Dana and Tasha had our groups take visual discussion notes in Dr. Evangelou's class last week. The topic was paradigm shifts, and Canek and Ruth and I were supposed to talk about how paradigms related to the discipline of engineering education. Ruth brought up that she wanted to change the world with her research, tackle the big messy problems -- but because she had to sell her work to so many different audiences (publications! funding bodies! industry! prospective students and their parents! her committee!) it sometimes felt like that world was shrinking narrower and narrower...
And so I drew:
The whiteboard image is a little bleah, but our red-shirted hero(ine) is a New Grad Student dreaming of the Cake of Academic Freedom, only to be reminded by the Advisor of funding and publications - then the Advisor gets backed up by Academics, who shout out the Acronyms of Professional Associations and Accreditation, and even Industry People, who are crunched for money and time and worried about legal matters.
After a short moment of dejection, our hero(ine) has a moment of hope when students appear -- alas, they came in to ask about grades rather than learning, leaving our New Grad Student to consider exactly what's involved in getting that diploma, and ponder whether The Cake Is A Lie...