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GOOD CHEMISTRY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY
GOOD CHEMISTRY
all the students to be exposed to, to learn, to experience for two
reasons. One, we view that as essential to being an educated person.
That’s our expression as an institution, to say that to be an
educated person we think you need to do this. But it’s also the way
we build an intellectual community at Columbia. All students here
have taken Lit Hum, CC, Art Hum, Music Hum — it is part of the
common dialogue, the basis on which they can relate to each other
whatever else they’ve done. It builds a community, an intellectual
community, and it also builds a social community. And it has created
a trans-generational community, uniting former students,
current students and future students. [Trustee Emeritus] George
Van Amson ’74 said that what we want is for our kids to read the
books that we were supposed to read when we were undergraduates.
Of course, he said that in jest, but even though the curriculum
evolves, there are some commonalities that do persist over long
periods. It’s not that it changes so much that it’s a completely different
course than it was 20 years ago or 40 years ago. It is something
that links people. There are certain ideas that we still believe
are important for students to understand and be exposed to. We’ll
add new things, we’ll modify things, but there will be some that
we definitely will continue to consider are important.
It’s also an expression of what Columbia considers an appropriate
undergraduate
The Core Curriculum
represents a commitment
to an idea that at any one
time there is a kind of
collective intellectual
experience and a body of
knowledge, information,
ideas, that we want all the
students to be exposed to,
to learn, to experience.
education. At the opposite
end are some peer institutions
that have little if
any fixed required curriculum.
That’s an expression
of a different philosophy. I
won’t say that one’s inferior,
but we’ve made a decision
that there are certain
things everyone should do.
I have always agreed with
that. Even though I came
here to be a chemistry professor
and the Core wasn’t
why I was recruited, I considered
it valuable. I do
think there are things everyone should be exposed to and that’s
what the Core provides. I don’t care if everyone studies chemistry,
I don’t think that’s important. I do think everyone should
study statistics, and if I ruled the world I would have statistics as
part of the Core Curriculum. But I don’t rule the world, and no
one singlehandedly decides what goes into
the Core.
Meet the Dean
Not on campus but still want a
chance to meet the new dean?
Come join Dean James J. Valentini
in the following cities this fall,
with more to come in the spring.
September 20 New York City
October 4 Washington, D.C.
November 1 San Francisco
November 5 Los Angeles
For further information, log on to
college.columbia.edu/alumni.
This year at reunion we introduced a new
event, an open house in the Richard E.
Witten Center for the Core Curriculum,
where alumni could see what is taught in
the Core today and meet some of the Core
chairs and faculty. The turnout was amazing.
It was one of the weekend’s most
popular events.
It’s not just a fetish, either. It could be easy
for some people from a distance to think
this is some sort of talisman and it’s not really
substantive. But they’re wrong. It is the
thing that former students almost uniformly
mention to me as the most important or
one of the most important parts of their experience.
It’s not that they just mention it, they actually explain
to me why it was this valuable in their lives and how it informed
their adult lives, and they speak very cogently about this. When I
went to see Rob Speyer ’92, one thing he wanted to tell me about
was Jim Mirollo teaching him Lit Hum. There was a segment of
The Divine Comedy that they were reading, and he remembers it
so well and how important that class was to him. He can tell you
why it was important, why it had value in his life. I think it’s really
important that current students talk to former students about
the value of the Core, because it has a value in the lives of former
students. Dede Gardner ’90 was one of the five alumni presented
with a John Jay Award [for distinguished professional achievement]
this year. When I called her shortly before that, she wanted
to talk about Lit Hum and how useful it was to her. She’s a movie
producer, and she wanted to talk about how important Lit Hum
was to her. Former students talk about majors, too. But there are
lots of different kinds of things you can major in; the Core is the
common currency of everyone who went to the College.
When I was director of undergraduate studies in chemistry, I
would ask students who were about to graduate what was the
best part about being at Columbia, what was the worst part, what
was important, what wasn’t and what was the most important
class they took. Now, I had actually taught most of these students
and many of them still needed letters of recommendation, so
you might think they would say, “Oh, Professor Valentini, your
course was the most important.” But hardly anyone ever said my
course, even though I’m a good teacher. More of them, in fact the
overwhelming majority of them, would cite a Core course — and
then they’d explain why that was important to being a scientist.
It has real value, genuine value in students’ intellectual lives and
in their subsequent professional lives. That’s not a small thing.
What role should alumni play in the life of the College?
I prefer to call alumni former students because certain words acquire
connotations that then become locked to them. Alumni is a
term that implies a kind of distinction that’s greater than I think
is really warranted. If you think of people as former students, you
think of them as continuing on in a connection that’s different
and yet the same. My middle son is in the Marine Corps, and I’ve
learned that there are no ex-Marines. They say once a Marine, always
a Marine — that’s it. It’s a culture, a group of people. There
are active duty Marines and inactive duty Marines but there are
no ex-Marines. Once you are, you are. From my perspective,
once you’ve been a Columbia student you’re always a Columbia
student, you’re just in a different category.
