This post is a little late:  the 2010 summer program was concluded last Saturday, 8/21.  Which,  in blog time, is like 10,000 years ago.  But I’m going to blog about it anyway, belatedly.

I feel lucky to have worked with the people who made this year’s summer program a success.  We had amazing teachers who were willing to experiment with a new classroom structure, students who, though hesitant at first, really embraced the model of groupwork based learning, and an exciting level of involvement from older Compass students.

For me, there were many highlights of the summer program: climbing above of the Berkeley fog to watch the Perseids meteor shower with students who had never seen the milky way, the water balloon fight at 7 in the morning, the trip to the Altamont Pass wind farm and stargazing on Mt Diablo, the Sunday night swing dance and mixer with the PREP students, seeing the students’ final presentations, and most of all, just getting to know 17  smart, lively, great people.

The program was concluded with a commencement ceremony, where we watched a picture slideshow of the 2 weeks, individually acknowledged each participant, teacher and organizer, and shared pizza and cake.  This is the first year we did some sort of semi-official commencement ceremony, and I think it was a nice way to conclude the summer program.

But just because the summer program is over, does not mean that the 17 students who did it are done with Compass- oh no, as we like to say, once a Compass student, always a Compass student.  There’s much more in store for them.  For the Fall, they’re taking Physics 98, a class designed for Compass students to learn about problem solving; they are matched up with mentors to provide them with advice and support throughout the academic year; there are Compass  lectures to help them learn about cutting edge research at Berkeley; office hours for tutoring;  and of course, opportunities to get involved with organizing Compass activities for the academic year and next year’s summer program….which is only 11.5 months away.

Ordinary class setting
Time in class: 1 hour
Lecture time: 55 min
Hands-on time: Once in a blue moon
Learning: Regurgitate everything you memorized

Coming from a school with 2500 students and 530 students in my graduating class alone, it was close to impossible for teachers to give anything but lectures. The teachers believed that lectures was the most effective way to teach curriculum for the oh-so-dreaded AP exams. Rarely did we have entertaining projects and opportunities to grow on our own.

Since this refers to an AA meeting for lectureholics, I must confess that I liked the lectures. I have always had a good memory, so all I needed to do was write down as much information as possible and come the test remember it. Naturally when I arrived at Compass, I did not know what to expect. However I reasoned that since we’re working with graduate students we were gonna get some interesting lectures. WRONG!!!

Compass is anything but the ordinary classroom. We are truly challenged and encouraged to grow in our logical, mathematical, and conceptual reasoning. This gives us a “feel” of being a real researcher. We have questions and observations with no real idea of what it all means. All in all, it is a giant step away from the lectures. This is something really new to me, but I really like it.

I guess I’ve finally lost my “addiction” to lectures. At first, I was really needing a lecture. After being on “autopilot” for all summer, I couldn’t possibly remember everything. But by the end of the first week I reached an epiphany, thanks of course to the peer collaboration. Now I realize that I don’t need a lecture. I learn by questioning, debating, wondering, collaborating, and solving technical problems.

Thanks to Compass, I’ve been lecture free for 5 days. And I like this change.

Just a quick update on yesterday’s trip to the SSL.

Not even the gloomy August weather could deter the Compass trip to the Space Sciences Laboratory this year! Having gone to the SSL when I was in the summer program, and loving it, I was super excited to lead this year’s students up there.

The bus ride up the Hill line was fairly uneventful, but provided some spectacular views (despite the weather) of the East Bay. Stuart Bale, lab director and professor extrodinaire greeted us at the lab and began with a short discussion about what the SSL is all about. I think it would be great if students interested in the stuff they do took his advice and look for the undergraduate posts up there in April.

The group then proceeded to go look at a couple labs around the facility. I, and it seems many of the students were very amused with seeing a large piece of space-borne equipment (I don’t remember what, exactly) being displayed in a coffin stripped of its outer casing.  We also were able to see the control center and some aquisition of data as a satellite flew over Wisconsin or some other non-California (and thus inconsequential) state.  Unfortunately we were not able to see one of the labs Professor Bale intended us to see.

Finally we got to go see the awesome view from the patio area of the lab, and managed to witness the fury of Berkeley August unleashing dark clouds like molted sheep suspiciously creeping about  the hills. And a great panoramic view.

Hope everyone had fun.

Hey all!

