Building the Admissions Committee

Though there’s a lot of overlap in the work done by each member of the Admissions team, we also have the projects that belong primarily to one or the other of us.  For me, in addition to writing/editing the blog, that would include coordinating the Admissions Committee for the MALD and MA programs.  The responsibilities start with hiring the students who sit on the committee (along with Dan this year) and continue through gathering feedback at the end of the process.  Along the way, everyone plays a role.  For example, Theresa ensures we’re fed and caffeinated (important!), Lucas “drives” the computer from which we see the application under discussion on the screen (and provides the behind-the-scenes details we need), and today, Liz is making it possible for one committee member to phone in.  My most important role this morning was to pick up the cookies that will go with the coffee.

Bringing together a group of students, staff, and faculty is both easy and difficult.  We all do our jobs, naturally.  But what we want is for students to feel comfortable expressing their views to professors who may be teaching them on other days, and for the professors to value the students’ unique perspective on the community.  A little conversation over coffee and lunch goes a long way toward bringing us together as more than a group of individuals.  And now I’m off, cookies at the ready, for our first committee meeting of 2016-17.