刚刚过去的这个周末，美国纽约哥伦比亚大学举办了一年一度的新生家长周末活动，邀请所有新生家长前来校园参加学校为家长组织的一系列活动。哥大今年的新的本科生有1000多人，前来参加的家长有600多人，来自全美几十个州乃至世界各地。我的女儿王安琪今年也考上了哥伦比亚大学，也算是很不容易，小丫头告诉我今年进哥大竞争异常激烈，申请和录取比例为6%。

     这是我自去年带她参观哥大以来，又一次来到哥大。去年初带安琪来时，是参观学校，听学校向潜在的中学生介绍哥大的优势和特点，考虑是否报考哥大。而这一次来，事隔一年半多，却是作为哥大新生的家长来了。哥大组织的家长活动十分丰富，不仅有新生家长之间的交流，更有学校的深入介绍，参观学校和社区，参观图书馆，让家长体验各种哥大知名教授的授课，和院长、教授和学生辅导老师之间的会面，和学生职业介绍中心的座谈，和学校多元文化中心的交流，当然还有周末晚上曼哈顿海上的纽约夜景游船，还有集体BBQ以及观看哥大和普林斯顿大学的橄榄球赛等。通过一系列的活动，学校增强了哥大和家长之间的联系和理解，也使家长对刚入学一个多月的新生有一个很好的交流和鼓励，这个时候小孩子刚上大学，刚走进社会，刚到一个新的环境，可能会遇到很多问题，这时候学校安排的这个活动可以说是想得很周到。我正好到美国来去哈佛大学参加一个论坛，也正好看看我刚上大学的女儿。安琪看来很适应纽约，她向来喜欢大城市，就像以前带她在巴黎读书一年，十分喜欢巴黎一样。纽约哥大是她梦中的学校，这次她终于如愿以偿。但是我告诉她，这只是一个人生长跑的起点，前面的路还很长，千里之行，始于足下。

    参加完哥大的家长周末，我就在想，这的确是一个很好的学校和家长之间保持交流，提高学校声誉和信誉，争强社会对长青藤学校信心的一种很好的方式。其实，美国的大学要面对很多方面，但主要的有两个方面。一个是培养最好最有竞争力的学生，这些学生能够给学校带来声誉和巨大的赞助。另一个就是社会上的家长，能够把自己的学生送到这些好的大学来读书。所以，美国大学很关心学生和家长，来争取这两个所有大学所要竞争的对象。

    我注意到国内的大学好像没有每年一度的家长日或家长周末。我想起我在国内上大学时，父母来看我，完全要靠我自己来安排，学校没有安排活动。今天，家长把子女送到大学来读书，缴纳越来越高的学费，其实是值得所有大学来关注的，因为他们也是大学服务的对象，他们付的学费也是大学经费的主要来源之一。即使是像美国长青藤这样世界一流的学校，在这方面也不敢怠慢，也不是皇帝女儿不愁嫁，也需要年年注重和家长之间的联系，得到家长对大学教育的反馈，得到家长对大学的评价，把家长请到学校来，让家长体验做学生的方方面面，这样可能更有益于家长配合好学校，共同来把学生在大学四年的教育做得更好。

下面就是哥大在过去这个周末活动的部分内容，供博友们一览。后面还有去年参观哥大写的博客连接。

《美国哥伦比亚大学的通才教育》  http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_46ebb5ba010008t4.html

Columbia Family Weekend 2008 Program

Friday, October 3, 2008

8:30 a.m. Check-in Begins Alfred Lerner Hall This is your first stop when you arrive at Columbia. Check in and pick up your nametag, a program of events, and tickets for Saturday’s Homecoming game and barbecue.

9:00 a.m. Continental Breakfast/Welcome Low Library Rotunda Join us for a casual breakfast reception and hear from Student Affairs staff as they welcome you to campus and explain the weekend’s programming.

9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Hospitality Lounge/Check-in Alfred Lerner Hall In our Hospitality Lounge, you will be able to check in throughout the day, sign up for Family Weekend events, pick up your tickets for the Homecoming game and barbecue, and learn more about activities taking place in New York City. Our Hospitality staff can answer your questions, point you in the right direction, and make excellent recommendations to ensure you have an enjoyable and busy weekend.

