ACADEMICS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Steven Rhudy, 1972 graduate, says KU's tough professors prepared him well
Value of KU's training evaluated
It's Commencement at the University of Kansas and the just-graduated Jayhawk is unsure of his future.
"What's it like? he muses. "What if I don't find a job to my liking? what happens if I'm unprepared
Each spring several thousand KU grads face those same questions. Each student will find different answers to the questions, depending upon his knowledge to the University and his retention of that knowledge.
All KU schools and departments have different criteria to measure their students' abilities to move
into the "real world." By the same token, graduated students also can evaluate the training ability of new recruits.
In this special section, particular attention is
to evaluations by students and faculties of
savers.
Contents
MEDICAL CENTER page seven
BREAKING pages
PINE ARTS pages nine
ENGINEERING pages ten
EDUCATION pages eleven
Law school's reputation grows strong, grads sav
Five years ago, William Tanner was a student in the university of Kansas School of Law.
Later this month, Tanner will return to KU to interview job candidates who would like to work for the Los Angeles law firm of Latham and Watkins.
Tanner, in a sense, has made it.
This was the third successive year in which law school graduates scored 98 and 100 per cent on the Kansas and Missouri bar exams.
A HIGH SUCCESS rate on Kansas and Missouri bar examinations is another factor that lends prestige to the law school. In the July 1976 examinations, 98 per cent of the Kansas bar examinations passed. All 22 KU graduates who took the Missouri bar exam passed.
AT ONE TIME, six of the firm's lawyers were KU graduates. Three KU alumni remain on the staff and one is a partner in the firm. Tanner says that KU graduates are able to compete well with coworkers from California, Harvard and Yale universities and the University of Michigan, all of which have prestigious law schools.
As a member of the 100-man firm's recruiting committee, he will visit several other schools, including the University of Texas and the University of Southern California. KU's law school will be a part of the university's faculty of law for five years in fact, a failure of his alims matter, but because Latham and Watkins like the lawyers KU produces.
Graduates interviewed said high quality instruction and faculty members concerned
Other alumni, recruiters and law professors agree that high academic standards, a faculty concentration more on classroom instruction than on individual research and numerous opportunities for the student to contribute to the school's good reputation.
John Murphy, associate dean of the school, said. "Our reputation is very good."
Murphy said more national law firms were hiring KU graduates, a trend that continues.
with teaching were main reasons for the school's success. Each alumnus singled out a particular professor he thought was exceptional.
Steven Rhudy, a 1972 graduate who in 1974 joined the Lawrence firm of Rilling, Burkhead & Rhudy, Chartered, said law professors had to be tough to be good.
“IT ALL COMES back the old adage that the teachers that were the hardest are the ones I appreciate a lot more now,” Rhudy said. “I'm really responsive to those professors who really made you put your nose into the books, made you feel like
By Jim Cobb Staff Writer
a fool if you didn't have all the information in class.
"It's just like that before a judge in a case. If you don't have all the information, you'll lose your case. If you lose cases, you don't keep clients."
Barkley Clark, professor of law, said KU's school dealt with students on a one-to-one basis, unlike at his alma mater, Harvard.
"We'd never get to meet the teachers," Clark said. "The classes were enormous; the teacher was so good."
Clark said KU's faculty was better prepared and concentrated more on teaching than instructors at many other law schools.
ANOTHER RECRUITER, Robert Driscoll, who works for Stinson, Mag, Thomson, McEvers and Fizzell in Kansas City, Mo., characterized KU's law school as one of the most dynamic additions, he said, today's graduates have a better cramen of the practical aspects of law.
"They're not so much kept in an ivory or in a purely academic environment."
George Corgins, professor of law, said KU's law students were now better prepared to take on the job he came here seven years ago. He said that entrance qualifications were stiffer now and
that jobs for graduates had become harder to get, motivating students to work harder.
"When I first started there was much social ferment," Coggins said. "Frequently the substance of the law wished to be in a place where swallowed up leaved in ideological discussions that had more to do with social ferment than the subject of the course."
SOCIAL PROBLEMS remain a concern of the School of Law, but they now are an object of activist programs and not purely academic discussion. Law students may participate in the Douglas County Legal Aid Society, which provides legal assistance for juveniles involved in criminal defense Project, which provides defense counsel for indigent prison inmates; and in special clinics, which focus on such problems as juvenile delinquency.
Besides providing a service to individuals and groups that need help, such programs are valuable experience for the student who is new to the academic world for a job in the legal profession.
