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

Dear Students:

We are writing to inform you of a new way to receive writing coaching at the
Journalism School. Currently, the only way a student can get writing
coaching outside a class setting is if a professor refers the student to the
Dean of Students office for remedial coaching. We will continue to offer
that service on a limited basis.

But there was there was no mechanism for a student who just wanted a way to
improve his or her work, or just wanted to bounce ideas off someone else, to
get help from our coaches.

That chanes with what we are calling “Writing Coach Wednesdays.” On an
experimental basis, on Wednesday, March 5, and on Wednesday, March 12, a
writing coach will be available from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in a classroom here.
Students can sign up for a 15- or 30-minute block of time during that
period. These are off-the-record, one-on-one sessions with no records kept.
Students can bring a piece of writing (anything goes: a sentence, a para, a
page, or more) and have the coach work on it with them and offer
constructive feedback. The students can use the sessions for any class work
(or for relevant freelance work).

Some things to keep in mind:
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Dear Students,

We are hearing from students and faculty that many classrooms, labs, and the student center are left littered with trash and generally filthy.

Although we have a great cleaning crew that comes in each weekday to clean, it is not possible to have every room cleaned between each class.

So, I’m asking for everyone to pitch in by depositing all cups, plates and wrappers into garbage cans or appropriate recycling bins.

Questions to dos@jrn.columbia.edu.

Thanks!

Work Block Group Available

Location: Counseling and Psychological Services: Lerner Hall 8th Floor

Day and Time: Monday 1-3PM

For 6 sessions: February 25, March 3,10,24, 31 and April 7

To register or for more information contact Dr. William Sommer at 212 854
2878 or email wgs2@columbia.edu

The Earth Institute at Columbia University has assembled its 2007-2008 Student Advisory Council with two students from each academic department who will assist in developing student and academic activities for the campus around the issues of earth systems science and sustainable development.

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SMARTER SURFING LINKS: The links page for journalists on deadline that five of your classmates helped build collaboratively during my Aug. 21 lecture are available at http://snurl.com/smartersurfing - feedback, additions welcome. I will be having additional, informal training sessions in the Fall and Spring - watch for them (or approach me about setting up one for smaller groups).

Meanwhile, here’s a question I just received (the two sites mentioned are on that list above):

Dear Dean Sree,
I was using statemaster.com and nationmaster.com tonight. I was wondering - is there a good website you know of that compares info about U.S. cities within one site?

My answer: Try the following…
City-Data.com: Data on 100s of cities across the U.S. Check out the “Top 100 Lists and the stats on NYC.
Main site: http://www.city-data.com/
Top 100 lists: http://www.city-data.com/toplists.html
NYC: http://www.city-data.com/city/New-York-New-York.html
Forums discussing NYC: http://www.city-data.com/forum/new-york-city/

As you know, each graduating student receives four tix for the CU commencement Wednesday morning and four tix for the J-school Graduation Wednesday afternoon. The students themselves do not need tickets, so they can bring up to four guests for each ceremony. These are two kinds of tickets for the morning and the afternoon.

Each year, we set up a paper-based ticket swap system. This year, we are doing a web-based ticket swap. If you have tickets to offer or need extra tickets, just post below. If you want to get or give tickets, as appropriate, please contact the relevant folks below.

TO SEE ALL THE TICKET REQUESTS & OFFERS: Just scroll down to the comments section (no registration required).

TO POST A REQUEST OR AN OFFER: please follow these instructions carefully:

If you haven’t registered on this site earlier, follow these instructions to post a comment - in this case, your interest in attending. If you have already registered, just go ahead and log in and indicate your interest, using your full name and Columbia e-mail address.
1. To register for this blog (you only have to do this once for all future comments), go to 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 Columbia e-mail address (just fill it in once, typing in just “N/A” in the URL section if you don’t have a site).

Include information about the number of tickets and which set of events and include e-mail, cell and other contact information. And, of course, put your full name into comments field, so people will know who you are. [NOTE: Several of you have posted WITHOUT your full name! We have updated the names we know. Please use your full name!]

Once you have posted your listing as a comment, the DOS office has to approve it, which might take a few minutes or a few hours. We will work to approve these as fast as we can. Please be patient. Once approved, the listing will show up in the comments section.

Questions to dos@jrn.columbia.edu

A lot of people have asked me about going to the opera. I just purchased a ticket for the Saturday, April 14, 8pm performance at the New York City Opera. They will do Madama Butterfly - and the production promises to be scintillating.

If you are interested, you can purchase a ticket here:

https://www.nycopera.com/
I bought an inexpensive ticket ($25).

If people like, we can have a meeting that week to talk about opera and such.

Send an e-mail to cjp2118@columbia.edu