Talk by Reinvention Center Director Pat Turner

This was an informal lunchtime talk by the new director, Pat Turner of UC Davis, who's also in charge of undergraduate studies at UC Davis.  She mostly talked about her undergraduate experience, especially the perspective of someone from a family with no background of higher education.  She reminded us that many students choose a university with no understanding of the distinctions that we academics think so important.

One caution she gave us is that, because most people think all universities are basically the same, the bad experience of a student with, for example, a for-profit institution, may cause all the people in their circle to expect similar problems with any university.

Students also come to university with no understanding of how universities work either (she thought that you became a professor after years of proving yourself as a high school teacher).  I had a lot of the same misconceptions.