I'm still Pam -- Cody just took it upon himself to use a more serious tone in that comment :-) at least he didn't use my middle name too....

I look forward to more blog posts and/or G+ circles for this discussion (though admittedly I still refuse to switch over from Facebook)! I would be happy to provide any more input as a current senior in the CLA. You have a great idea on your hands, so best of luck on your presentation and keep us posted!

Oh my, this got off topic a little bit haha. I just responded to Sam's post below so hopefully that clears things up somewhat. But to get back to your comment, Geoff, I think we are still talking past one another a bit. Obviously we all agree that students are reasonable enough to go out and grab these resources on their own, and we all certainly agree that these resources exist. Yet to simply end the conversation there and say "look, these websites exist, you just have to search for them" is to miss out on a real opportunity here.

As far as the default response to say "just go talk to your academic advisors" I invite you to read Katelyn Perry's comment below. I, for one, thoroughly appreciate all that my academic advisors have done, but that's just it -- they are ACADEMIC advisors. When I visit them, we talk about my degree audit and graduation requirements, but career advice is an entire other sphere of counseling. Ms. Perry addresses this tension below, and I've seen it in my own experience. So to suggest that academic advisors should be our muses for both academic AND career advice, I think, would spread them even thinner than they already are (I can't imagine having hundreds of students to advise). That is not to suggest academic advice and career advice are mutually exclusive (I have talked with my own advisor about post-graduation plans), but I think asking them to be experts on BOTH academics and post-college employment is pushing it.

So why not go to career services? Don't they solve all of these problems? Well, yes and no. Obviously it's no secret that Penn State has an amazing career services center -- I went there last week and I'm returning tomorrow. Yet I think the key here is that we could take it a step further. That is, instead of just sending our kids off to career services to receive general advice on job hunts, why not offer a more specialized network under our own roof? Not to replace Career Services (again, they are great) but to supplement it with specific advice for LA majors?

Perhaps it's just me, but I think LA degrees are somewhat more well-rounded than other degrees (which is why I love them so much). Therefore, maybe they require a different type of advice. While engineering degrees narrow down your career path a bit, liberal arts degrees make you so well-rounded that you're almost TOO well-rounded. You develop the analytical and communication skills to do anything, so it's kind of a different process. Of course, I don't need to discuss this value to liberal arts degrees (I saw Sam's post about LA in times of crisis, so kudos for that).

But the point is, while what career services does now is great, wouldn't it be even better if CLA had its own sort of career network unit? Something that could focus specifically on marketing your LIBERAL ARTS degree, and connect you with specific alumni and mentors to guide you? This is especially important when LA majors (in my experience) often get a much slower start on their career path than, say, a business or science major. Maybe you guys had different experiences, but that's a whole other discussion.

In short, while infinite resources exist already -- whether through the websites you showed us, academic advisors or career services -- students in the CLA would benefit significantly from a career network specifically under the college's roof. If there was some kind of organized service that allowed you to think much more strategically about your career at an earlier stage, that would be awesome. I think we would see a lot less students struggling come graduation. I commend Dean Long for his proposal, and I hope these comments provide some sort of advice (again, Sam's post below had several good ideas).

This comment got much longer than I expected, but hopefully now we all understand each other :-)

Ah, I'm sorry for misunderstanding your point, Sam. It appears that we're all agreeing haha I think you hit everything right in this post, especially your 5th paragraph. Nobody here is suggesting that Penn State has an obligation to hold the hands of each student as they walk through college. That's not what college is about, and every student is responsible for taking advantage of all the services here. So perhaps I was unclear when I said that CLA could consolidate all of these resources into one place.

Your suggestions about the content and delivery mechanism seem to address the concerns from my previous comment. I think Geoff's suggestions below about a mentorship and Alumni relations would be beneficial as well. For example, this year I participated in a new PL SC Mentorship Program, and I'm extremely glad I did. If we could expand these services across all departments in the CLA and create like a mini-career-services with a specialized focus in Liberal Arts students, I think other students will start thinking more strategically about their careers at an earlier stage.

P.S: They actually did consolidate all the volunteer opportunities in one location! Right at http://volunteer.psu.edu/ so hopefully that gives us hope for a similar consolidation for the infinite resources available to Liberal Arts students.

As a current senior facing the uncertainty of what lays ahead of me, I am very glad Cody wrote this post, and even more excited about Dean Long's proposal for a "Network." While Sam's point about accountability is well-taken, and perhaps even true, I think it missed the issue altogether. The problem, for me anyway, isn't that opportunities don't exist on campus -- Lord knows there are thousands -- but that I wish there was one place where they were all organized at once. Indeed, some times it feels like there are TOO MANY opportunities. For example, I get 10-15 emails per day from my various major departments, LAUS, Schreyer, etc. While all of these emails are awesome, I feel bombarded at times (and many of them end up in my spam folder). If there were one place in the CLA where all of these opportunities were organized into various career paths, SPECIFICALLY for Liberal Arts majors, I think it would be extremely beneficial to people like me who don't even know where to begin.

