Meeting w/ Dean McCarthy - Nov 26

After a few weeks of juggling schedules I met with Dean Mhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifcCarthy to review the mid-career issues list to see what we might triage out to other parts of the KSG organization. The reps are hearing some things that might normally go to a Program Director and could be better handled in other parts of the administration.

You can read details here. For a summary, read on.

Program Director
As might be expected this personnel issue is taking longer to resolve than anyone hoped. The Dean can't legally share anything with us, other than to emphasize they're still spending a great deal of energy looking for solutions and stepping into the breach where they can. We're working to make sure our first mid-career seminar on is on Dean McCarthy's schedule so he can update us as a group in January.

Academics
Betty and Scott have been working extensively with the Dean through the Academic Affairs committee to bring our issues forward.

We discussed the concern that the approach to teaching about plagiarism was too militant. The Dean mentioned there used to be more writing tutors and they were easier to locate. Generally the best approach is to ask a CA, a TA or the professor if you're concerned that the idea you're working with may not be original. If you have any questions about what to cite and how, asking is the best policy. Learning to use also Refworks removes a lot of the fiddly burden of sorting out punctuation and so on.

Diversity
There's been a concern that not enough US diversity is represented at the Kennedy School. Dean McCarthy reports that we lead the nation in diversity in the MPP program but always find it harder to match that in the mid-career program for a variety of reasons. If you'd like to get involved, there is the diversity committee, which always lacks enough mid-career representation.

KSSG and Student Life
Apparently in past years, the mid-careers have run several successful campaigns for KSSG President, in part because they had August to organize. Even in the last few years there have been successful Mason Fellow Presidents. This year was a little off kilter because of the situation with the program director, but it's expected the trend of a politically active mid-career class will pick up again!

Our next meeting is December 5th!