The Daily Plan-it / Dean of Students Blog, Columbia J-school

Please go to http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/events/delacorte/index.asp for complete information and the 2006 schedule. Magazine concentration students are required to attend; all others are invited.

NOTE THE NEW DATE: Sunday, Feb. 12.

Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust presents

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Sunday, Feb. 12, 2:30 P.M.
Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the
Laws That Changed America (HOUGHTON MIFFLIN, 2005)
With author Nick Kotz; moderated by Sam Freedman, Columbia University
School of Journalism
Celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Opposites in almost every
way, suspicious of each other at first, President Johnson and Dr. King were
thrust together in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Both
men sensed an opportunity and began a delicate dance of accommodation that
moved them and the entire nation toward the historic Civil Rights Act of
1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nick Kotz draws on a wealth of newly
available sources - from President Johnson’s telephone conversations to FBI
wiretap logs - to provide the first definitive account of the relationship
between these two great leaders.
FREE with suggested donation
—
RESERVE TICKETS
On-line: Visit www.mjhnyc.org
Phone: Call 1.646.437.4202/4203
In Person: Visit the Museum Box Office at 36 Battery Place, Battery Park
City, New York.

Advance ticket purchases are recommended. All sales are final. Internet
orders are subject to service charges.
Programs, performers, dates, and times are subject to change.

GENERAL INFORMATION
1.646.437.4200

MAP
http://www.mjhnyc.org/visit_information_d.htm

DIRECTIONS
Subway:
4/5 to Bowling Green, walk west along Battery Place.
W/R to Whitehall Street, walk west along Battery Place.
1 to South Ferry, walk north along Battery Park/State Street, turn left
and walk west on Battery Place.
J/M/Z to Broad Street, walk one block west to Broadway, and then south to
the corner of Battery Place and Bowling Green. Walk west on Battery Place.

Bus:
M1 to Battery Park.
M6 to Battery Park.
M9 to Battery Park City, stops in front of Museum.
M15 to Battery Park City.
M20 to Battery Park City, stops in front of Museum.

Ferry:
Staten Island Ferry

Driving:
FDR Drive to Battery Park City East exit
or West Side Highway becomes West Street,
turn right onto Battery Place, or call 1.646.437.4200.

Parking
The Museum offers a $3 discount on parking at three nearby garages. Please
refer to map for directions to these garages. Visitors should present their
parking ticket at the admissions desk to receive disount validation.

From Ann Elizabeth Törnkvist, aet2110

Dear fellow J-schoolers.

At the beginning-of-term all class lecture, I mentioned a volleyball team and a soccer team for the university’s intramural team. Francesco Radicati, fr2148, will be looking into the soccer
intramural.

I, on the other hand, would like to organise a volleyball team. We have to be signed up by the end of January, so if you are at all interested, please email me now so I can add your names to the
list, because they won’t let non-listed players play in the games after a certain point. So even if you aren’t a hundred per cent sure you want to play, send me an email in any case.

In terms of practice, I’m also the new captain of the Columbia Club team, but as there is a varsity team we usually are only 7-10 people at practice, so women at J-school, consider yourself invited
to our practice sessions, Mondays 10.30 pm to midnight, and Thursdays same hours.

Any question, my telephone number is 917-346-8854.

Cheers
Ann Elizabeth Törnkvist
Columbia Graduate School of Journalism

Q: I lost my CUID and press pass. What do I do?
A: Go to http://www.columbia.edu/cu/id/rStudent.html for instructions.

The Dean of Students and Career Services offices are going to be hosting a special all-class session on Wed, Jan. 18, 2006. Mandatory for FULL-TIME M.S., but all are welcome. 9:30 a.m.-noon in the Lecture Hall - coffee and cookies will be served.

Focus: Academic prep for the Spring + job hunt planning.
Mandatory for all FULL-TIME M.S. students, but all are welcome.

For M.S. students, the only classes this week are the Workshops on Thursday, Friday; Seminars and Electives begin next week.

From Dean Lemann.

Dear M.S. Students,

I’m writing to remind you that tomorrow evening, at 6 p.m. in the Lecture Hall on the third floor, there is an information session on the Master of Arts in Jouunalism program. I hope you’ll come.

