KatysBlog

We are back from our trip to Houston, Texas and Rice University.
Jessica enjoyed her visit to a Shepherd class and she came away impressed
with the music school. Jessica also
enjoyed her dorm stay. Rice is a “wet campus” and the girls who were
kind enough to host her were on a party hall. So, Jessica learned
two beer drinking games. One involved tossing pingpong balls into a cup
of beer and the other seemed to be a speed drinking contest. She said that
the students were chill and did not pressure her to participate beyond her
comfort.

At least a hall-wide drinking party meant that the students were
talking and enjoying each other’s company. It was better than her experience
last summer at U.C. Santa Cruz where the students just stayed in their own dorm
rooms and smoked. We need to wash her sleeping bag because of the fresh and
used beer that was on the dorm carpet. Even though she had fun, Jessica said she
does not want to be on a party hall when she goes to college next year.

We spent Saturday seeing something of Houston.
In the Museum District, the Menil Collection,
Rothko Chapel, and
Byzantine Chapel nearby are very impressive. The Rothko chapel in particular
is a remarkable space. As we sat in the dim light of the quiet 8 sided room, the
deep colors of the large canvases felt increasingly complex. The sizes, positions,
and relationships of the panels became more interesting. Those which were all deep
matt purple revealed their horizontal brush and vertical drip patterns while those
painted in glossy bordered rectangles shone softly under the skylight. The 14 paintings are presented in three sets of triptychs, one of which is set into an apse
or large recess, plus 5 panels. We were there on a cool overcast day . I imagine that
bright light and heat outside would make the chapel feel quite different.

Jessica has an audition next month for Lawrence Univ.
(the school is in Wisconsin but they hold regional auditions in San Francisco).
There are a number of schools to which she is re-sending materials she
submitted earlier which they can’t find. Plus, she has a few more interviews.
After all that is done, we wait until the college acceptance decisions
arrive in the mail on 1 April.

My daughter and I are in Houston, Texas visiting Rice University and
the Shepherd Music School. Jessica is now staying over in one of the
dorms (at Jones College). Of the universities she and I have visited,
Rice feels most like Carnegie Mellon U in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
They are both strong Engineering schools with excellent programs
in the humanities, sciences, professions, and music. We had to come
to Houston because Shepherd only offers on-campus auditions (no
regional auditions).

We walked from our hotel to Jessica’s audition at Shepherd this morning.
Houston is cold and rainy and there are vast puddles and red mud everywhere.
The most common trees seem to be big oaks, many of which are edged in tiny
ferns and moss. The flat campus is bordered with huge parking lots.
Most of the signs relate to parking rather than to the buildings or
life of the university.

The only graffiti I saw was on a section of
the Berlin Wall in the lawn outside of the Baker public policy building
(that is, Official Historical Graffiti). Very few of the buildings have
more than a discrete identification label. Our student tour guide said
that about 3/4 of the students
live on campus but cars still seem a big part of campus life. I saw some
bicyclists but this is clearly not a bike school like the University of California campuses at Davis or Santa Barbara.

The campus has all been built since 1912 and there are clear generations
of architecture among the brick and stone buildings. The school’s founder

William Marsh Rice was murdered in 1900 (yes, the butler did actually do it) but his money ended up creating an impressive and clearly well funded
institution. The center of the school is the bronze statue of founder “Willie”. Interestingly, it was James Baker the lawyer who found out
Willie’s murderous butler. His descendent, James A. Baker, III founded Rice’s
Institute for Public Policy.
This is the same institute which recently issued the controversial

Iraq Study Group Report.

Jessica was happy with her very brief vocal audition but we will not know
until 1 April what their acceptance decision is. The Director of Admissions said it was mostly a “numbers game” and that excellent students were turned away every year. Shepherd only accepts about 30 students a year in
all areas (instrument, voice, music theory, etc.). We were surprised to
find out that Rice has an “all or nothing” admissions policy. If a
student applies to a school in Rice and is not accepted, they are not
accepted to Rice at all even if they have other academic interests. I
am not sure how Rice manages students who enter with an undecided major.

During our brief orientation at Shepherd this morning, we were told that
music students are discouraged from trying to double major. However, the
Rice Senior with whom we went to lunch
said that “Musies” (music school students) often did double major and should
not let Shepherd push them around about their life choices. He also said it
was easy to transfer from school to school, which does not seem to go with
the all or nothing admissions.

After she left with her dorm hostess, Jessica was going to visit a class by
one of the Shepherd teachers she asked for. Shepherd has students apply to work with individual professors rather than to the school as a whole. Since
I did not see a class, I have less of a feel for Rice than I do for other universities.

I was concerned to hear one of our tour guides, a Mechanical Engineer,
say that most Engineers have either a desktop or laptop computer but some
don’t have either. Coming from the Silicon Valley, I know very few High School
students who don’t have their own laptop. In the dorm room we visited,
both students had up-to-date desk computers. It feels odd for a famous
and well funded Engineering school to have students without their own computer.

Another concern was physical safety. There is a prominent framed sign in
the women’s bathroom at Shepherd about sexual harassment and rape,
giving very detailed instructions about what to do if it happens. When
I was walking back to the hotel, a man stopped me and said I should hide
my gold necklace chain because it might be stolen.

I liked the Rice institution of college Masters. These are professors
and their families who live in an on-campus home located near the dorm
which is part of each college. Our tour guide said that the masters
provided all of the good parts of family (an emergency ride, a shoulder
to cry on) without complaints about finishing homework and room cleaning.