I’m Joyjit (or Joy, as I like people to call me), and I’m a Compass 2010 student from India (yep, that’s right! THE India!). I’ve only had one more experience with a summer program (we don’t do many of those in India), and that was EPGY at Stanford last year. I pretty much expected Compass to be the same, but after the last three days’ classes, I can surely term the two programs as poles apart!

Coming from the Indian education system, I’ve pretty much been deprived of the concept of ‘discussions in class’. I’m used to lectures, and homework assignments, and more lectures, and still more homework assignments, and so on… So what I’m used to is basically being fed the facts, and then working with them to solve problem sets.

The Compass format, understably, is radically new for me. It completely does away with the conventional image of a professor standing behind a desk and teaching a class (comprising of about 10% students sleeping). Basically, we have no lectures. The spectacular thing is that the Compass classes are all about discussions and self-learning processes. We even think about HOW to think (cool, right?)! Whatever progress we’ve made till now in the Compass classes (which is quite significant I think, but I don’t know if the teachers would agree :S) has more or less been been based on deductions made by students! Of course, the discussions always follow an initial prompt, but the whole process of learning induces excellent understanding. We think, we discuss, we debate, and we try our best to come to a consensus. But we keep coming up with just more questions! And that’s what makes it so much more amazing! The system takes time to be absorbed, but its worth the wait…

 The teachers and RAs are great too! What shows this is that I’ve not once felt sleepy in their company ! They’re fun to learn from. (I’ll write more about them later. I’m hungry and I’m heading for dinner now.)

I’ve probably written stuff that is redundant (that shows that I’m really impressed by the Compass Project ), but I didn’t know how much I should write. I’ll ask Anna before my next post.

I’ll write again soon!

P.S. – This is my first ever blogpost, so if you all have any criticism or suggestion, do let me know. Thanks .

Another day has dawned and set on the summer program.

Not much has been written yet about the classes; as neither a student or teacher, I have observed only a little of the classroom action.  But this I can say: the classroom style is unlike anything these students have experienced before.  For instance, there are no lectures.  The teachers only use the chalkboard for writing questions, to prompt student discussion and discovery.  For each prompt, the students first consider the question independently, writing in their notebooks.  Then, they discuss in groups of 3 or 4.  And after that, the whole class comes together in a circle such as this:

As an observer, the discussions seem lively, with many students engaged in debate.  But talking to the students individually, I’ve found that this classroom style is met with varied levels of enthusiasm.  This radical change from the lecture style classroom is an understandably challenging learning environment for some students who don’t feel comfortable speaking in front of the group.  Other students seem to thrive in this environment.   It would be interesting to hear the student perspective on this classroom model- I’ve been encouraging them to post to the blog, so hopefully we will get some of their insight.  Tomorrow we will introduce the jargon buzzers, small electronic buzzers which students can use to stop anyone – teacher or student- from using fancy terms that are only vaguely understood.

After the classes, the afternoon treat was a lecture by Professor Basri, who spoke about the Kepler mission and the search for extrasolar Earth-like planets.  It was an interesting lecture, and I am grateful to Isha for organizing it.

As an extra treat for the students, Joel and Allen supplied doughnuts for the homework time.  Already, plots are being plotted for pranks and talent show acts- so I know Compass will just keep getting better…

Hey guys,
This is Gina, your trusty Compass Resident Assistant! I just thought I’d add some visuals of what we’ve been up to!

Yesterday morning we had a Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream Social, in which we mixed cream/juice/coconut milk, sugar and LN2 to produce delicious ice cream and sorbet!

Jenna, Jessica and Pauline enjoying ice cream!

Of course, the social quickly digressed into freezing stuff in LN2.  Here, Alex models proper safety technique.  Note the strategic placement of safety goggles.

Kyle, playing with the LN2.

Anna, our summer coordinator, being awesome!

Classes began today!  I didn’t get a chance to witness the magic, but I can say that the tour of the Zettl lab was epic.  We saw nanotubes and lithography samples in the scanning electron microscope, got a rockin’ demonstration of nanotube synthesis, and saw the transmission electron microscope, scanning tunneling microscope, and atomic force microscope.  Five students attended this tour, and the other students were split into a tour of the Sadoulet labs and Stamper-Kurn labs.   I don’t know what happened on those tours- but I’m sure they were great as well.

For this year’s summer program, we tried something we haven’t done before in Compass: giving the students a full day of activities to get to know each other before starting classes.