10:00 a.m.-10:50a.m. Literature Humanities Deborah Martinsen, Associate Dean of Alumni Education Hamilton Hall Just as Professor Williams’s first Lit Hum class focused on the opening of Homer’s Iliad, an epic that imaginatively portrays the conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans, this session will discuss the opening of Herodotus’s Histories, an “objective” inquiry into the conflict between the Greeks and the Persians. In examining Herodotus’s method, we will gain insight into the working of Lit Hum, which asks students to analyze texts and construct arguments as they consider conceptions of what it means to be human.

10:00 a.m.-10:50 a.m. Data-Driven Music Understanding Daniel Ellis, SEAS, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Interschool Lab, 750 Schapiro Center Music is one of the most complex human activities, yet also one of the most poorly understood. The digital music explosion of recent years presents many areas for novel applications, but it also provides an opportunity for a new approach to describing, and possibly understanding music. By analyzing many thousands of examples of music audio, we can build models of the common regularities and structure that are part of the essence of music. In this talk, I will present recent work from my lab in using computers to analyze large collections of music audio with applications in music management and recommendation, as well as our more speculative project to distill out shared musical structures as a way of revealing the nature of music based on the statistics of actual examples.

11:00 a.m.–11:50 a.m. Contemporary Civilization Michael Stanislawski, History; Chair of Contemporary Civilization Hamilton Hall This lecture provides insight into the work of “CC” by addressing some of the central questions in the course: What is the nature of human beings? On what basis do communities form? Where does authority in a community come from? What constitutes the happy life?

11:00 a.m.–11:50 a.m. Art Humanities Lynn Catterson, Art History and Architecture Hamilton Hall Art Humanities involves a visual and analytical study of a limited number of monuments and artists, and teaches students how to look at, think about, and engage in critical discussion of the visual arts. This session will reenact the first introductory Art Hum class.

11:00 a.m.–11:50 a.m. Developing Future Technology Leaders Through Community-Based Learning Jack McGourty, SEAS, Associate Dean Botwinick Multimedia Learning Laboratory, 1220 S.W. Mudd This presentation will describe how SEAS develops future technology leaders who, with both technological depth and contextual breadth, can adapt to changing technical, social, and business conditions. To accomplish this educational vision, SEAS has moved authentic university-community partnerships to the center of the undergraduate educational experience. Special emphasis will be on how SEAS has made community-based learning and community capacity building an integral part of the School's educational mission.

11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Morningside Heights Tour* Tour Departs from the Hospitality Lounge in Lerner Hall From great dining options to famous and historic landmarks, Morningside Heights offers a rich and diverse landscape for its residents and visitors. This tour explores the history and evolution of the neighborhood and highlights various points of interest from 112th Street to 120th Street.

12:00 p.m.–1:30 p.m. Family Lunch* Low Library Rotunda Join members of the Columbia community and other families in Low Rotunda for a relaxing lunch in the middle of a busy day. 2:00 p.m.-2:50 p.m. Frontiers of Science David Helfand, Astronomy; Chair of Frontiers of Science 428 Pupin Hall Join Professor David Helfand, a founder of the Frontiers of Science course, to find out once and for all "What is a Star?"

2:00 p.m.–2:50 p.m. Using Optics to Make Supercomputers-on-Chip Keren Bergman, SEAS, Professor of Electrical Engineering 833 S.W. Mudd Today’s microprocessors, the engines that run our computing systems of all sizes, have recently undergone a major paradigm shift. In the past, increasing computing performance was generally tied to accelerating the speed of the underlying transistors. However this trend has come to a grinding halt as we have quickly reached the limits of on-chip power dissipation. New microprocessors are now composed of a growing number of computing cores each running at modest frequencies to conserve power. The major challenge for computing has shifted from increasing the performance of a single processor to figuring out how to make a large number of parallel processors work in unison efficiently. In this talk I will describe how recent advances in nanoscale silicon photonics can be exploited to help solve this communications problem and how we envision using optics to create future supercomputers-on-chip.

3:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m. Columbia’s Hollywood Tour* Tour Departs from the Hospitality Lounge in Lerner Hall While Columbia is most known for world-renowned academics and research, the University has earned a reputation as arguably the most cinegenic collegiate campus in the country. It is no wonder that dozens of films and television programs have been shot in the hallowed halls, quads of campus, and the surrounding neighborhood over the years. Join a Columbia undergraduate involved with the arts for a special chance to learn more about Hollywood’s legacy at Columbia and in Morningside Heights. Varied tour stops include the famous Tom’s Diner featured in the television series Seinfeld and the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, where scenes from the hit Hitch were filmed.

