The Dean’s Blog

I have appointed a committee of faculty, students and alumni to develop a new science course for the Core. The formation of this committee follows a recommendation of the Educational Planning and Policy Committee, which at my request, on behalf of the Columbia College Committee on Instruction, conducted a review of Frontiers of Science last year. I expect that the committee will work over the course of the 2013-2014 year to determine the best structure for a new science course, considering both its form and its intellectual aim. The real work of this committee is philosophical, examining the Core as a whole while specifically examining science in the Core. The goal is to create a science course that in the future will be cited by alumni as “the most important course I ever took,” as former students often refer to Lit Hum and CC.

Tomorrow is CCE’s annual Fall Career Fair. More than 130 employers — ranging from Viacom to Amazon, to Teach for America to Oliver Wyman, and from the Council on Foreign Relations to Unilever — will gather in Lerner Hall. I encourage you all to go, whether you are looking for an internship or a full-time opportunity; whether you know what you want to be “when you grow up” or you’re starting to think about your career. The Fall Career Fair is a unique way to meet employers looking to hire students and alumni from Columbia — and to meet some former students who have come back to recruit on campus. But it’s not the only way to find a job (more on this below) and, depending on your career interests, job searches vary by industry.

Each year, I welcome you back to campus with a similar message: To our new students, I say: “Welcome to the greatest college in the greatest university in the greatest city in the world.” To our returning students, I say, more simply, “Welcome back.” What makes us the greatest is our people — you, our engaged, curious and diverse student community, along with our outstanding faculty and our exceptional alumni — and our imaginative and wide-ranging curriculum, anchored in our unrivaled Core. We admitted each of you on the basis that we believed you were the applicants best able to profit from and contribute to the Columbia experience. And time has proven the wisdom of our admission decisions.

Last week at Class Day, I gave seniors a “quiz,” their final quiz as Columbia College “current” students. I tasked them with figuring out why I was offering Juan-Manuel Fangio as source of inspiration “when the brains in your head seem not powerful enough, and the shoes on your feet are slipping, and you are facing what seem like impossible odds.” Fangio was a race car driver and the story of his win on August 4, 1957 is related to advice I gave to the Columbia College Class of 2013: work hard, try hard, play hard.