating students with different types of minds? Grandin: It depends so much on the particular faculty. You look at the faculty that helped me. They saw I had abilities and they developed those abilities. UBTech: You’ve said that a lot of instructors at community colleges are people who would be good mentors for younger students who learn differently. Why is it that people with various backgrounds who want to go into teaching wind up in community colleges? Grandin: You don’t need a teaching certificate to teach there. All those good mentors these kids in high school are going to have to have are at the community college. UBTech: It sounds as if you would be a proponent of early college programs, where you see high school students enrolled in community college classes. Grandin: I think that’s excellent. You’ve got to expose kids to interesting things to get them interested in interesting things. UBTech: Why else might the community college be a good place— as opposed to a large four-year college or university—for a student with a certain kind of mind? Grandin: For kids who think differently, getting stuck in a 300person class is really hard. I’d recommend going to community college for the first two years. UBTech: Those large lecture hall classes make it all the more difficult to find a teacher mentor. How might having or not having a mentor affect the future of a smart student who doesn’t fit the traditional mold? Grandin: One geek goes to Hollywood, one geek goes to Silicon Valley, and one geek goes to the basement to play video games. Too many smart kids are not getting exposed to the mentors who can get them motivated to study. The teachers who helped me were the unconventional, creative ones. There are many retired scientists, journalists, and people from other professions who could be teaching in high schools. We must tap into their talent. UBTech: Instruction is obviously important in helping students reach their full potential. Today, instruction can occur via distance learning models. How do you feel about using technology to teach from afar? Grandin: There’s a place for distance learning, but there’s also a place for face-to-face classes, too. For certain subjects, like a math class as opposed to a philosophy class, distance learning is going to work better. There’s a tendency now in some classrooms to use online for lectures and use class periods for discussion. I don’t think we can just do everything online. UBTech: Content requiring hands-on practice is particularly difficult to offer via distance learning. Grandin: That’s another thing I’m very concerned about. High schools have taken away the hands-on courses. Those are the things that I excelled in. It teaches practical problem-solving. I’m seeing a lack of UBTech 2012 resourcefulness [in students]. You’ve got the internet at your fingertips and you don’t think to look things up on it. Hands-on courses teach resourcefulness. How do we do stuff? The geeks and the nerds, we’ve always had them. Why are they having more trouble today? We’ve taken out all the hands-on classes in the school that they are good at. I see too many quirky kids going nowhere because there’s no shop teacher to turn them around—because they got rid of shop. UBTech: What about at the college level? Grandin: Within college courses, more hands-on stuff is needed. I’m very pleased that some engineering programs now are putting handson building experience into first-year classes. Students can learn early on what engineers actually do. We’ve got to get back to doing stuff. As a visual thinker, I’m interested in real things happening. Why do we take our best and brightest and teach them to game the financial system? They need to be solving the energy crisis. UBTech: What do college presidents need to be doing? Grandin: A real thing they could accomplish? Getting industry to finance some major programs. For kids who think differently, getting stuck in a 300-person class is really hard. UBTech: The finance of higher education is of great concern now, and state funding shortfalls appear to be the new normal. What are your thoughts on this? Grandin: Normally when you grow crops, you have to save seed to plant next year. If you don’t have seed to plant, next year you’re not going to grow a crop. I’m worried about the public university system— that this country is eating its seed corn, taking more and more funding out of public universities. The only way we’re going to be able to replace that funding is corporations investing in education like Microsoft does. We’re going to need a lot more of that. I’m very worried. Tuition has just skyrocketed. We’re getting in a situation where the lower income students aren’t going to be able to go to university. At CSU, an accomplished faculty member named Gary Smith is retiring. He’s about 10 years older than me. He came from a very modest background. The young Gary Smith would not be able to afford going to the university. UBTech: That’s a good example of a reason administrators should do everything they can to keep college as affordable as possible. How do you like being part of the higher education world? Grandin: I really like to see students go out and accomplish things and getting students interested in things. Students come up to me and say, I’m a vet now because I read your book. They’re out there doing real things. 13

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - March 2012

University Business - March 2012
Contents
Editor’s Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Human Resources
Campus CFO
ERP in the Ethers
Digital Treasure
Scoring Big With New Football Teams
Money Matters
End Note

University Business - March 2012