The M.A. program, as most of you probably know by now, is an optional second year that focuses on imparting deep subject-matter expertise to journalists. It is generally considered to be the most ambitious attempt to expand the boundaries of journalism education now going on in the United States. It is in its first year of operation. At tomorrow night’s meeting, various deans, including me, will be there to describe the program in detail, and faculty members and students from all of the program’s four majors—Arts and Culture, Business and Economics, Politics, and Science—will be there too, so it will be easy to get answers to any questions you may have.

The one question we can’t answer yet for sure is the one that I would guess is uppermost in your minds: What kinds of jobs does the M.A. program lead to? That won’t be answerable until the second year of the program has already begun. But, mindful of the uncertainty, we are offering the program once again on extraordinarily generous financial terms: full-need tuition assistance. So in return for being a brave early adopter, you’d get a deal that is not going to last into the years when the program is a proven success.

The application deadline for the program is three weeks away. Please try to take the time to find out more about it tomorrow evening. Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you then.

Best,
Nick Lemann

NOTE: 20 seats (previously only 10) have been set aside for Columbia J-school students. If you’d like to attend, please follow these instructions.
1. Register for this blog at http://deanstudents.blogsome.com/wp-register.php (once you are registered - includes a password being sent to you via e-mail), go to step 2.
2. Click on the “Comments” at the bottom of this post and fill in your FULL NAME - first and last - and e-mail address (just fill it in once, typing in just “http://” in the URL section if you don’t have a site. Your name WILL NOT show up there immediately, but will be there when we approve the comment. The first 20 names will be sent directly to the event organizers. Rest will be placed on a waiting list. Check the list a few days before the event.

Once you have registered for this blog, you can use the same login for future events. Meanwhile, please remember to sign up only if you are able to attend - we had problems last semester and so had to write a memo about it. We don’t like writing memos.

The Century Foundation cordially invites you to attend a panel discussion by leading journalists about media coverage of the Vietnam and Iraq Wars.

What: Bringing the War Home: American Media Coverage of Vietnam and Iraq
Forum Moderated by ABC’s Lynn Sheer with lunch to follow

Where: Harvard Hall, The Harvard Club
27 W. 44th Street, New York
When: January 19, 2006 from 11:30am to 1:30pm, with lunch to follow from 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Panelists Include: Morley Safer, CBS
Sydney Schanberg, Village Voice, author of The Death and Life of Dith Pran
Jane Arraf, CNN
Mark Whittaker, Newsweek
Deborah Amos, NPR
Peter Osnos, Public Affairs Books, formerly of The Washington Post

About the Forum: Forty years after the United States became a direct combatant in Vietnam, it is again embroiled in a distant war that deeply divides the American public and alienates much of the world. Both then and now, the American reporters and editors have found themselves at the center of a bitter debate about the responsibility of news media to the public at a time when security sensitivities are high, and how this tension should affect reporting of both decision-making in the capital and activities in the field.

The Century Foundation invites you to a discussion with leading journalists who covered the Vietnam and Iraq Wars that will explore the factors affecting media coverage in these times of crisis. In addition to addressing similarities in covering these two conflicts, panelists will discuss changes in coverage in a post-9/11world and implications of the changing news mediums, such as the rise of the 24-hour-news cycle, Internet-based news, and blogs. They will also consider what these factors may suggest about media coverage, policy transparency, and pressures from Washington, media ownership, and the public in the years ahead.

From Dean Klatell.

To all M.S. Students:

As you know, next Tuesday evening (1/17) we’ll be holding an information session on the M.A. program in the lecture hall. I urge you to attend, because much information as well as current participants (faculty and students, not just administrators) will be available. Dean Lemann will orchestrate the discussions.

Frankly, this is the best time to consider applying for the program: the job market is tight, so the extra expertise gained in the M.A. will give you extra oomph in the eyes of employers; tight times in industry inevitably produce a surge of people heading back to various kinds of graduate schools, preparing themselves to be more-attractive candidates for the smaller number of jobs, when employers can be much pickier in their recruitment efforts. And the M.A. doesn’t duplicate what you’re gaining from the M.S. - - it provides not only greater specialization, depth and mastery of in-demand subject matter, but employs a very different model of teaching and learning, habits of the mind which have their own, intrinsic value over the course of your career. The faulty is terrific, the classes very small (half the size of the average M.S. class) and the students committed, eager and engaged.

