Work at the Poly

I started work  at the Poly on Wednesday.  During this first week I met with all the Deans of the schools and the heads of the departments to discuss the “foundation courses” (courses for first year students).  To give some background the Poly is an applied sciences college—the schools courses are both theoretical and practical—schools include the School of Business, Biomedical sciences, engineering, Communications and land management.  It is a European system where students typically have a three year diploma and some stay on for an “honors” 4^th year degree.  My time here will be spent thinking through what the school can do improve retention and in particular what can be done to make first year students more successful. 

Some challenges:

·         English—courses are taught in English and English is the national language of Namibia—yet only about 2% of the student population has English as their first language—for most students English is the 3^rd language that they speak.  They do not have teachers in K-12 who have mastered English and along with that, the professors who teach them here are also not often English-dominant either.  So for most they are really working on two degrees—one in their focus area and a pseudo-degree of mastering academic English.

·         Limited post-secondary options: In Namibia there are two universities—University of Namibia, The Polytechnic and that’s it.  There are some vocational schools but the concept of community college is non-existent.  The School of Engineering here has created a very successful “bridge” program where students come for a 1-year bridge year to help prepare them for the rigor of the engineering program—of those students who complete the bridge year—they are typically more successful than the students that gain immediate entrance into the school.

·         Critical thinking and problem solving:  the Namibian education system is not particularly strong and even the best students are not adept at problem solving.  They have been taught in a system where memorization not structured thinking is rewarded.  They often have a rough transition into a university model.

·         Transportation and housing: Similar to UC Denver, only about 400 students live in campus—the rest live throughout the city with a good majority living on the outskirts of town in Katatura (similar to Soweta in South Africa).    Many students walk 10K per day to get back and forth to class because they can not afford taxis (there is no bus system here). 

Some opportunities:

·         Students at the Poly come from all around the country.  There are significant government dollars available to send smart students to university.  The government also has an access policy that forces the university to take larger numbers of students than in the past---admittance is based on a test score.  While attending university is not common—the best and brightest from around the country will have an opportunity to study.

·         Students are very hard workers---there is no sense of entitlement about getting to college.  Not many students get to go, so if you’ve made it this far, then most students here take it all VERY seriously.  As one professor told me, “These students are not as many American students, coming to college to “party.”

·         Students are motivated—when asking professors about what their students’ strengths are, all of them mentioned that these students are very motivated to do well.  Sometimes they lack the ability but they are willing to try hard and put in the hours to learn.

Some interesting tidbits about general university culture here:

·         They have a tea lady in the admin office—her entire purpose is to bring tea, coffee and cookies to our meeting.  Very fancy.  I think we should have a tea lady at UCD--let's see if there is room in the new budget:)

·         Students attend 6 courses per semester—this translates to six 1-hour lecture courses that occur four times per week.  They are literally here from 9:00AM-5PM everyday.  Night classes begin around 5PM and the university only seems to go dark  around 10PM.

·         All the students love to wear NY Yankees and NY Mets t-shirts—they love the logos and have no clue about what either of those teams are in the US.