Gonzaga visit
I need to get this written before I forget everything. D and I visited Gonzaga last Friday, which was a special preview day. First off, we learned how to pronounce the name properly. We had been saying gon-zah-ga, but it’s actually like the zag in zig-zag.
Moving along, this was a bit of an odd pick for D. She had originally said “no religious schools,” but Gonzaga sounded like a perfect fit. Right size at about 7000. Nice combo of strong engineering and liberal arts. Reputation for good merit and D is a bit over their 75%. Most importantly to D, a very strong focus on sustainable energy. From their website explaining the electrical energy and power focus within EE: “Are you interested in green, sustainable energy generation? Worried about the relationship between energy, ecology, and the environment? Would like to build a smarter, more-efficient electric power grid?” Yes, yes, and yes.
On the “maybe not” side, Gonzaga is a Jesuit university, about 50% Catholic and D is an atheist. We were both hooked early on in the information session. This is one of two info sessions (the other was Smith) that we thought really gave us a feel for the school rather than slightly different versions of the same cliche’s. A lot of time was spent discussing the importance of critical thinking and ethics. One term the AO used to describe the kind of students Gonzaga wants was “contemplatives in action.” That really resonated with me.
For the tour they separated students from parents, which I hadn’t seen done before. The guide for my group was the assistant dean of admissions and she walked backward in high heels – wow! The tour was really good not surprisingly. She talked about the history of the school and I felt like she gave us a real sense of the atmosphere. The suite-style dorm was one of the nicest I’ve seen. The Cathedral was beautiful and some school events, like convocation, take place there. Sunday evening mass is well attended, but Sunday morning not so much! Our guide also mentioned that they have a Muslim prayer space and an LGBT resource center. I think they strive to be very inclusive. Of course the last stop was the basketball arena because they are a really big basketball school. It was interesting to hear about how students have rows of tents set up the night before to get tickets (which are free).
Next was an admissions/financial aid presentation for the parents (same old same old) and a student panel for the students – very good according to D, although she didn’t give me many details. Parents and students were re-united for an excellent lunch. I appreciate that they let us old folks get in the buffet line before releasing the hounds (er, kids) into the room. D told me later that her tour was really great. Several groups of students who passed the tour group yelled out things like “Come to Gonzaga – be a zag!” She thought that was pretty cool.
Our last session was a fairly small group for the engineering presentation. I can’t remember the faculty position of the professor who gave the presentation, but he was very good. One big positive is that they don’t have a graduate engineering program, so nothing is taught by TA’s and the research assistants are all UG’s. I think the prof mentioned about three times how thrilled he was to see the “young ladies” in the room because they really want to increase the percentage of women in their program (currently 22%) and in the field generally. Agreed! He talked about a survey sent out to alumni going back quite far (maybe 20 years, but I can’t remember for sure). There was the usual about being satisfied with their education, high employment rate in their field, etc. But one interesting question they asked was whether the alum had ever made changes to a project due to ethical considerations and 80% said “yes.” He also emphasized sustainability and the responsibility of engineers to make the world a better place. D and I were loving all this.
The campus was nice, but nothing particularly outstanding. We didn’t get a chance to see Spokane since we had to rush off and drive across the state to Bellingham for our WWU visit.
So, overall very good. I do worry a bit about her fitting in at a religious school. I guess we’ll see what happens.