You may also want to remember that the university’s substantial financial support for this program offers M.A. students this wonderful education at an amazingly low price – a situation that cannot be counted on to last forever. So, if you’re interested, come to the briefing and Q&A Tuesday evening, and be prepared to fill out an application quite quickly; as you are aware, we’ve extended the deadline by a couple of weeks, but it rapidly approaches.

Regards,
DK

From Dean Klatell.

To all full-time M.S. students:

Please remember that the first draft of your masters project is due to your adviser – not the deans’ office – next Tuesday. Be certain you and the adviser agree on the method of delivery (hard copy, email, snail-mail, university mailbox, office delivery, etc.). A word to the wise – have a conversation with your adviser asap to be sure you are handing in whatever he/she expects, as advisers vary considerably in this regard.

Most of all don’t panic. There will be many subsequent edits, changes in structure, adding and dropping of characters, perhaps even a switch to another story, so this first draft is only that: a draft, proving to your adviser that you’ve got a good story, you’re reporting it in depth, and you can demonstrate the narrative structure. A couple of months from now, you’ll need a finished, polished piece, but not by Tuesday.

Best,
DK

From Dean Klatell.

Please consult your biographical listing on the web site’s “faculty”
page. If you want an email address associated with your name on this
page, send a message to web-request@jrn.columbia.edu, providing your
Columbia e-mail address, which will be the only one listed and the
only one to which the school will send messages from now on.

The school provides easy-to-follow instructions on how to “bounce”
your messages to a secondary account (i.e., hotmail, yahoo,
roadrunner, gmail or another business address) at
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/email/delivery.

Regards,
DK

Part-Time January 2007 Orientation
Friday, January 12, 2007

8:30 am:

• Pick up IDs and Orientation Folders, World Room (3rd floor)
• Coffee and pastries, World Room

9:00 am: Welcome, World Room

• David Klatell, Vice Dean
• Robert Mac Donald, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid
• Sreenath Sreenivasan, Dean of Students & Director of the Part-time Program
• Melanie Huff, Assistant Dean of Students
• Ernest Sotomayor, Director of Career Services

11:00 am: Break

11:30 am: Rebecca Castillo, J’06 SPJ Class President: Student panel: “Being a Part-Time Student”

12:30 pm: Box lunch, World Room

1:30 pm:Visit to Kent Hall for those still needing CUIDs

1:45 pm-3:45 pm: First session with Professor Gil Griffin, Room 601B

4-5 pm: Reception hosted by Dean Nicholas Lemann, Lobby

Tuesday, January 16, 5:45 pm: Mandatory Computer Activation, Room 607C (Pizza and soda served)

From Dean Sreenivasan

Dear Students:

From now on, we would like all of you to use dos@jrn.columbia.edu when
communicating with the Dean of Students office. That way, both Dean Huff and
I will get copies of the message and whoever needs to handle it will do so.
Of course, if you are writing about something unofficial or want to
communicate with just one of us, please use ss221 or mgh2.

Meanwhile, I am going to be on the road Wednesday night through Tuesday,
Jan. 10. Please keep using the DOS e-mail address and stop by to see Dean
Huff if you’d like to come up for a visit.

1/3/2006 UPDATE: The Add/Drop Request Form is live at the following address:
http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/courses/adddrop.asp
PLEASE IGNORE the sentence up top that says the deadline has passed. The
form went live at 9 a.m. today and expires Jan. 27.

- Dean Sreenivasan

From Dean Huff, dos[at]jrn.columbia.edu

ADD/DROP & OUTSIDE CLASSES: If you wish to request changes to your schedule, including taking outside courses, (we cannot guarantee that we will be able to fill any request), you may do so during the Add/Drop request period, which begins Tuesday, January 3, at 9 a.m. It ends on Friday, January 27, at 9 a.m. For outside classes please refer to the outside course instructions.

