An engineer and manager for several high-tech companies, he
spent many years at Stanford University, teaching in both the
business and engineering schools. He later served as
Stanford's vice president for development before coming to
Claremont as the president of Harvey Mudd College.
Before the professors, the students, or the $50-million, Keck
was a glimmer in Mr. Riggs's eye. Starting from scratch has
certain advantages, he says. "Certainly one of the motivations
was the chance to start with a clean sheet of paper and put
professional master's degrees as the centerpiece and recruit
faculty who knew that that was the goal," he says.
The faculty members place considerable emphasis on teaching,
Mr. Riggs says, and they stress that this degree is not a
steppingstone to a Ph.D. In fact, when an application hints
that the student seems more interested in pursuing a Ph.D. or
a medical degree, Keck administrators will call the student to
make sure the institute's mission is clearly understood.
Mr. Riggs says remodeling the Ph.D. to confront needs it
wasn't designed for seems to make less sense than creating a
new type of degree. "Ph.D. training is highly specialized, and
it's a scholarly activity," he says. "The way industry works
is almost every problem is messy, involves several
disciplines, and is done by teams. So that's how we've
designed our place."
Ms. Tobias, the consultant, who organized the Tucson meeting,
says that now that many of the programs have been started,
attention must turn to finding jobs for the first graduates,
tracking them over the coming years, and convincing industry
leaders that these degrees are valuable. In addition, the
Sloan Foundation has approved grants for three more
institutions, and is considering expanding the program beyond
research universities to master's-oriented institutions.
Ms. Tobias says she hopes the conference inspired people who
are toiling individually to make the science master's
initiative a success. "I think they left as true believers,"
she says.
End of article ...
