San Diego State University was founded to educate elementary school teachers in 1897, making it the oldest university in the geographic region. The original training center for students was a room located over a retail establishment in the city. By the 1930s, the university had its own 17-acre campus and began to expand to offer additional majors. Today, 20,000 students each year are able to enroll in majors such as science, business and engineering at a larger campus with multiple specialized buildings.
Mission/Visions
The goals and mission of San Diego State University are diverse including providing an understanding of various world cultures, advancing human thought and encouraging intellectual development for its students. To achieve this mission, the university provides a knowledgeable educational staff from around the world who offers an interdisciplinary perspective to students. At the same time, the faculty strives to support creativity and innovation amongst its student body.
Campus Setting
Because this is an older university, several on campus building have historical...
Point Loma Nazarene University is a private, Christian Institute that offers high education while developing students on their spiritual journeys. The university has an established community living agreement in which all incoming students must accept and abide by while furthering their education. Students who attend PLNU are expected to reflect pure, Christian values, which are guided by the Holy Spirit.
At the time, San Francisco State College had an enrollment of approximately 18,000 students. Characterized as an open campus, San Francisco State was known for its innovative approaches to teaching and the development of courses in conjunction with students.
Personal Development, one of the core values at Saint Leo University, plays an important role in students’ daily lives. From the moment you step foot on campus to the day you graduate, you automatically become a different person. As a first year student, you are entering a new life and not knowing what to expect. Once you are in college, it is the start of a new chapter. You will become more mature and all the obstacles that you will go through will make you a different person. In order to have a successful Undergraduate experience, it is crucial to have a balance between personal life and school. Your personal development will strengthen your academics and the community. The Campus Life Handbook states, “Saint Leo University stresses the development of every person’s mind, spirit, and body for a balanced life. All members of the Saint Leo University community must demonstrate their commitment to personal development to help strengthen the character of our community” (Saint Leo 1). Based on the Saint Leo core values, personal development, responsible stewardship, integrity, respect, and community exemplifies Medea’s character as a Hero devolving throughout the play.
Organization-environment relations depict certain areas of UCSB in their entirety in which two of those theories include population ecology and neoinstitutional theory. Population ecology and neoinstitutional theory looks at UCSB in divergent perspectives: population ecology looks at UCSB as a living or dying species whereas neoinstitutional theory highlights UCSB’s importance as an establishment to its field of education. With this, I am going to compare both, population ecology and neoinstitutional theory, in relation to the University of California – Santa Barbara. I will further discuss each of their strengths and weaknesses in accordance to the behavior and environment of institution, faculty, staff, and its students.
Creativity is something that isn’t taught but learned through self-reflection. Creativity requires one to be able to express their thoughts through words or other various forms of expression. Creativity allows students to come up with practical solutions to everyday problems when applying them to real life situations. This teaches students that there may be several ways to solve a problem, but no solution is better than the other. “People who are creatively successful go beyond merely performing a job, becoming sources of new ideas, discoveries, and inventions” (Zagursky). Students that are more creative thinkers; instead of, standardized test takers may find it difficult to advance in class. According to Kim Zagursky, the Torrance test is the most widely used creativity test in the world and is the best predictor of creative achievement. The Torrance test, named for creator E. Paul Torrance, was developed in the late 1950s as a potential tool to individualize student instruction (Zagursky). Unfortunately, as time past creativity is becoming less among our students. There is a growing concern for the ability to form their own opinions about ideas they have read. The questions in the Sternberg’s Kaleidoscope policy was designed to measure creativity, ana¬lytical, practical, and wisdom-based skills and attitudes (DiMaria 55). Sternberg’s policy is currently being used at Oklahoma State
Universities in California, especially UC Berkley and University of Southern California are ranked so high in the nation that foreign students yearn to study in California in order to get more chances to work in well-known companies such as Apple and Silicon Valley. The quality of schools and education people can get decides how many chances and how many possibilities to be close to success. According to Jennifer Medina, “During a 1960s renaissance, California’s public university system came to be seen as a model for the rest of the country and an economic engine for the state”. The uniquely structured California education system, which provides students with higher education and convenient transfer, attracts an increasing rate of foreign students intend to get education in California instead of other states. Those foreign students, who are not qualified to get into UC or cannot afford such high tuitions, can apply to CSU or CCC at the beginning, and then transfer to UC which is most students’ dream school. Despite the advantages of the California education system enjoys, the extreme budget cuts, growth tuition and increasing population however overturn what foreign students imagined about universities in California, and the result is that most foreign students cannot realize their California dreams about education in California.
