Nicholas Thompson wrote: ... > Whenever I give the elevator talk on CUSF I get three responses, > immediately:
> (1)” Get back to me when you have 200 million dollars.” Get $200 million (or some reasonable amount). The Free University of Berlin got started with a Ford Foundation grant. Find (or become) one of the grantsmanship elite. This will work better if you get something started to which you can point. > (2) ”Are you accredited? “ Catch-22 time. You can't get accredited until you teach something and you can't teach until you get accredited. See suggestion below. > (3) “I’m smart, I don’t have a PhD. Why should anybody want a [bleeping] Phd? As you point out, those folks would grab at a PhD if there was a decent one available. Many of those folks, like myself, just don't think they can learn anything or think they'd be bored stiff learning from the usual PhD mill. I last attended grad school in about 1990 and even then, after 12 years of real-world experience since earning my BS, I thought some of the course material was too basic. If I tried to get a Masters or PhD in my field, I'd be taking courses from people I work with and advise - my peers. That doesn't work. Suggestion: Pick a single course, divide and conquer the syllabus, and conduct it with a team of volunteer instructors. Choose a course for which you think you can get volunteers (in this group it would probably be best to choose complexity). The course should be one from an established university (outside of New Mexico for the sake of non-competition) taught by professor who's willing to share the syllabus and, possibly, material. For this first course, don't pick something that requires computational capacity beyond that of an individual student. Take the syllabus and divide it into subject areas that fit the interests of your volunteer group. Most syllabi are organized into subject sections, just like textbooks. The course should have roughly 45-50 one-hour lessons. If each instructor teaches two lessons you'll need about 22 to 25 volunteer instructors. The time required from the instructors is a little high (two hours of teaching plus about twenty of prep), but if each instructor teaches something about which they are passionate they'll be willing to give it. You may have to go through a couple of candidate courses before you find the ideal one for your trial. The whole point is to get something going - if you can show a graduate-level course equivalent to one taught by an accredited university, you should be able to win the grant war. -- Ray Parks [email protected] Consilient Heuristician Voice: 505-844-4024 ATA Department Mobile: 505-238-9359 http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax: 505-844-9641 http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:505-951-6084 ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
