INDEX
Emory Events Calendar, Page 2
Police Record, Page 2
Q&A, Page 9
Crossword Puzzle, Page 8
Staff Editorial, Page 6
OnFire, Page 11
THE EMORY WHEEL Since 1919
The Independent Student Newspaper of Emory University www.emorywheel.com
Friday, September 21, 2012 ACADEMICS
Every Tuesday and Friday
RESISTING THE RAIN
DEPARTMENT CHANGES
Univ. Joins Online Course Program
Committee Helped Forman Evaluate Depts. By Evan Mah Editor-in-Chief After the College and Laney Graduate School announced a series of shutdowns and suspensions last Friday, many students and faculty demanded to know about the specific criteria used to determine how departments and programs were selected. As the Wheel reported on Tuesday, College Dean Robin Forman based many of his decisions on talks he had with a committee — one that, until now, had remained relatively unknown to students.
By Jordan Friedman Associate Editor Emory will become one of 33 universities worldwide this spring to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs), the University announced Wednesday. Coursera, a social entrepreneurship company, partners with top universities — such as Emory — around the world to offer free online courses, according to the Coursera website. Individuals around the world who enroll in these courses watch lectures online and complete interactive exercises but will not receive course credit at the University. The purpose of the program, Coursera’s website states, is to enable “the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students.” The length of courses can last from four to 12 weeks. Prior to Coursera, Emory offered online courses only in the Candler School of Theology and the Rollins School of Public Health. The Candler School of Theology launched a two-day-a-week program for Master of Divinity (MDiv) students last fall. The online program featured online courses and hybrid classes, according to a Jan. 24 Wheel article, but did not extend beyond the MDiv degree program. The Rollins School of Public Health launched a distance-learning career masters program, offering the Masters in Public Health (MPH) degree in an online format. “[Coursera] is a remarkable opportunity to extend our impact by offering learners everywhere in the world the chance to experience a rich and diverse sampler of Emory faculty and course topics,” Earl Lewis, Emory’s provost and executive vice
See ONLINE, Page 5
OBITUARY
Victor Le, 20, Caring and Dedicated By Karishma Mehrotra Contributing Writer College junior Victor Vinh Charles Le, remembered by his classmates for his determination and caring nature, died last week. He was 20. As reported in a Sept. 18 Wheel article, a Gwinnett County police officer shot and killed Le last Wednesday night after Le allegedly pointed a BB gun at the officer, Gwinnett police Victor Le say. Le, who was from Lilburn, Ga., was majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology (NBB) and served as a freshman legislator on the College Council. He was a mem-
See LE, Page 5
Volume 94, Issue 7
Origins
Elyssa Marcus/Contributor
D
espite the rain, students and faculty ventured through the weekly Farmer’s Market Tuesday afternoon. The Farmer’s Market is an opportunity for the community to purchase locally grown and sustainable food.
DEPARTMENT CHANGES
National Media Discuss Forman’s Plan By Karishma Mehrotra Staff Writer After College Dean Robin Forman’s letter appeared in email inboxes across campus Friday afternoon, The Emory Wheel was not the only news organization eager for an explanation. Media outlets across the nation wasted no time in spreading the information about the breaking news. The Cavalier Daily, University of Virginia’s (UVA) student newspaper, openly criticized Emory University’s administration in a staff editorial “Running with Scissors.” The newspaper wrote that Emory administrators have ignored the lessons UVA
learned in their so-called “leadership crisis.” This summer, the University’s Board of Visitors removed and reinstated UVA’s President Teresa Sullivan within less than a month. “The abruptness of [Emory’s] drastic and apparently unilateral decision should frighten anyone with an interest or stake in higher education,” the paper stated. “This dean did not learn the lesson we gathered from June: that a decision made without buy-in is not only undemocratic and most likely misguided, but will bring unintended consequences and reputational damage.” UVA was not the only university with an opinion on the dean’s decision. Yale Daily News reacted
specifically to Forman’s justification that the journalism program was too pre-professional for Emory’s liberal arts program. “After all, if Emory truly believes the line between liberal arts and career skills is so firm, it should ban future engineers from taking higherlevel math courses; they might, you know, use those skills at work someday,” a Yale columnist wrote. “Future novelists? Stay away from literature, lest you dare to glean some inspiration from Dickens or Cervantes. Interested in a career in music? Sorry, those classes are restricted to the tone-deaf.”