3:00 p.m.–3:50 p.m. Atmospheric particles, clouds, and climate V. Faye McNeill, SEAS, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering Interschool Lab, 750 Schapiro Center Nano-and micro-scale particles are ubiquitous in the lower atmosphere, where they affect human health and visibility. They also impact Earth’s radiation balance, and therefore its climate, both directly by absorbing or scattering solar radiation and indirectly via cloud formation. We will discuss the sources and effects of atmospheric particles and their complex roles in atmospheric chemistry and climate.

4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Jazz in the Core: Music Humanities in the 21st Century Chris Washburne, Music Department; Center for Jazz Studies, Director Location TBD In 2003, jazz became a required subject in all Music Humanities classes, acknowledging the masterworks of composers and performers in the jazz tradition and their fundamental influence on contemporary classical composers. In this lecture, we will focus on these questions: What role has jazz played in the formation of the American art music tradition? How do these works reflect issues of race, ethnicity, and nationality in United States? As in many sections of Music Humanities, there will be a live-in-class jazz performance featuring some of our best undergraduate musicians.

6:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. Harbor Lights Cruise* Bask in the glow of the setting sun and be dazzled by millions of glistening lights. This dramatic cruise will take Columbia families on a trip around the southern tip of the island of Manhattan. See the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and more, from the water – all while enjoying time with your student and other Columbia families. *Space is limited. Please sign up for these events at check in or in the Hospitality Lounge in Lerner Hall.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

9:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. Check-in/Hospitality Lounge Alfred Lerner Hall

10:00 a.m.–11:00 a.m. Steps Toward Social Change: The Legacy of Our Shared History Tour* Tour departs from the Hospitality Lounge in Lerner Hall From the historic Low Library steps that have been the literal platform for student activism to memorials, like the Malcolm X Lounge and the Stephen Donaldson Lounge, which honor key figures in social movements, Columbia University’s campus has a rich legacy steeped in sociopolitical awareness, dialogue, and action. This tour provides a glimpse into the University’s history of activism and multicultural/cross-cultural dialogue that reflects students’ leadership in the complex struggle for social justice and equity locally, nationally, and globally. Hear from current students about the shared goals and individual missions of unique locations on campus that signify their collective strides toward social change.

11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Brunch with the Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA): Chapters in Our Shared History Jed D. Satow Room, 5th Floor, Alfred Lerner Hall Meet with other families, students, and administrators to discuss how the University community actively and collectively strengthens the richly diverse fabric of Columbia through innovative cross-cultural initiatives and engaging campus-wide programs for all students. Find out how we can work together to continue meaningful dialogue and educational opportunities through all of our various identities and experiences we bring to the University. Also, learn how to assist your student in connecting to resources and support for communities of color as well as the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community on campus.

11:00 a.m. – 12:00 a.m. Café Science: Brunch and Lecture John Jay Lounge

11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.* Brunch with Faculty and Dean in Residence* The Faculty-in-Residence Program allows faculty members and their families to live in residence halls throughout the academic year. Resident professors invite students to dine with them, organize special programs around issues of interest, and help students establish links with the cultural, political, and professional institutions of New York City. Join Professor Andrew Smyth, Dean Cristen Scully Kromm, and Professor Robert Harrist in their homes for brunch prior to the game. Professor Andrew Smyth, Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, and Dean Cristen Scully Kromm, Office of Residential Programs Hartley Hall, Apartment 9B Professor Robert Harrist, Department of Art History and Archaeology East Campus Residence Hall, Apartment 410

11:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m. Homecoming Barbecue and Football Game Baker Field Stop by the family tent at Baker Field and cheer for the Columbia Lions as they take on the Princeton Tigers. Kick-off is at 1:30 p.m. Pick up your tickets for the barbecue and Homecoming game in advance when you check in. Please note that there are additional costs associated with attending the barbecue and football game. Evening on the Town Use your time this evening to explore the sights and sounds of New York City, the Morningside Heights neighborhood, and campus. Information on campus events and recommended dining and city sights will be available in the Hospitality Lounge. *Space is limited. Please sign up for these events at check-in or in the Hospitality Lounge in Lerner Hall.

A note about students: Programming is specifically designed for families of students; however, new students are welcome to attend the Friday breakfast and Saturday brunches as our guests. Admission to the football game is free for students with their Columbia ID. Students may attend the barbecue for an additional cost.

A note about siblings: There is no formal programming for young siblings. Please plan ahead. Check in with our Hospitality Lounge for city tours and information for younger children