During the add/drop period you will also be able to submit an add/drop form for admission to an additional class we have added to the list of Spring electives, Feature Writing with Alexandra Peers.

Those submitting an add/drop request for Advanced Photojournalism must either have taken photo skills or have had Profs. Barrett or Laforet e-mail Dean Huff with approval for enrollment.

Please carefully read the information below before submitting an add/drop form:

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT ADD/DROP REQUESTS: Tuesday, January 3, 9 a.m. to January 27, 9 a.m.

On each add/drop request form you may request to add one class AND drop one class! If you are a part-time student and simply want to add or drop something, please just complete that portion of the form. PLEASE NOTE: Add/Drop forms ARE processed on a first-come, first-served basis.

If your form is submitted correctly you will receive a request confirmation e-mail within 24 hours.

You will NOT receive an e-mail from me saying that your request was granted or not granted. If you submit a request you must keep checking your class schedule on the web using STUDENT SERVICES ONLINE.

All requests remain on file during the add/drop period. You do not need to submit multiple forms for the same add/drop request. If I am able to grant requests I do it as soon as possible but sometimes it takes days for a space to open in a class. Sometimes the space never opens up. In most cases, if you want to add a class I have to wait to see whether someone else wants to drop it.

Please remember that you are submitting an add/drop REQUEST. There is no guarantee that I will be able to approve your request. Until you see a change reflected on your class schedule on STUDENT SERVICES ONLINE, your request has not been approved.

I will NOT drop you from a required course unless I can get you into the course you have requested.

If you have more than one preference for a given course, you may indicate so in the notes section of the add/drop form. Simply complete the add portion of the form with your first preference and in the notes section give me the same info about your second, third, etc., choices. You must include the call and course numbers if you indicate other preferences in the notes section.

And finally, remember that if you are requesting to add a course, you are also probably planning to drop a course. DON’T forget to request to drop the course and please do it on the same form you use to request a class. The only way I will be able to approve most requests is by knowing which courses will be dropped by students.

SAMPLE FORM BELOW (information is fictional)

Please fill out all the fields in sections 1-3. Section 4 is optional.

I. Please enter your personal details below:

Your Name: SUSIE J-SCHOOLER
Your Email Address: sjs20091@columbia.edu
PID Number: C000213126
Choose your Program Type: Full-Time Master’s Degree

II. Please enter the details of the course you would like to drop:
(information for completing this section is at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/ - see instructions at the top of the add/drop form)

Class Number: J6001
Section Number: 14
Title of Course: Reporting and Writing I
Call Number: 81350

III. Please enter the details of the course you would like to add:
(information for completing this section is at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/ - see instructions at the top of the add/drop form)

Class Number: J6001
Section Number: 15
Title of Course: Reporting and Writing I
Call Number: 72241

UPDATE…

Jan. 2, 2006 - REMINDER: Today’s the deadline for students to submit evaluations of the
Fall classess/professors. You know how useful you found the evaluations from
previous years, so please take the time to fill to do an online form, if you
haven’t done so already: http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/evaluation/

We are tracking the student response and students who do NOT fill in
evaluations for the Fall will not be allowed to begin Spring classes.
If you are getting this after the Jan. 2 deadline, you are still required to
fill in the form.

[Dec. 13 Memo]
This week we are beginning the process of having students evaluate their fall courses/professors.

Full-time M.S. students who did not complete the online form (http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/evaluation/) in a computer lab with their RWI classmates, should complete the form on their own by January 2.

Part-time and M.A. students are asked to complete the forms on their own. These students have until January 2 to complete the forms.

*****************************************************

Using the online evaluation form (http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/evaluation/)

You will be asked to log into the system using your UNI and password.

Once you have logged in, you will see a screen with your name and a list of the classes you have taken.

You must click on each page and complete a form for each class that you took.

Once an evaluation has been submitted, you will not be able to make changes or submit another evaluation of that course.

You will have the option of signing or not signing your evaluation. Only those evaluations that are signed will be made available to future students.

Professors are not able to view their evaluations until they have submitted both their final grades and evaluations of you.