REMINDER
THE LAST DAY TO DROP A CORE CLASS is Friday, February 1.
This means that after this Friday, students may not drop their Core classes.
This only applies to the following Core classes:
The Center for Career Education presents the First and Second Year Career Week (February 11-February 15).
The First and Second Year Career Week features five days of specialized and focused programming designed to help first and second year students to begin and to further their career development.
This year, the First and Second Year Career Week features a site visit to the Guggenheim Museum, skill based workshops, and the essential Internship Bootcamp: Peer to Peer Networking.
Please visit our website www.careereducation.columbia.edu for more information and to register for events.
Are you a good listener?
Do your friends come to you for advice?
Do you want to volunteer your time to serve your fellow classmates?
Join NIGHTLINE!
This is a great opportunity to build your communication skills!!
Find out more at the following info sessions:
TONIGHT!!!
Wednesday, January 30th at 8 pm, 203 Barnard Hall
Any questions? Email our directors:
Mariya at: mr2424@columbia.edu
Sarit at: srh2118@columbia.edu
***For Columbia College students***
CORRECTION: The deadline to uncover a “P” from last semester (Fall 2007) is Tuesday, February 5, 2008.
Students can uncover their grade by going on SSOL and clicking on the link on the left side of the page marked “P/D/F Grading.”
Once you open the P/D/F Grading page, the grade should be indicated. On the same page, there are instructions about how to uncover your grade. Please read them carefully and send an e-mail request to the Registrar by using the link provided.
The Change of Program/Registration period ends this Friday.
Change of Program/Registration
Monday, January 28 - Friday, February 1
==========================
REMINDER
The last day to ADD a Core class via on-line registration or via petitions is TODAY: Monday, January 28 (end of Core Registration).
THE LAST DAY TO DROP A CORE CLASS is Friday, February 1.
This means that after this Friday, students may not drop their Core classes.
Dear Columbia College students,
The Department of Computer Science would like to invite you to our Major Information Session. Professor Adam Cannon will go over the major requirements, and the current CS majors will be there to answer questions. This is open to first-year and second-year students.
Major Information Session
January 31, 2008 (Thursday)
4:00pm - 5:00pm
CS Conference Room
Please RSVP Remi Moss at remimoss@cs.columbia.edu by January 30.
We look forward to seeing you.
For present and future majors and concentrators in archaeology
954 Schermerhorn Extension
Thursday, January 31, 4:00-6:00 pm
The Program in Archaeology invites you to its open house, to be held in the Center for Archaeology (CCA) on January 31st from 4:00 to 6:00 pm.
Faculty members will be there to help you learn more about the major and concentration in archaeology.
Snacks and refreshments served.
U4890 "Topics on Contemporary Turkey: Identity, Accession and Social and Political Debates in Turkey Today".
This course proposes to examine in depth some of the major debates and issues faced by the citizens of the Turkish Republic at the present time. In doing so this course will briefly examine the origins of the modern Turkish State with a focus on how the founding realities and myths have aided or hindered contemporary Turkish society. This course will give particular emphasis to the interplay of domestic and international agendas in the larger framework of the current Turkish debates on such topics as accession negotiations to join the European Union, civil society and the rights of women and ethnic minorities.
Course Requirements: As this course is intended to take form as a seminar, the final grade will consist of class participation (20%), the leading of a selected reading, (20%) and the submission of either two ten page papers or one twenty page papers (60%). This requires that all members of the class are also expected to lead a readings discussion section of their choice.
Attention SENIORS:
The GradZone website has been updated. You can find out important graduation information here.
PLEASE keep in mind that while the Class Day for SEAS and CC will be on May 19th, the times for the two ceremonies have not been determined as of yet. Please check the GradZone website for updates.
Here is a link to the GradZone website: http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/events/gradzone/
If you are interested in housing for your family on campus during graduation week, your family can start applying for rooms in Carmen in mid-February. More info will be posted in February.
There will be a mailing to the parents of all potential grads in early February. This mailing will also be to the families of anyone on the October or February graduation lists.
Dear Student,
This is to remind you of the changes in Core registration that we communicated to you in November.
Specifically, we want to remind you that there is a new, earlier deadline for dropping Core classes. That date is Friday February 1.
Please read below for details.
