Dear Soumitri,
I am encouraged by an excellent recent book by sociologist Donald N. Levine.
It is called "Powers of the Mind: The Reinvention of Liberal Learning in
America," University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Richard Buchanan
Carnegie Mellon University
On 2/20/07 4:37 PM, "Soumitri Varadarajan" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> I am reading Mary Evans' book "Killing Thinking: The Death of the
> Universities" for my reflective paper on my term as Program Director
> here. And she delivers a pretty devastating indictment from a very
> particular perspective. Its the story of what happened over the past
> two decades to British Universities, and the story is the same for
> universities in Australia. Continuous performance evaluation, funding
> cutbacks, and the push for research. Did design schools in the US
> escape these changes?
>
> Would be interested in anecdotes from other countries too (Ido,
> Eduardo, Can, Chris). I have read Alpay, and have heard the word
> around events like Wonderground- so it looks like we have all worked
> hard to adapt. But the tension between research and practice refuses
> to go away. A Good Tension I think - I like.
>
> Still I would like to hear - and this will help me in writing with a
> broader context in mind. Thank you.
>
> Dr. Soumitri Varadarajan
> Associate Professor
> Industrial Design Program
> School of Architecture and Design
> RMIT University
>
> Web: http://users.tce.rmit.edu.au/Soumitri.Varadarajan/index.htm
>
> "Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them"
> - Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976)
>
|