FOCUS — in seven issues a year — is a publication of the faculty and staff of Carnegie Mellon University. Many of the articles in FOCUS express the opinions of individual members of the Carnegie Mellon community; unless so indicated, they should not be construed as reflecting university policy. In the spirit of the fairness doctrine, FOCUS seeks a variety of opinions.
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Top Stories: April 2008
Lessons From Chocolate
By Susan G. Polansky, Teaching Professor of Hispanic Studies and Head, Department of Modern Languages
 I am part of a long line of chocolate devotees on both sides of my family. For instance, Grandpa Martin, who died in 1999 at the age of 104, was a true chocolate lover, though not a very discriminating one. Two memories stand out. My sister, cousins, and I always marveled that he would pop his selections from boxed assortments into his mouth without identifying their innards. We always had to bite and look to see what we were getting.
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The Power of Faculty Senate
By Vivian Loftness, 2007-2008 Faculty Senate Chair
After 3 years of extolling the importance and power of Faculty senate, Bill Brown nfinally convinced me to take on the challenge of Senate Chair in 2007. Aimlessly assuming this was a charge to represent issues as they arose, Jay Kadane then convinced me to set goals for my years as chair, addressing unsolved issues - both personal and collective - accrued over 25 years at CMU.
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April 2008 Issue Contents:
- Lessons From Chocolate
Susan G. Polansky, Teaching Professor of Hispanic Studies and Head, Department of Modern Languages
- The Power of Faculty Senate
Vivian Loftness, 2007-2008 Faculty Senate Chair
- From the Archives...
Compiled by Erin Goldberger
- In Search of August Wilson
Jean Alexander, Head, Hunt Reference, University Libraries
- Sidebar
- Staff Council
- Doubling Down on the High Life: a look at Fritz Stern's "Five Germanys I have known"
Andrea Deciu Ritivoi, Associate Professor English and Rhetoric
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Promoting Good Teaching
The comments and advice of G.A. Forehand and H.A. Simon are greatly appreciated.
From time to time it seems as if topics of concern to this campus are like seasons, they come round with regularity. So it seemed that it might be useful to scour past issues of FOCUS for contributions that might still have some currency.
The following was originally published in FOCUS September 22, 1971. It begins with an argument for making planning for effective classroom outcomes the focus of teaching. Teachers should be evaluated on the quality of their planning and design of educational events, and ultimately on the effectiveness of those plans, and not on classroom performance, or popularity. The second part of the essay, deals with implementation of Professor Korn’s ideas, with attention focused on how to evaluate designs and plans, and how to reward those who develop them effectively.
English professor Arthur M. Eastman gives his reply to Professor Korn at the end.
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