The Core Registration Period: Tuesday, January 22 - Monday, January 28
Currently, students who are unable to effect changes in their Core classes via on-line registration can do so by filing petitions at the Center for the Core Curriculum, in 202 Hamilton Hall (as in the past, Frontiers of Science discussion sections can ONLY be changed by petition at the Center for the Core Curriculum in 202 Hamilton).
Please be reminded that during the Core registration period (January 22 through 28) students registered for Core classes must attend class or they will be dropped after two absences.
The last day to ADD a Core class via on-line registration or via petitions will be Monday January 28 (end of Core Registration).
THE LAST DAY TO DROP A CORE CLASS is Friday, February 1.
This means that after Friday, February 1, students may not drop their Core classes.
As you see, the Core drop date happens much earlier than the regular drop date, so it is imperative that you keep this earlier deadline in mind as you work out your schedule.
We thank you for your cooperation.
Best wishes,
The Center for the Core Curriculum.
All of the CSA Advising Deans want to welcome everyone back from Winter Break!!
Please remember that the Change of Program/Registration is currently going on.
Change of Program/Registration
(check SSOL for your time slots)
Tuesday, January 22-Friday, January 25
Monday, January 28-Friday, February 1
REMINDER: Applications for the SIPA 5 year BA-MIA/MPA applications are due this Friday, January 25th.
Applications and all supporting material must be submitted to Dean Leora Brovman in the Center for Student Advising, Schapiro Residence Hall location, by 5pm.
No late applications will be considered.
As you finalize your courses for this semester, keep your study abroad plans in mind. If you are considering studying abroad, you should meet with Dean Scott Carpenter (105 Carman) as soon as possible to discuss how next semester’s courses can help prepare you for the experience.
Study abroad applicants need to have adequate language training and must take at least one course pertaining to the country or region where they intend to study.
Please visit the College’s study abroad website for details: http://www.college.columbia.edu/students/studyabroad/
You should also stop by Dean Carpenter’s open hours or e-mail him at sc2764@columbia.edu for more information on study abroad eligibility and requirements.
Open Hours in 105 Carman Monday through Thursday: 1:30 to 4:00pm Friday: 10:00am to 12:00pm And by appointment: sc2764@columbia.edu 212-854-7444
HIST W3426y History of Slavery. 3 pts.
Professor Christopher Brown
TR 1:10-2:25
301 Fayerweather Hall
This lecture course presents an introduction to the history of comparative slavery, with particular reference to the relationship between human bondage and broader processes of economic and social change. Topics include the experience of enslavement, the development of long-distance networks for the transportation of slave labor, the rise and fall of the plantation complex in the Americas, and the distinctive character of human bondage in the twentieth century.
Department of History website:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/history/ugrad/main/index/index.html
Q. How much information from my Facebook profile can random people find out about me with a regular Web search?
A. Facebook announced last fall that it was making limited member profiles visible on the Web for people who are not members of the social networking site. While the information revealed about you is limited to your name and profile photo, you can edit your privacy settings to limit what the general public — as well as Facebook members — can see.
To adjust your privacy preferences, log into your Facebook account and click the Privacy link in the top right corner of your home page. On the Privacy Overview page, you will find links to the aspects of your Facebook profile that you can control. For example, click the Search link to limit which Facebook users can find you in a search — everyone, people in your network or just the users you have tagged as friends.
You can also choose on this page whether to let people outside Facebook see your information. Make sure the box for your “public search listing” is not checked if you don’t want to be found by search engines. If you want to be found, you can specify here what people can see or do if they find you, like viewing your photo.
Aside from your search privacy settings, the Privacy Overview page has plenty of other options to adjust if you want to limit what people, Facebook applications or even external Web sites can display on your profile page. You can also choose to block or limit your profile to specific users.
If you are taking Frontiers of Science this semester, PLEASE make sure that you are also registered for a Frontiers DISCUSSION.
You must be registered for the DISCUSSION by 5pm this Wednesday, January 16th or the Core Office will register you themselves. ***This may cause you to get bumped from a previously registered class.
Do you need to change your spring schedule? Need to add or drop any classes??
Your CSA Advising Deans wanted to remind you all that Spring 2008 Registration starts back up next week!!! You will have three weeks to make changes.
