Orientation is now over and I have begun debriefing myself from that experience. I have a few ideas in my head of little projects and things that I can do to assess how orientation went. I have the urge to develop a handbook or guide of some sort for any Practicum/Intern students that may work with orientation in the future. I initially wanted to complete a full report based off of the evaluations that were received, but the majority of them were all positive and did not have any really good information to work off of. My site supervisor and I did not have the chance to meet this past week, so I did not have the opportunity to discuss this idea with her.
Because her and I did not meet and I didn't have any specific tasks to complete, I had the opportunity to do some exploring. I spent much of my day on Friday researching, both information specific to MUW and some information regarding smaller public schools in general. One thing that I was told about before conducting this research was the debate over whether MUW should change their name or not. Some people want the name changed in order to make MUW seem more accessible and attractive to the male student. The flip side of this argument is the name represents their tradition, which MUW was founded for the higher education of women. Some alternative names that are being discussed are Renau University, or Welty University (if this were chosen, then people could still refer to it as the W). I think this represents an interesting dilemma that this school is trying to work through and as an outsider I can see both sides of the coin, and which side I favor would depend on what MUW's future goals are. If they are looking to grow in enrollment, and reach a larger population (i.e. the guys out there who completely disregard MUW when beginning their college search), then I would be in favor of the name change. If they are content with maintaining the student population they have, then I would vote to keep MUW. I believe, based on what I heard, that they're needs to be something done though. Make a decision and campaign for that decision. If that means keeping the name, that make it clear why we are keeping the name, and get the staff on board.
One thing I noticed when browsing MUW's website, is that they state "women and men" quite often. If a prospective student viewed their website they would know that, despite the name, this school educates both women and men. I'm curious to know what your opinions are!
PS - I will be posting some pictures from home for my next blog. HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!
Jason - I found this post really interesting on the conversation about the university name change. I remember when this came up a few years ago when there was a big push to take away the "women" from it's title. Now that I am at a smaller school we have already had several discussions about changing university culture. I think it's difficult anywhere but I think smaller schools almost have a harder time with it. If a few key people in the university structure have a problem with it and refuse to embrace the change, that makes a larger impact with a smaller pool. In my opinion I think the W will eventually have to change it's name, but I would be interested to see what staff and administration at the W think about this ongoing debate.
ReplyDeleteCarrie