Perhaps "The Network" can provide a website that organizes the various types of career paths. For example, maybe I'm interested in a career with the federal government, so I go to the website which has sections for various career paths. Now suppose there is a section for people who want work in the federal government. As a freshman, I would read about the courses/majors/minors that correlate with this career option. Maybe there is even a section about clubs and organizations that apply to this career path. As a sophomore/junior, I go to the website and focus on the internships and faculty who specialize in that particular area. Finally, as a senior, I can visit the website for career and job opportunities, even graduate school options.

Again, the problem isn't even that these opportunities don't exist -- they definitely do, and every student can go out and find them. Rather, for me, I just wish there was one organized place where I could have looked at a potential career path and what sort of options in the CLA (and beyond) could help me mold those interests. Honestly, that would be amazing.

In short, Cody hit it right on the head when he said: "We need to consolidate this information into one place and make it more user friendly/accessible." It's not about "parenting" so much as having that organized resource, specifically for Liberal Arts majors.

And I'm going to be late for class, but I hope this helps!

Time out, I just noticed this comment. We must have posted around the same time. As per usual, I'm compelled to agree with Cody here. He and Anthony clashed on issues throughout the semester, yet throughout their disagreements they both remained civil. They handled their disagreements correctly, in my opinion, and the aggressive rants of vox Dei only accentuated that fact. So kudos to Cody and Anthony!

Also, I had to comment on the new Intense Debate picture, Cody ;-) NERD

Thanks for coming clean, Ross.

On the one hand, I feel like thanking you for bringing me closer to my PHIL 200 classmates. As you acknowledged in your comment, dealing with a hostile "Other" became a great teaching moment for us. We had spent a semester building a community, and your comments acted as a test for that community. As we told Dr. Long later, for a second we thought he was behind the anonymous account and this incident was sort of a secret final exam. In my opinion, my classmates passed with flying colors.

But on the other hand, I still question the maturity of your actions. While you very well may dislike Anthony, your bizarre disruptions on the blog made many students fear for our safety in class the next day. Your threatening tone put Dr. Long in an unfair and awkward situation, and frankly it seemed to irritate everyone in the class BUT Anthony, who handled it quite maturely. Overall, resorting to anonymous insults on an undergrad class blog was probably not the most appropriate way for you to express your disdain. That's just my opinion.

But that's all in the past now! I appreciate you for commenting over a year later. Hopefully I'll see you around on the blogs, maybe even willingly participating in the dialogue...? :-)

This anti-intellectualism still exists in the undergraduate experience today, in my opinion. Especially after Penn State received the #1 party school rating last year, the contrast between "nerds" and "party animals" seems more exaggerated. If one rejects going out to a bar and chooses to do homework instead, she is not praised for her studiousness, but scorned for being an "over-achiever" or "perfectionist." This doesn't happen all the time, but there are definitely people who assume that SHC students have no lives.

Personally it doesn't bother me -- in fact I affectionately refer to SHC as the "nerd college" -- but I think Mike had it right. It's about balance. Nice post Mike!

Months later, I still stand by everything I said in this video. In most classes, "participation" simply means a decent attendance record and occasionally raising your hand to answer a question. It wasn't until this class that I truly understood the importance of participation -- it's a team effort. If nobody participates, the blog is dead and that's no fun! Yet because everybody contributed to this living document, the blog lived and grew. It's like it thrived off our ideas, and without us it would starve and die.

And the icing on the cake was that it brought us closer together as a class. On the blog, it was like we each played our own characters. I could read a post and immediately recognize who wrote it ("Anthony WOULD write a post questioning the existence of communication"). This brought us closer together on Tuesday and Thursday mornings when we had to trek over to Fenske lab and see each other in person. To this day, I remain friends with many of our classmates(except Cody, what a loser), and I owe that all to Professor Long and the unique format of this class. I wish I had more classes like this.

This class was unlike any other experience I've had at Penn State. We managed to create a community TOGETHER, while in most of my other classes, students are disengaged from the course material. The video illustrates how the blog encourages a fluidity of conversation and how we are all, in effect, teachers and learners. I think it also accurately captures the classroom dynamic and our togetherness. This may very well be the future of higher education...

P.S: I enjoyed the interpretation of the vox "menace." That interaction proved the strength if the online community.

That's a great article. The comparisons between modern day America and Ancient Greece were interesting. And I would LOVE to see Socrates as a political commentator on Fox or CNN. I feel like most of the current commentators act like they know everything about everything, but Socrates believes the opposite is true. Town hall meetings would be fascinating too -- especially remembering Socrates' preference for the dialectic as opposed to mere monologues. In my experience, half the people who go to town meetings just like to go up there and hear themselves talk. I don't know about the American Taliban comparison though...

And I completely agree that he would come across as arrogant and condescending. I feel like we've become so cynical today that it's impossible for us to believe any major political figure could be genuinely honest and caring. In fact, the other day I was pondering how MLK would be accepted as a movement leader today. Would the media write him off as an extremist? Especially with all the religious/Christian language and metaphors? Consider his defense of natural law in his letter from Birmingham jail:

"How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law."

In a society where secularism and moral relativism are prevalent, would people automatically tune out MLK and write off his speeches as religious nonsense?

Anyway, I digress.

And as far as Socrates being a talk show host, someone would have to warn him about NBC.