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Tuesday, April 8, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
PLMEs write Simmons on advising continued from page 1 Cushing-Brescia and Empkie are now being paid less because their compensation is proportional to the number of advisees they handle, Gruppuso said. This freed up resources to implement the changes in the medical school advising system, he said. Empkie, who used to have four half-days available to students, said he now has two. To accommodate his own schedule, Empkie said, he has scheduled these hours so that he works one full day a week. “We’re trying to make that work,” Empkie said. “It does make for a scheduling challenge.” Associate Dean of Medicine Julianne Ip ’75 MD’78 said that, in addition to the scheduling changes, the reformed medical school advising system, which sends advisees to three separate branches that each serve specific needs, effectively ends the six-year continuous advising system that has been part of the PLME experience. “Those of us who were advising medical students miss that,” Ip said. “I’m still accessible to medical students, if they seek me out.” Geolani Dy ’08, PLME Senate co-president, said the new system makes it harder to meet with advisers because their new office hours make them less accessible. Zachary Marcus ’10 said when he applied to PLME, he was told he would have the same adviser for six years. While he said he recognizes the importance of separating the undergraduate and medical school years, he liked that the advising sys-
tem formed a bridge between the two. Dy said the old system, which allowed PLME students to keep their undergraduate adviser for the first two years of medical school, helped them think of their education as a “continuum” instead of four undergraduate years distinct from four years of medical school. She liked the idea of having an adviser who knows her well, she said, and who could guide her through making important decisions in medical school. But, she added, “I think the new advising system they’ve put in place for med school students seems pretty strong, and it sounds like it’ll cater to med school students’ needs well.” Sarah Swanson ’11 said she thinks the changes will improve the advising system by allowing undergraduate PLME advisers to focus more on the undergraduate experience and allowing medical school advisers to focus on medical students’ needs. But Minjy Kang ’11 said “it’s a shame” that the advising structure changed, adding that she would have liked to have had a medical school adviser with whom she had built up such a long relationship. Kang, whose adviser is Cushing-Brescia, said she has not had a problem yet with her adviser’s accessibility. “Whenever I’ve e-mailed her, she’s been responsive, and I think she’s made an effort to make sure that (the reduced schedule) hasn’t affected the relationship that she has with her advisees.” Still, Dy said, “PLME undergrads are disappointed that they weren’t in-
formed earlier and that we didn’t have much input into the changes.” Dissatisfied with the effect of the new med school advising system on PLME advising, five students sent a letter on Feb. 11 to President Ruth Simmons, urging her to appoint a dean of medicine and biological sciences who will attend to concerns about PLME advising. “Recent, significant reductions in weekly availability of advisors, in addition to the shortening of the duration of the advising partnership, have profoundly altered the ethos of the program,” wrote Marcus, Claire Williams ’10, Jenna Kahn ’08, Lawren Wellisch ’08 and Ruhan Nagra ’10. “Specifically, we would like to stress the importance of seeking a Dean that believes that exceptional advising, which provides continuity through the eight-year Brown experience, is of paramount importance,” they wrote. Marcus said an assistant provost told him the letter was forwarded to the committee selecting the new dean, which had no student members. Last week, when Edward Wing was appointed the next dean, Marcus wasn’t sure what to think. “I’m not satisfied or dissatisfied,” he said. “I know nothing about the new dean.” But, he added, he is unhappy there were no undergraduates on the selection committee. Dy agreed, saying the PLME Senate hasn’t “collectively discussed how we feel about the appointment of Wing yet.” She added that “one concern was that we wanted to be part of the decision-making processes.”
Internationalizer gets top Watson post continued from page 1 radar screen, no,” he said. But he added that being director would be “a very exciting challenge” and that he saw the Watson Institute as “a terrific piece” of the University’s plans for internationalization. He said there was “a very strong
leadership structure already in place” among the Watson faculty — which includes a plethoric assortment of visiting and adjunct faculty and fellows — and that he would be “relying very much” on them to learn how the institute works and can improve. Emphasizing that Stallings was still the director until the summer,
Kennedy said that Watson is “in the middle of a very important transition” and promised to “continue with the agenda that she laid out.” He said he would work especially hard to strengthen Watson’s integration with the rest of the University, specifically by making joint faculty appointments. He said Stallings’ decision to resign as director, which she announced to Watson faculty last week, came as a surprise but was “very understandable.” Stallings, who has been director since 2006, will step down from that position this summer to return to the Watson’s Political Economy of Development Program, which she directed for several years, and to her own work in social and political development, she said. Kennedy would also inherit the Watson Institute director’s fundraising responsibilities, Stallings noted. The Watson Institute operates almost entirely off the return from its endowment, and grows that fund mostly by seeking contributions from wealthy alums. The institute is named for Thomas Watson Jr. ’37, a former chairman of IBM and ambassador to the Soviet Union, who founded a policy development center that was eventually incorporated into the Institute for International Studies. Before coming to Brown, Kennedy was the director of the European Law Research Center at Harvard Law School. He is an expert on international law and global governance. Kennedy, whose vice presidential office is slated to move into University Hall next year to be closer to Kertzer and President Ruth Simmons, said that plan has not changed as a result of his Watson appointment.