Change of Program/Registration
(check SSOL for your time slots)
Tuesday, January 15-Friday, January 18
Tuesday, January 22-Friday, January 25
Monday, January 28-Friday, February 1
Monday, Jan 21
Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Observed - University Holiday
Tuesday, Jan 22
First Day of Classes
Links to information on all of these is at: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/faculty/mowshowitz/changes.html
(1) For nonmajors – a great way to fulfill your science requirement – a new course for students who had some bio in high school and want to learn more, but don’t want to compete with premeds! Bio W1130, Genes & Development. For more info, go to URL above, or go to Courseworks, log in, and enter ‘Hazelrigg’ or ‘Genes & development’ in the ‘search courses’ box.
(2). For students interested in how Molecular Biology Developed -- A new Topics (1 pt) Course: W3995y(2) - Topics in Biology: Foundations of Molecular Biology. For more info, go to URL above or go to Courseworks, log in, and enter ‘foundations’ or ‘Hertzberg’ in the ‘search courses’ box.
(3). Systems Biology II: This course is a continuation of Systems Biol. I, but is open to students who have not taken the fall term. For more information go to URL above or go to Courseworks, log in, and enter ‘systems biology’ or ‘Pe’er’ in the ‘search courses’ box.
(4). Molecular Biology of Cancer, W3799.
(1) For nonmajors – a great way to fulfill your science requirement – a new course for students who had some bio in high school and want to learn more, but don’t want to compete with premeds! Bio W1130, Genes & Development. For more info, go to:
https://courseworks.columbia.edu/cms/outview/courseenter.cfm?no=BIOLW1130_001_2008_1
or go to: Courseworks, log in, and enter ‘Hazelrigg’ or ‘Genes & development’ in the ‘search courses’ box.
(2). For students interested in how Molecular Biology Developed -- A new Topics (1 pt) Course: W3995y(2) - Topics in Biology: Foundations of Molecular Biology. For more info, go to:
https://courseworks.columbia.edu/cms/outview/courseenter.cfm?no=BIOLW3995_002_2008_1
or go to: Courseworks, log in, and enter ‘foundations’ or ‘Hertzberg’ in the ‘search courses’ box.
The Reality
The introductory lecture course may have an innocuous title, like “General Psychology I,” but such gateway courses can pack a discipline’s worth of jargon and knowledge into one or two semesters. Those who can’t crack the material could be shut out of their dream major.
“The amount of material is overwhelming,” acknowledges David E. Harris, who says more than 20 percent fail his “Introduction to Human Anatomy and Physiology” at the University of Southern Maine.
About 15 percent who take 100-level courses at large public universities get D’s or F’s or withdraw from them, says Carol A. Twigg, president of the nonprofit National Center for Academic Transformation. She works with colleges to make the lecture format more engaging. “We lose so many students between the first and second years,” she says, “because they are not passing these courses.”
How To
You won’t be missed if you skip class and download the professor’s notes online, but you will miss out. Being there and being alert lets you figure out which stuff the professor finds most important (hint: that’s what will be on the exam).
Student support centers — from the University of California, Berkeley, to the University of Connecticut — are offering for-credit courses that help students navigate a specific lecture course.
Last semester, Cathy Healy, an instructional developer at UConn, guided four students through David B. Miller’s intro psych lectures, focusing on how to take better notes. In one exercise, she showed a 10-minute video of Mr. Miller while she, a teaching assistant and the students took notes. It revealed a troubling gap: Students had three pages while she and the T.A. averaged six. “They are not keying into what he is presenting as important material,” says Ms. Healy, who tells her students to notice the lecturer’s gestures and volume of voice. “If he’s loud and he’s waving his arms, you’d better write that down.”
Ms. Healy tells students not to relax when Mr. Miller shows a video (he starts with a music video — Al Yankovic is a favorite — then reaches for a “South Park” or “Family Guy” clip). If he took the time to show it, it’s underscoring a key point.
Does It Work?
It’s no help that 100-level lectures can have 300 or more students; that grades are often based entirely on a midterm and a final exam (so class participation and personal charm can’t save you); and that classes are taught at what feels like daybreak.
Mr. Miller’s class is at 8 a.m., and he catches some nodding off. “When I see them, I know what the outcome will be,” he says. A few have taken his advice to get aerobic exercise before class. “It does increase oxygen flow to the brain by up to 20 percent.” That, however, “doesn’t work for everybody.”
While careful not to draw conclusions, he notes that students taking linked courses have done “a notch” better on his exams — a C+ instead of a C, the class mean. Similar results have been noted for students taking courses that shadow intro chemistry and biology.
Mr. Miller believes that success is less about native intelligence than good study habits. He suggests spending time every day processing what you’ve learned, as if prepping for a pop quiz. One way is to copy lecture notes.