ROVERT OVERMAN, who works in labor law for the Wichita firm of Martin, Cooper, Churchill & Friedel, said he had no trouble making the transition from his 1973 graduation to his job after prior exposure to such programs.
"There's no substitute for actually practicing 'law,' he said. "Schools provide a ground, but you need experience, exposure to the law and a chance to work with it."
Serving as a clerk for district or county attorneys is another means of gaining experience. Such opportunities are limited, and many students can't participate.
Blake Hudek, a 1974 graduate who is now a lawyer with Hudson and Mullies in Fort Scott, said he wasn't prepared for general practice by his academic background at
"THERE'S NO WAY law school could have done it," he said. "I had to learn most of it out here."
Hudson said, for example, that he didn't
See LAW page six
"We don't necessarily have to hire new faculty, but we do need more equipment. We're not set up to use new equipment properly. We try to make the most out of outside speakers, visiting companies, movies, government publications and video tapes."
Ernest Angino Professor of geology
Staff photo by DAVE REGIER
Glamour jobs rare for natural science graduates
Even when a graduate finds a job, the battle to succeed may be only half over. The job must be satisfying for the student's educational investment to keep paying off.
Some recent graduates of the University of Kansas natural sciences department were pleased with work and had fewer students are all the graduate happy with working in their profession?
"I hate it," says Richard Van Dyke, a geology graduate who received his M.A. at KU last year. Van Dyke, 25, is working at the University Co. in Casper, Wyoming, in oil exploration.
CHARLES KOCH, now a professor in geography at the University of Nebraska, said, "It's okay, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted. However, it is a close substitute."1
Koch, 33, has worked at NU for five years, and he graduated at B.A. in KU in 1966 and his Ph.D. last year.
The graduates interviewed seemed discontented with the organization and productivity that their occupation offered. They worked for something new in their line of work.
Van Dyke said he wasn't sure how long he would stay at his job, but it would probably be worth it.
"This job won't what I wanted and I'm still not sure what I want," he said.
Kevin Condon, professor of geography at Fort Hays State College, said he also thought about leaving his job soon. Condon received his M.A. at KU in fall 1975.
When he does get a new job, it is likely to be near his home town of Cleveland.
"I GOT MY present job because it just happened to come up," Condon said. "I would like to continue academic teaching at a university where some independent research or writing."
Condon plans to stay at Fort Hays until Christmas, then go to Greeley, Colo., to finish his dissertation to complete his doctorate requirements.
By Bryant Griggs Staff Writer
"I do what I want to do. I don't have a boss. And I investigate the subjects I want to work with."
Koch is also thinking of moving on.
to investigate, but I don't think I'll stay much longer," he said.
'Right now I'm thinking about getting a position at the U.N. or in the state department.'
THE GRADUATES, to their surprise,
found the professional world less interesting
and less competitive than school. The
students from college life to job was easy,
they said.
The educational background they received at KU, they said, was invaluable in their obtaining their current jobs. They had trouble naming many deficiencies in KU's educational system, although some said they weren't prepared for teaching.
The graduates agreed that, although students received good training in conducting laboratories and assisting classes, their ability to teach was below par.
Condon said, "At KU the education process reaches various fields in natural sciences, but they haven't given me any training in teaching classes. I had no experience in preparing lectures and class formats."
KU MCGREGOR, 29, who got an M.A. in geology at KU last year, he wished the wide background of information he got at KU had been more specialized.
Illinois University, where he now works as a professor, demands more specialization and emphasis on teaching ability, he said.
"IN THE PAST, professors had to learn to
"There's so much information through books and the use of television that professors are concentrating more on getting that information to the students," he
"At Illinois, professors evaluate graduates teaching classes through video tapes and how they make up tests. I would have liked to have had some sort of class at that helped students in our field improve their teaching skills," McGeorgie said.
Paul Burton, professor in physiology and cell biology, said that because of an "information explosion" there was less attention on how to teach.
teach on his own or were naturally born with it. Now there's just not that time.
"It would be really nice if the state was really interested in teaching people how to use geology," Ernest Angino, professor of geology, said there were two sides to the story.
"Assistants teach science lab classes in the laboratory or laboratory internships," he said. "Grading papers is the least of their work. With all this, graduates should be able to organize a science class."
kU graduates and professors said KU tried to teach the same material as other universities, but tried to teach it in a more direct, personal way.
McGregor said that KU had a completely different educational approach from other universities.
See GLAMOUR page six