The American system of education is considered to be one of the most progressive in the world. One of the surveys on attitudes toward teaching around the world found that the United States is unique in its strong emphasis on "good teaching." My experience at State College has helped me to understand better how this system works, and what methods and techniques American teachers use to motivate their students for creative and active learning. However, I can also see that this system doesn’t work perfectly in every classroom. Reading Ernest Boyer’s article “Creativity in the Classroom” helped me with my understanding of the main problem that nowadays exists with the American college education system. According to the author, the problem is that teachers and students don’t see each other as one team doing the same business; therefore, in most classrooms the process of learning becomes a boring procedure instead of being mind-blowing. Moreover, reading this article, I could analyze the reasons of this problem that the author identifies through my own experiences at State College.
1. Guiding question: What is the state of California’s higher education now and in the following years?
The light of the typical Ivy League student may not need to sparkle from within because the outside light is radiant; gifted from birth and straight A’s in advanced Shakespeare classes litter the scores of acceptance essays. The light of the atypical Ivy League student, conversely, needs to sparkle from within because of the adversity he may have faced. In order for him to transcend intellectually, he has to find that indomitable spirit. He needs to forge ahead against uncertainty because nothing was paved for him. Consequently, the light shines brighter because he has already fought the darkness from within, creating a stronger individual. This metaphor of darkness and light was taken straight out of the pages of my story. My childhood was not filled with advanced Shakespeare classes or any other typical Ivy League scripts, but it is not despite the adversity I faced but precisely because of what I faced do I feel Columbia GS would add a great chapter in the story of my life.
The students do try to seize their days, both as individuals; bucking the pre-programmed lives that have been laid out for them and as members of ...
Tagg, John. “Why Learn? What We May Really Be Teaching Students.” About Campus. 2004. Print.
Again, my passion is for every student to be successful and not be left behind because they aren’t receiving the instruction and assistance that they need. My passion is to keep my students engaged, I want my students to enjoy learning, therefore, I will find methods that will make my students want to strive for knowledge. Because of my caring and dedicated personality, I will assist my students so that every single one receives the help that they need in the most interesting way possible. I am interested in the different learning styles to improve the success of my students, the disciplines of interdisciplinary studies will help me do
Each year, as a new group of students enter my classroom, I will encourage them to be expressive of their imaginations in their favorite subjects, whether it will be art, literature, math or music. We all have rules and regulations to follow, and each student will know that there is no exception in the school or the classroom. Another goal in my classroom will be to keep the students excited about learning, not to treat school as a game or a social event, but to encourage a unique and fun atmosphere to learn.
Colleges and universities provide both residential and online facilities for groups of selected students while community colleges provide inventive approaches to provide an education to the underprepared or underprivileged populations. Institutions of higher education both domestically and abroad have three universal key missions including research, teaching and service. Institutions that emphasize research have yielded unparalleled advancements in every field including science, medicine, engineering, etc. which have both served the greater good and brought global acclaim and praise to individual institutions. These monumental breakthroughs have been the mortar laying the foundation for research-centered institutions around the world with research being one of the fundamental values and purposes of higher education. While many distinguished four-year institutions have centered their focus on research, others have emphasize...
...urity would make my experience at University of Southern California a challenging and an exciting one.