You’re an inactive student, although we
don’t use the word “inactive”; I say you’re a
former student.
Former students bring real value to the
University because they have a lot of life experience
from which they can tell you how
their time at Columbia was valuable, so we
can see how what we do for undergraduates
adds value to the lives of those students
when they become former students and also
how it contributes to society. We’re not just
educating people for the sake of educating
people. We hope that that actually produces
something. We hope it produces satisfying
personal lives for former students, the ability
to make a living — that’s not a small thing
— and to make a contribution to the larger
world. Who can tell us most effectively whether
we’ve actually achieved that? The people who
actually have been students and have gone out
and done things. They can help current students
visualize what lies ahead for them in a way that
faculty and the dean can’t communicate to them,
because the dean and faculty are just one small
segment of society with limited experiences.
Former students of the College have been involved
in lots of different things, so they carry
a lot of valuable information about what we’re
doing well and what we’re not doing well.
They’re also this huge army of 46,000 people
— even if only 10 percent of them are really committed
to the College, that’s a lot of people who
can work on behalf of the College and the University,
at no cost to us. They may make financial
contributions, that’s obviously important to us
and to any institution, but they also commit their
time and their energy to helping make the lives
of current students better, to helping make the
institution stronger by working on its behalf in
many different ways. Former students participate
in ARC [the Alumni Representative Committee]
by interviewing prospective students.
That in itself is a very important thing. Former
students know as well or better than anyone
what it’s like to be in the College and what kinds
of students are going to do well in the College
and can help applicants understand whether
they really should be in the College. There’s no
way for the College itself to do that. We couldn’t
afford to hire enough people to do that. And that’s just one thing
— there are a lot of valuable things former students can do for
the College and the University, supporting everything that we
do and contributing their time and effort to getting things done.
They are a phenomenal resource.
Projecting five or 10 years ahead, how would you evaluate your
success or failure as dean?
If former students, current students and faculty say, “The College
is a better place now than it was five years ago or 10 years ago,”
then I’ll consider it a success. I’d certainly consider it a success if
I feel it’s a better place. But what does that really mean? Is there
anyone who ends a term as something and doesn’t think it’s a
better place, rightly or wrongly? Probably not.
There certainly are specific things we’d like to do, but they
take a lot of explaining and don’t have the same kind of emotional
impact. I’ll give you one example: I’d like us, both as a College
and a University, to be financially more secure, by which I mean
less dependent on tuition and revenue that we can bring in every
year, so that we’re less sensitive to the vagaries of economic life. If
we had an endowment big enough to pay for everything that we
want to do, that would be really great. Is that an achievable goal?
No. In the same way that when I say the goal for the Columbia
College Alumni Association is 100 percent alumni engagement
and everyone in development cringes because you can’t get to
that — but we can work toward it. It’s a destination. But that’s
technical, it doesn’t have an emotional component. I’d like there
to be an opportunity for every student to have an internship or
a summer research fellowship. But that too is kind of specific.
There are a lot of things we can do, specific things, some of which
Valentini and CCAA president Kyra Tirana Barry ’87 at the Alumni Reunion Weekend
2012 Dean’s Continental Breakfast on June 2.
PHOTO: EILEEN BARROSO
will work, some of which won’t, some of which may work but
won’t actually lead to people thinking it’s a better place, in which
case they were interesting to do but not actually all that productive.
So how would I judge it being a success? If former students,
current students and faculty consider it a success, then I will, too.
One last question: What is one thing about you that would surprise
our readers?
That’s interesting … let me think about that. Last September,
when we had an all-staff meeting, I said there are three things
that are important in my life: my family, the College and cars,
in that order. I don’t think people expect professors to be interested
in cars. But if you turn around you can see what’s in my
display case — six model cars, all of which were gifts from current
students or former students who know how much I like
cars. There are also two statues of Buddha. I like to think of the
different ways we can express something important, to surprise
people with the unexpected comparison or unanticipated analogy.
The Buddha and cars provide an example. The Buddha is
supposed to have said, “There is no way to happiness, happiness
is the way.” I repeat that to myself each morning. Now there was
for a while a poster in the entrance to the service area at the BMW
dealer in Manhattan that said, “Happiness isn’t just around the
corner, happiness is the corner.” It is the same thing. Any car guy
would agree. And I tell chemistry students that the Second Noble
Truth of Buddhism and the Second Law of Thermodynamics say
essentially the same thing. I hope that surprises you, but you will
have to wait for an explanation — or better yet, try to figure it out
for yourself.
FALL 2012
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FALL 2012
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