But, he says, “be thinking about what you are recopying — don’t be doing it while you are listening to your iPod.”
IT will surprise nobody that the most competitive wave of high school graduates is now the most competitive wave of college students. The generation that made admissions a contact sport bring the same sharp elbows to how they spend their summers. Or, put in a form that parents would understand: “Internship” is to “first job” as “community service” is to “college.”
And if you haven’t applied for yours yet, you are late.
“Internships are no longer optional, they’re required,” says Peter Vogt, author of “Career Wisdom for College Students” and an adviser to MonsterTrak.com, the student arm of the job-search Web site, which reports that 78 percent of students in college this year plan to complete one or more internships before entering the post-collegiate world.
First, let’s clarify terms. An internship is not the same as a part-time job. What parents of today’s students did during their summers — working as camp counselors, shipping room clerks, lifeguards — those were jobs. Jobs are for making money. Internships are for gathering contacts, résumé fodder and experience. Jobs are found through human resource departments. Internships are handled at a much higher level. In a true internship, real responsibility provides a hands-on feel for what a particular kind of work is like (and not the kind high school students do, volunteering at soup kitchens or building huts in Guatemala — that’s community service).
The time for securing internships is already running short. The career counseling center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas warns students on its Web site that recruitment for the most coveted 10 percent of internships starts 10 months in advance. And many of those, at places like Microsoft, Google, Disney and XM Radio, have filled their summer slots by New Year’s Day.
For those programs with deadlines that are a bit more forgiving (say, April 1, when, according to Southern Methodist’s data, 40 percent of official programs close), the question is how to find them.
College career offices keep lists of the big programs, and the most popular ones are very popular. Last year, for instance, Google received more than 5,000 applications for fewer than 1,000 summer intern slots in the United States.
Even small entities are awash in applications. The American Jewish Committee received 200 for about a dozen spots last summer, while the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University had 20 science majors, from the likes of Johns Hopkins, Cornell and the University of California, San Diego, eager to earn $12 an hour in the single available position of “science writing intern.” At the Huron Consulting Group, a young Chicago company formed in the aftermath of the Arthur Andersen debacle, application numbers had been rising so steadily in recent years that it increased its program from 20 to 72 interns last summer.
Competition is further heightened because applicants are increasingly qualified. At Ketchum, a New York public relations company, more than 600 students applied for 16 positions last summer, with predictable results.
“This year, for the first time, every candidate selected for this summer’s program came to Ketchum with previous internship experience under their belt,” says Allison Slotnick, a spokeswoman. “Where once strong academics and extracurricular activities could demonstrate one’s capabilities, a track record of professional internship experience is now necessary.”
In other words, you need to have done an internship to qualify for one. What is an average student who has spent summers working as a grocery cashier to do?
There is almost always a side door — a makeshift slot created for a particularly qualified, determined or connected applicant. That’s where parents, acquaintances, alumni networks and local business owners and politicians can come in handy.
Professionally, Victoria Goldman is author of three books, including “The Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools.” In her spare time, she helps friends and family find otherwise hidden internships.
Her husband, Lloyd, runs a real estate business, so when a friend of her son’s wanted to learn the business, “Lloyd found him something, I think in the file room, but now he really knows real estate from the bottom up.” When their daughter expressed interest in law, Ms. Goldman called an assistant district attorney in the Bronx who served with her on the same charitable board. The result was a one-month internship taking notes in court and helping with research on the Bernard B. Kerik corruption case.
In all, Ms. Goldman helped 10 college students find internships last summer alone.
Students who don’t have a Ms. Goldman in their circle might take a closer look at whom they do have.
“Personal connections, family connections,” says Hilary Dykes, a sophomore at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, to describe what it takes. “Most people want to say it’s not, but it really is.”
Ms. Dykes spent last summer at a financial services firm in Greenwich, Conn., in an “unofficial internship” procured through a friend of her family’s. She prefers not to name the company because she doesn’t want to share her contacts.
She attended business conferences, learned to analyze a stock portfolio, helped research a PowerPoint presentation — nothing of any key importance to the company, but she got a taste of the field.
“I was very lucky to have it, especially coming from Wharton,” she says, “because students are so competitive about internships. If you can get one that’s a name on your résumé, that’s a huge deal.” Each internship “gives you an edge,” she says, because the next summer position will require more experience.