I walked over to Rice Village after visiting campus. In addition
to national chain stores, there were a few local shops and a wide variety
of restaurants, including many international choices. The campus
area seems prosperous. This is not a student slum with funky stores but
rather an upscale community outdoor mall: more like Stanford Shopping Center
near Stanford Univ. than Telegraph Avenue near U.C. Berkeley or
Isla Vista near U.C. Santa Barbara.

The two edges of campus I walked along were more designed for cars than
pedestrians. The sidewalks were often broken or tilted and there were
sections roped off where the walkways were ripped out entirely. The
family homes were interesting with varied architecture. Most
provided large private parking areas in front with small border gardens.

I look forward to hearing what Jessica has to say about her dorm visit.
Her hostess said they planned to have dinner tonight at Rice Village.
We plan to visit the Menil Collection and
Rothko Chapel tomorrow (they are
about 2 miles from Rice). My mother’s old friend Walter Hopps was Menil’s
first Director and the collection is the listing for Houston
in one of my favorite travel guides 1000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler’s Life List by Patricia Schultz (2003).

Yesterday, Lucy Sanders of the National
Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) had lunch with Sun’s
“Succeeding @ Sun as a Woman Engineer” (SASWE) networking group. Lucy talked
about NCWIT’s mission to ensure that women are fully represented in the influential world of information technology and computing. I came away from
the lunch with questions about why young women aren’t more fascinated by
computing.

Last night, my 18-year-old daughter was studying for her final High School
exam: Java programming. (Jessica does not have to take another exam until the
end of her first college semester in a year.) She loved her Java class and
wished she had more time to learn programming. Sadly, with just one semester left in
High School, Jessica has run out of class slots and it is too late for her
to join the Advanced Placement in Programming year-long class.

Jessica’s High School required her to take introduction to computing in her
Freshman year. She was miserable and never wanted to take another computing class.
Now as a Senior, she loves her new Apple MacBook Pro laptop and wishes she had
known how much fun programming can be. When she took a break from studying for
the exam, I asked Jessica what made this class different and why she loved
programming. Here is what she said:

• Teachers need to be comfortable with computers. Computers are just
  a tool, like a pencil, not something you have to use or something that
  is special or different.

• It would be good to have both men and women role models. Her High School
  has women math and science teachers but no women in its tech department.

• Practical tasks, not abstract concepts, are fun. This programming
  class taught Jessica how to make an on-line robot walk and beep and
  do things.

• Programming class should have no stigma. There should not have to be
  a big push to get in. It shouldn’t just be the prizefighter girls
  who take programming and join the Robotics Club. It should be normal to
  take programming.

• Some work, like learning how to write a perfect bibliographic
  citation, is better done by computers. Time is better spent programming
  the computer.

• Computing teachers should hold themselves to a high standard and
  expect the students to do well. Teachers should be disappointed when
  their students don’t work hard. (Jessica described great teachers
  as “battleaxe” – a good thing!)

• Geeks get enthusiastic. Teachers who are really into it are cool,
  are better role models. Honest geeks do not pander to
  the subject or condescend to the students.

• Talking with senior women who are succeeding in Computer Science helps.
• Lego robotics are fun. They are good for a beginner: practical,
  effective, with immediate results. Show the future action
  potential or beginning students get discouraged.

• Reading books like She’s Such a Geek (Ed. by Annalee Newitz and
  Charlie Anders, Seal Press 2006, ISBN-10: 1580051901) helps to keep Jessica excited
  about computing. It’s not just that she has an essay included the book – it
  is being part of a group of excited girl geeks.

Some of what Jessica said reminded me of a section called “More
Attention to Good Teaching” in Unlocking the Clubhouse
(p.131, by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, The MIT Press, 2003, ISBN-10: 0262632691).
This section addressed some of the changes made by Fisher and Margolis in
Carnegie Mellon’s undergraduate Computer Science program:

…good teaching is especially important to women because failures
in pedagogy or in curricular integration affects women disproportionately.
Our main effort in this regard was to use the teaching assignment process
to put better, more experienced, and more senior teachers (note that these
are not always correlated!) into the earliest courses of the curriculum,
where women reported having the most distress.

In March, after we find out which colleges have accepted Jessica, I hope
she will choose a school with a great undergraduate Computer Science
staff. It would be sad to see all of her computing enthusiasm trashed by bad
teaching.

My son’s High School Freshman English class at
Paly has been studying poetry
all semester. Paul has been writing poems in 7 forms: haiku, limmerick,
cinquain, free verse, narrative, and sonnet. He told me on Tuesday that
he had 5 done and needed to write 2 more poems by Thursday (the last day
of class). I haven’t written a sonnet in years but we sat down and
worked out the following on the subject dearest to his 14-year-old heart:
Xbox video games.

Gaming Sonnet

X-box video gaming is fun to do,

You can choose to be on the Red Team,

Or you can choose to be on the Blue.

You must always want to sneakily scheme:

Your reflexes must be fast and sure.

People that are good at an X-box game,

Have intentions that are not often pure.

Most people play Halo2 about the same,

But some gamers are very fast,

So they win their matches clever and quick.

Imagination makes a good game last,

Crushing Red soldiers bloody and slick.

X-box gaming is never boring,

So gamers minds are always soaring.

The meter and number of syllables are flawed but it seems like
a good first effort.