There is a very thin silver lining to President Jacob's Address.

In my last night's grad class on Persuasion and Propaganda (COMM 6230) we had just finished reading Orwell's 1984, its Newspeak appendix and also Orwell's wonderful "Politics and the English Language" essay. Many of these grad students work for the University and had attended the address. They said Jacob's address was the perfect example of what George Orwell was talking about, and they insisted we watch the streaming video of the address. It was just as they said, even more perhaps, and a wonderful discussion followed .
It worked so well as a discusion example that I just gave my online Persuasion class their final exam/paper: to watch the address on the President's website and analyze in terms of Orwell (they have been assigned the same readings). I think perhaps I should send the President a "thank you" letter. Is this what he means by "extreme student centeredness"--him getting personally involved and setting an example for students?
BAP
Watch out for the New Entity
It might bite

-----Original Message-----
From: Davis, David H.
Sent: Thu 4/3/2008 4:42 PM
To: Anderson, Lawrence S.; Caruso, Michael J.; Creutz, Charles; Davis, David H.; Lipman, Joel A.; Patrick, Brian; Purviance, Susan M.
Subject: Dr. Jacobs' imaginative address
To the Executive Committee:
Even if you attended the presentation, you should look at the written version in detail. To save time, start at page 13 which says the purpose of higher education is economic prosperity. Page 22 says that degrees will be customized rather than majoring in a discipline. We will organize all undergraduate courses into modules and algorithms (page 26). Professional advisors will be moved to the Provost's office. We will purchase some Computer Assisted and DL courses from outside UT (page 30). We will have a New Entity to do much of this (page 32). Degree programs from University College will be transferred to A&S (page 34). These ideas are "sweeping the business world" (page 35).
While I have many questions, one is Where is the connection to the strategic plan?
David