Recent posts for Featured
Law Students in Need of Epistemic Experience
Law schools are failing students by not teaching them how to practice law according to an article in the New York Times . Practical application is left for students to learn after graduation.
The article frames the issue simply,
“What they did not get, for all that time and money, was much practical training. Law schools have long emphasized the theoretical over the useful…”
If students never learn the basics of practice, does graduating mean they have become lawyers? Jeffery W. Carr, the general counsel of FMC Technologies, says no.
“They are lawyers in the sense that they have law degrees, but they aren’t ready to be a provider of services.” Carr told the New York Times.
Students are suffering because they are not taught to think like lawyers, to use their skills, knowledge and culture to see the world like a lawyer. When they graduate with a diploma they know a lot of theory, but they don’t have the epistemic frame of a lawyer.
David Segal, New York Times reporter, places the blame on Universities, as law school professors are chosen for scholarly thinking rather than experience. In fact, experience may even hurt one’s prospects of becoming a professor.
“It can be fatal, because the academy wants people who are not sullied by the practice of law,” explained one lawyer turned professor.
Lack of faculty experience presents a mentoring problem. How are teachers, who have very little experience themselves, in a position to show students how to think like lawyers?
Some schools are looking to make changes. What they need is an epistemic model, to teach an epistemic frame, and turn students into lawyers.
It’s Confidence, Not Competence
According to an MIT report on women in science and engineering, it turns out women leave the field of engineering because of a lack of confidence, not because they want to start a family or have lower technical abilities. Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Physics and Poetry
Professions that depend on STEM skills are the second-fastest professional group in the United States according to New York Times blogger Motoko Rich, who references a Georgetown University study. Occupational fields like manufacturing, utilities, transportation and mining, and even sales and management are demanding that workers have a STEM background. In an increasingly technical global marketplace, it’s become a necessity to be able to communicate with engineers and computer scientists in collaborative projects or to sell a product.
So even if young people don’t plan on majoring only in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, it’s beneficial for them to have some understanding of the STEM world and ways of thinking. Students can complete a double major in STEM and another field, participate in STEM extra-curricular activities and competitions, or play epistemic games like Nephrotex and Land Science that simulate professional workplaces.
Rich sums it up best, “physics and poetry, anyone?”
Dr. Naomi Chesler invited to attend Frontiers of Engineering Education (FOEE) Symposium
Dr. Naomi Chesler, the Co-PI on the Nephrotex Project and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been invited to attend the Frontiers of Engineering Education (FOEE) Symposium. The symposium, which will take place November 13-16 in Irvine, CA, brings together sixty-five of the nation’s most engaged and innovative engineering educators and will create a “unique venue for engineering faculty members to share and explore interesting and effective innovations in teaching and learning,” said NAE President Charles M. Vest.
The 2011 Frontiers of Engineering Education symposium is sponsored by the O’Donnell Foundation.
David Shaffer speaking at ASU February 2, 2012
David Shaffer will be the guest speaker at Advances in Learning Lecture series at Arizona State University on Feb 2. See the flier for more details.