Erik Tillman, now a sophomore at Williams College, has spent the last few summers working in a cardiac research lab at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan. His work there was mostly entering and analyzing computer data on the function of mouse hearts. He found the job, while still in high school, because the scientist who runs the lab was a family friend.
At first reluctant to let his father intervene, Mr. Tillman quickly decided that he should use any route he could to get in the door. “Then I had to prove myself on my own,” he says. He did, and was asked back for subsequent summers and was included as an author on a medical journal article that included some of his data.
Time was when most internships lacked this kind of substance. Gen Y is changing that. The generation already known for its impatience has made it clear — in numerous studies and polls — that it will not stoop to fetching and copying.
Ryan Healy, the 23-year-old founder of Employee Evolution, a Web site that gives career advice to Gen Yers, speaks for many of his age when he says: “I walked away from one internship because it was a waste of my time. We have limits.” Members of his generation, he explains, have been building their résumés almost since grade school and are too qualified to be doing “meaningless work.”
In response, prestigious companies seeking to recruit the most qualified interns are offering elaborate support programs, training and actual work.
At General Motors, for instance, 18 would-be designers spent last summer designing a car. They were divided into teams for the G.M. Design Annual Summer Internship Program and sent off to build a three-dimensional model for the vehicle’s exterior and create sketches for the interior. They also developed press kits, videos and a Web site for their proposed brand.
At Texas Instruments, last summer’s interns worked on new products with company engineers. They tagged along on customer visits and had roundtable discussions with senior company executives, including the chief operating officer.
IN fact, a good number of internships serve as two-month-long job interviews, and just as the students hope to turn the experience into something good for the résumé, the companies hope to turn the students into future employees.
“We tell them up front that we have offered, and will offer, full-time jobs to outstanding performers,” says Maureen Lippe, a founder of Lippe Taylor Brand Communications, a Manhattan firm that specializes in marketing to women. “So they come in with a very competitive mind set.”
Microsoft, which brings up to 1,000 interns to its Redmond, Wash., campus each summer, hires about half of them full time, according to Caroline Bulmer, the company’s internship program manager. “Our interns provide us with an opportunity to develop the next generation of talent,” she says.
The word “internship” has often been synonymous with “working for free.” But recently, as summer programs have come to be viewed as a way to reel in the best and the brightest, companies are sweetening the pot with weekly stipends. Ms. Bulmer says that interns last summer at Microsoft not only received “competitive pay,” which varied by position, but also were provided with subsidized rental cars, a bike purchase plan, health club memberships, bus passes, discounts on company software and a summer of parties and special events.
At the same time, a growing subset of internships are available only to students who cannot afford to work for free. (To find a list of these, start with your college’s financial aid office.)
Leigh Stuckey, a Duke junior, won such an internship last summer at the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. “It was specifically for students who qualified for financial aid,” she says. Ms. Stuckey spent 10 weeks reviewing the oral histories of artists who had been interviewed during the 1960s and ’70s, readying the transcripts for eventual release to researchers. She was paid $4,000 ($5,000 is budgeted for next summer). The other Smithsonian interns receive college credit for their work but are unpaid.
For most students, an internship still means draining someone’s bank account (the students’ or the parents’) in exchange for a résumé line.
Which leads to the subject of my own intern.
I hired one, Allie Sommer, for the first time last summer. Allie is the daughter of a close friend, and since I have known her for most of her life, I knew she was smart and resourceful and more organized than I was. She had waited tables the summer before, but now that her freshman year at Duke was over, she was looking for something with a little more substance.
I tried to give her as much “real” work as I could, though her main assignment for July — finding an electronic calendar system that would keep me from forgetting appointments — while of great importance to me, was probably not as earth shattering to her. Closer to the “substantive” end of the spectrum, she did a number of interviews for me and wrote up memos on them. Her final project, in fact, was to help report this article.
Also, I paid my intern, $10 an hour. But I was not able to give her more than 10 hours a week, so she had to supplement that by taking a second internship — with a friend, also a writer, who was looking for a researcher. And when that wasn’t enough, she sold clothes at a nearby store.
For this summer, she says, she is starting to look earlier.
That’s a good plan, advises Ms. Goldman. The young man she helped place in her husband’s real estate office has already put out feelers, this time through formal intern programs at top investment banks. Although he thought real estate was interesting, he now thinks he would like to be a banker. “Those are cutthroat internships to get,” she says. “Of course, if you happen to be related to one of the firm’s partners. . . .”
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