[Foundation-l] Participation of intellectual professions

[James Alexander]

On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 12:21 AM, Keegan Peterzell <keegan.wiki at gmail.com>wrote:

> Exactly what David said.
> --
> ~Keegan
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
>
>
Aye, there is a group who will never really be able to fit in (I generally
think of them as the "elitist" side of the academics but that isn't really
the best way to describe them I think). I do think that there are a lot who
aren't really engaged who could be brought in though. Other then the
"elitism" group I think most of the other problems they have can at some
level be overcome by showing them the opportunities and benefits. The Public
Policy Initiative that the Foundation is starting sounds like a great idea
to get some thoughts on how to do this (both helping to incorporate the grad
and undergrad students but also the profs by showing them exactly how much
it can do). In the end however we are going to have to be able to expand it
to other disciplines and find good ways for us to do it on a larger (and
more volunteer run) scale.

There was an interesting point that I saw  a couple weeks ago (I think it
was in the Initiatives State 1 report, perhaps it was just in the
description on OutreachWiki). Basically it was talking about who had the
most time to edit. Undergrads had the most, Grads and Professors tended to
be more focused on academic papers/books for work reasons and then the
Retired Professors had more time again. I think we could still get a fair
amount of Grad students and active Professors but the Retired/Emeritus
Professors would be another good group to try and target (and one I believe
that will be less focused on by the current Initiative)  I know we have
some, but there are tons more out there ;).

James Alexander
james.alexander at rochester.edu
jamesofur at gmail.com