NYPL Student Event: 9.15.09

Student reception & introduction to the world's premiere performing arts library!

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

6:30-8:30pm


The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts cordially invites you to join us for an evening of drinks, hors d'oeuvres, entertainment, and the opportunity to learn about the unique collections, scholarly opportunities, programs, and services at your local world class performing arts library. Meet and reconnect with other students and faculty from the New York City area.

RSVP required (see below).

When: Tuesday, September 15th, 2009. 6:30-8:30pm

Where: Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, Plaza level entrance

Please RSVP by September 9th to: pagepaa@nypl.org

Directions: To reach the Lincoln Center Plaza entrance, enter the plaza, which is located west of Broadway and Columbus Avenue from W. 62nd to W. 65th Street. The Library is between the Metropolitan Opera House and the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Due to construction, look for directional signs along the way to the Library.

For MTA and further info, go here.

July Workshops: Tamiment Library 101

Tamiment Library 101

A series of informal workshops introducing researchers to the printed, archival, and visual collections of the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives will be offered in July.

Workshops are one hour long and will take place in the Tamiment Library on the 10th Floor of Bobst Library. No advance sign-up is required.

Printed Collections Workshop, Wed, 7/22/09, 3-4
Archival Collections Workshop, Thurs, 7/30/09, 2-3 pm
Visual Collections Workshop, Fri, 7/31/09, 2-3 pm

Please see the program flyer for full details.

Anamesa Planning Meeting: Tuesday, July 21st

What? Start-up team meeting for the graduate journal, Anamesa

Who? Anyone interested. No experience necessary.

When? Tuesday, July 21 at 5:30pm

Where? Dojo Restaurant 14 W. 4th Street (corner of W. 4th & Mercer)

Why? Appetizers on us! (Oh, and the chance to be part of an amazing team project.)

Anamesa is an interdisciplinary journal of graduate works, run and published jointly by the students of the Draper Program and CLACS (Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies). Usually published twice a year, the journal has been quiet for the last couple of semesters. But, plans are now in the works to jumpstart it again—beginning with a joint issue covering the past fall and spring—and we need your help!

All interested in being part of the team should plan to meet for appetizers on the patio at Dojo Restaurant, 14 W. 4th Street (corner of W. 4th and Mercer) at 5:30pm, next Tuesday, the 21st. Please RSVP to Anna Bardaus at alb469[at]nyu.edu so we can get a head count. If you can’t RSVP in time, don’t let that stop you—come anyway!

Available jobs include: editors, proofreaders, designers and art directors, publicists, webmasters, and more. No prior experience necessary. Just a keen eye, a few hours a week, and lots of enthusiasm for the promotion of critical and artistic expression.

If you have any questions, contact Anna Bardaus at alb469[at]nyu.edu, or DSO President Myong Chin myc266[at]nyu.edu. Also, check out past issues of Anamesa at http://www.nyu.edu/pubs/anamesa/index.htm.
See you there!

Call for Papers: Society for American City and Regional Planning History

The Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH) will be holding its bi-annual conference in the San Francisco Bay Area in the Fall of 2009. The conference will be based at the Marriott Oakland City Center hotel and will run from Thursday, October 15 through Sunday, October 18, 2009.

On Saturday, October 17, the conference will feature a public session of posters that present original research by undergraduate and masters degree program students. This session will be a unique opportunity for students at the bachelors and masters level to present their work in a forum attended by hundreds of professionals from all over the United States as well as overseas.

HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL

Undergraduate and masters students interested in participating should submit to asha[dot]weinstein[dot]agrawal[at]sjsu[dot]edu a single document containing the following:

- A one-page abstract clearly marked with your name and contact information that summarizes the research, including the title, the central research question(s), a brief statement of significance, the sources consulted, and the major conclusions. (Works in progress, such as bachelors or masters theses, that do not yet have firm conclusions, are also encouraged.)

-A one-page resume or curriculum vitae, including (at a minimum) your contact information, university, major or concentration, expected degree,and expected date of graduation.

In addition, students must have their adviser, or a faculty member closely familiar with the project, email a short letter of endorsement to asha[dot]weinstein[dot]agrawal[at]sjsu[dot]edu. The letter should explain the significance of the work and confirm that the faculty member expects it will be ready to present by October.