In previous years, we always jumped right in on the first day with classes.  We decided to try to make the goal of building community more explicit this year, and felt that having the first day be classes-free would help further that goal.  The schedule was scavenger hunt in the morning, liquid nitrogen ice cream social in the afternoon, followed by some free time- which ended up being frisbee (as per the compass tradition)- and a game night in the evening.

For the scavenger hunt, clues led students around campus where they received both the next clue and some piece of the materials needed to build a mysterious object.  After about two hours of doing silly things- singing to a dinosaur, preaching on Sproul Plaza, trying to stick paper airplanes into the ceiling of the physics reading room, they had amassed the supplies needed to build a anaglyph camera adapter for taking red-blue 3D images.

It was interesting watching the group dynamics.  The students almost universally stuck to a set of rules that they had internalized about scavenger hunts- in particular that the teams are competing for something.  Even after all the hunting was over and they were in the classroom to assemble their boxes, the teams worked only within their groups.  After one team got their device working, I suggested to the other groups to ask around for help-meaning outside their own group- but they were very hesitant to do so.

Later that afternoon, we made liquid nitrogen ice cream, by mixing liquid nitrogen (donated by the department!) with half and half and sugar.  When the students had their fill of ice cream, we shattered cheese, flowers, fruit, and froze soap foam.  This was a good activity for the first day:  everyone seemed to be excited and enjoying themselves.

At the after dinner game night, we brought out the apples to apples, settlers of catan, dominion, and, according to Compass tradition, Mafia (which, by the way, was epic).

In all, I think having the first day be focused solely on community building was successful, and I feel that in the 7 or so hours I spent with the students, I got to know each one at least a little bit.  This makes me happy:  the new Compass students are awesome!

Last night, Harjit Singh, Compass student from 2009, delivered a great welcome speech.  He left everyone laughing and moved with his sweet sincerity.   Here’s what he delivered to the crowd of 80 students, families, grad students and faculty:

For all the incoming freshmen sitting here, you’re probably wondering what you’re getting yourself into.  To be honest with you, a year ago, I had no idea either.  The thing is, for the summer program at least, you’re going to be confused, lost, frustrated, and by the end, completely exhausted.  But during the whole experience, you’re going to have an unbelievable amount of fun, and I’m not just saying that because I’m getting a free dinner.  To shed some light on Compass, I’ll talk just briefly about its history and what you can expect from the program.

A few years back, some grad students decided that there needed to be more diversity in the field of physics.  Other programs around campus were trying to create diversity for their respective fields of study.  However, nothing existed for physics, or the physical sciences in general.  The best way to do this was to reach out to a diverse group of undergraduate students and encourage them to pursue studies in physics.  The rest is history.  With a lot of effort, funding, and support, we now have this multi-thousand dollar organization.  Although Compass is still concerned with diversity, building a community within the field of physics has become a main goal of ours.

The best thing about Compass is the sense of community you feel from it.  It’s truly unlike anything else that you’ll experience while at Berkeley.  Traditionally, students come into the sciences, take their classes over the four undergraduate years, hopefully graduate, and its over.  How much do you think they actually enjoy college?  Not a whole lot.  They felt they never had anyone to go to for their problems in school.  Sure, you can go to graduate student instructors or professors, but honestly, do they really care about you?

That’s what you get from Compass, a group of people who truly care about you.  Many of you might be coming to Berkeley knowing only a few other people.  Some of you might not even know anyone.  Look around; there are at least 50 people in here that you can call your own.  People you can depend on and go to for help.  People who will remain a part of your Physical Science Community.

For the freshman, let me tell you what you all mean to each other.  These are the same people that you’ll be with studying with for your next midterm.  The same people who you hang out with for fun during the weekends.  They’ll be the same people who you go and play Frisbee with out on Memorial Glade.  And they are the same people who’ll you’ll get to know very well over these next two weeks.  Everyone one of you is going to have your personal share of frustrations to deal with during the class, but you’ll all be in it together, working to solve problems.  This is the take-home point from the program.  Science is meant to be a collaborative process, and Compass helps you to become comfortable with this type of collaboration.

There’s no way that you’re going to have everything figured out your first year at Cal.  That’s why you have all your Compass peers to learn and grow together.  Stuck on a problem, Compass has tutoring for that.  Can’t figure out how to get your daily schedule in order?  We have mentoring for that.  Want to engage in a nice conversation with Physics nerds, you have everyone here to talk to.  But if you want someone cool to talk to, I’ll be sitting right over there.  Anyway, I hope you all have a great experience here at Berkeley.  The next chapter of your lives has begun.  Welcome to Compass.