See JOURNALISM, Page 5
DEPARTMENT CHANGES
The origins of the Faculty Financial Advisory Committee stretch back to late Fall 2007 under former College Dean Bobby Paul. At a time when the financial markets started to collapse and university endowments across the United States were hit hard, Paul established a group of faculty and administrators to advise him, according to Micheal Giles, a professor of political science and the chairman of the Faculty Financial Advisory Committee since 2008. In the spring of 2008, the group emerged as an official subcommittee of the Governance Committee consisting only of eight faculty members. Given the constant state of flux of the University’s finances, the committee met at least twice a month for the first two years, Giles said. During that time, the committee reduced funding for various institutes and programs in ways that had “minimal impact on the experience of students,” according to Giles. There came a point, though, when members of the committee became concerned that the dean would
COMMITTEE MEMBERS Keith Berland Associate Professor, Physics Huw Davies Professor, Chemistry Robin Forman Dean of the College Micheal Giles Professor, Political Science Pam Hall Associate Professor, Religion Stefan Lutz Associate Professor, Chemistry Bobbi Patterson Senior Lecturer, Religion Rick Rubinson Associate Dean/Professor, Sociology
SEE INSIDE A graph of how this plan will affect students’ majors. See Page 5. request that certain programs be eliminated. “When you’re confronted with the shortfalls that were being predicted, we realized that we could be asked at any moment, so we set about to school ourselves,” Giles said. With permission from the dean and the provost, the committee acquired exhaustive documentation: department-planning materials, department self-evaluations, patterns of enroll-
See UNIVERSITY, Page 5
BEAN BAG TOSS
Department Chairs Clarify Recent Misinformation By Evan Mah Editor-in-Chief While rumors regarding the shutdown of more departments continue to spread through campus, several have turned out to be false. The Department of French and Italian and the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies are not being phased out, the Wheel has confirmed. Elissa Marder, the department chair of French and Italian, said rumors had circulated that her department was merging with Comparative Literature. The merge, Marder said, is “bad language.” Marder clarified that the two departments will now share one administrative position and one director of graduate studies (DGS), as opposed to each department having its own. “The deans assume that we can keep our own distinct profile and identity of a graduate and Ph.D. program in French, and that comparative literature can define their own identity even though we share one staff person and one DGS,” she said. “[The deans] also are encouraging us to work with the intellectual synergy that has long existed — I, myself, am joint-appointed [in comparative literature] — and they’d like us to maximize efficiencies intellectually as well, but that is up to us.” Marder added that her department has been approved to find an associate professor in French — a position, she said, that is a tenured appointment. “That is a vote of confidence in
our graduate and undergraduate program,” she said. Pamela Scully, the department chair of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, also debunked rumors regarding her department. “Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies is not affected directly by these cuts at all,” she wrote in an email to the Wheel. “Our department is one of the top, if not the top department of WGSS in the country. We are very much supported by the College and the Laney Graduate School.” There continues to be conflicting reports about the fate of Hindi and Persian programs. Several students taking Hindi and Persian Language Coordinator and lecturer Hossein Samei have both said Hindi and Persian have been cut. Forman denied the decision, saying that he and Vincent Cornell, the chair of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies (MESAS), are having discussions and have not reached a final resolution. “These languages have not generated the enrollments that we have seen in most of our language courses, and hence we must ask the same hard questions about these courses that we would of any undersubscribed course,” Forman wrote in an email to the Wheel. Forman acknowledged Persian and Hindi’s role in graduate education but wrote that such a role does not imply that “we must teach these languages in standard language courses.”
See STATUSES, Page 4
Jason Lee/Staff
C
ollege senior and Student Government Association President Ashish Gandhi participates in the bean bag toss at this week’s Wonderful Wednesday. A haystack was also present at this week’s Wonderful Wednesday in honor of the homecoming theme of “Swoop’s County Fair.”
ADMISSIONS
Admissions to Focus on Social Media By Anusha Ravi Staff Writer The Office of Undergraduate Admissions will implement a new communications team this fall, which will focus on spreading Emory information to prospective students around the world through social media. John Latting, dean of undergraduate admissions, said the program aims to streamline Emory’s message to students who may be interested in Emory using increased social media efforts as well as more extensive current student interaction with prospec-
tive students. The team also hopes to better incorporate the voices of current Emory students and faculty in the recruiting process by having students post videos and blogs about the Emory lifestyle on social media sites, Latting noted. “The website and social media we are employing now are strong but don’t really transmit the voice of current students,” he said. “We need to get more current students involved in the process of attracting prospective students.” A new Director of Communications
Daniel Creasy, who previously served as an admissions counselor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., will start work at Emory on Monday, Latting said. During this semester, he will conduct a search for about seven members of his communications team, which will consist of a receptionist, writers, editors, a social media coordinator and an event planner. Part of the drive to create this new program, Latting said, was pressure to compete with peer institutions in
See COMMUNICATIONS, Page 3
NEWS STUDENT GROUP
OP-EDS DEPARTMENT
STUDENT LIFE
SPORTS GOLF FINISHES
NEXT ISSUE GRAD
“CHINA-TIBET” INITIATIVE... PAGE 3
CUTS MAKE
EMORY UNREMARKABLE... PAGE 7
TALES FROM THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL... PAGE 9
SECOND IN THIS SEASON’S OPENING
STUDENTS HOST SECOND
TOURNAMENT...
STRATEGY SESSION...
ESTABLISHES
BACK PAGE
TUESDAY