Proposals will be reviewed in the order received (all materials must be received before the proposal will be reviewed), with the final deadline for all materials submitted being Tuesday, September 8. It is anticipated that the maximum number of proposals will be accepted before that deadline, so students are encouraged to submit materials as soon as possible.

CONFERENCE DETAILS

Presenters are expected to provide their own poster of up to 36 x 42. SACRPH will provide foamcore backing boards, easels, and clips. For tips on designing and creating a poster, see http://ual.stanford.edu/OO/research_opps/SURPSResources.html or http://www.aspb.org/education/poster.cfm

A special schedule of discounted fees will be available to student presenters who wish to attend only one day or a portion of a day at the conference. Those wishing to attend more of the conference will pay the regular student registration fee.

Questions can be addressed to Michael Kahan, Associate Director of Urban Studies at Stanford University, at kahan[dot]michael[at]gmail[dot]com; or to Asha Weinstein Agrawal, Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at San José State University, asha[dot]weinstein[dot]agrawal[at]sjsu[dot]edu.

SACRPH is an interdisciplinary organization dedicated to promoting scholarship on the history of planning cities and metropolitan regions. Its members come from a range of professions and areas of interest, and include architects, planners, historians, environmentalists, landscape designers, public policy makers, preservationists, community organizers, students and scholars from across the country and around the world. SACRPH publishes a quarterly journal, The Journal of Planning History (http://jph.sagepub.com/), hosts this biennial conference, and sponsors awards for research and publication in the field of planning history.

The student poster session is presented with the support of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, San José State University.

For further information please consult http://www.dcp.ufl.edu/sacrph.

Why get a master's degree, anyway?

Years ago I saw a poster that said simply, "Change your mind." It was an advertisement for a meditation class. Clever, succinct and almost a dare, the phrase could just as well advertise what happens when a university gives its students its best.

In a troubled economy, questions about value and worth are especially urgent. Such questions extend to all fields, including higher education. There's been debate in the press recently about the cost and value of college in general, and there's been debate about the master's degree in particular.

At the end of June, the New York Times asked a panel of experts -- two professors, one personal finance consultant, and a former university president -- what an MA is worth (you can read their responses here). It's an important question, except that the answers in the Times use a narrow understanding of "worth." The respondents talked mostly about whether or not an MA will help the recipient earn more money. In that context, they concluded that a master's degree is a waste of time.

But there are many ways to evaluate "worth" beyond the limited measure of dollars.

A person stepping into a master's program has made a commitment to be part of a community of scholars, which in and of itself is pretty exciting. If she's sincere in her commitment, going to school is not a "hobby" or a casual endeavor. It is consuming, the way training becomes consuming for a serious athlete. Already the student is drawn out of herself and into a larger world. There's something heady, even a little intoxicating, about a classroom full of people trying to understand how, for instance, a new interpretation of French postmodern feminist literature can influence the controversy about Muslim women wearing religious headscarves in Paris. Does such insight guarantee the student a higher salary when she's finished her degree? Nope. But does it change, even in a small way, her perception of the world around her? It certainly can. And does this matter?

Absolutely.

It points to the most significant benefit of taking the degree, and recalls the gentle exhortation of that poster from the past. A true education cannot leave a student unchanged. Over time, she comes to perceive more detail, nuance, interconnection, and potential in everything around her. Whether she's studying landscape ecology or American colonial history or Anglophone literature or early childhood education or molecular anthropology, her world becomes wonderfully more complicated the more she studies.

She will also be changed by the work required to do well. The countless hours reading, researching, attending and participating in classes, listening to colleagues differ or find consensus, influence her thinking and her sense of connection to and responsibilities within the larger world.

Then there's the writing. Any master's program worth its salt (from the Latin sal, the root of the word "salary") requires students to write. And write. And write. No matter what comes after the MA, a student who becomes a competent writer graduates with a skill marketable across nearly all job categories. We're back to the monetary rewards of the degree, but this particular point wasn't mentioned by the quartet who wrote for the Times. I'll even make the claim that if a student (at any university) does not become a better writer by the time she has earned the master's, then that university has failed her.

It's true that an MA at a private research university can be expensive. It's also true that a direct link between that degree and a higher-paying job is sometimes elusive. But it's hard to argue that there is no link at all. The person who emerges from the classes and the research and the writing with that master of arts is not the same person who first enrolled. Her journey through the process has changed her mind -- and thus changed her world -- forever and completely.