Whether it's advising students how to strategize for a
job interview or how to talk
with an air traffic controller upon descent, university President William R. Brody has
many words of wisdom to share, and he took full advantage
this month.
For
Intersession 2008, Brody stepped out of the President's
Office and into the
classroom to teach two courses, one on "uncommon sense" and
another on flying.
The intersession program at Homewood, which runs from
Jan. 7 to Jan. 25, offers
undergraduates dozens of one- and two-credit courses for
academic exploration,
experiential learning and personal enrichment, along with
opportunities for studying
abroad. Since 2001, intersession has featured many courses
with an applied, "real world"
bent.
Realizing the importance of good judgment and sound
reason, President Brody in
1999 created the course Uncommon Sense: A Practical
Approach to Problem Solving for
Your Personal and Professional Life. Offered by the
Whiting School of Engineering, the
class deals with such everyday issues as making money,
marketing yourself and
prioritizing your time. It also attempts to answer such
questions as, What should you do
if you arrive at a final examination and find that the
questions have nothing to do with
the course material? The trick: Keep your answers short.
Brody said that "the boundaries" are pretty well
defined in most classes, and he
wanted to offer a course that could not be pigeonholed and
would be focused on
approaches to problems rather than solutions.
"What we do here in higher education is give students
answers to questions that
we already know, and then, at the end of the term, get them
to give us the answers back,"
he said. "Yet so much of life is trying to deal with
questions that have never been asked
before, and questions that don't necessarily have clear or
perfect answers. Sometimes
you don't even know what the question is. The solution
involves intuition and judgment,
which you don't necessarily get in a traditional academic
setting."
Brody, who has taught the course off and on since
1999, says that he loves
teaching, enjoys keeping in contact with undergraduates and
feels he has many lessons to
share.
Prior to becoming the 13th president of the
university, a post he has held for 11
years, Brody had active careers in academia, health care
and business. He has been a co-
founder of three medical device companies, and served as
the president and chief
executive officer of one of them, Resonex, from 1984 to
1987. He joined Johns Hopkins
in 1987 and has served as the Martin W. Donner Professor
and director of the
Department of Radiology, professor of electrical and
computer engineering, professor of
biomedical engineering and radiologist in chief of The
Johns Hopkins Hospital.
He's done his fair share of studying, but logic and
reason, he says, have been key to
his success, too. On day two of his Uncommon Sense
class, he had the 18 students give
oral presentations on why they deserved to be admitted to
medical school. He wanted the
students to learn how to sell themselves, which included
putting themselves in the other
person's shoes; in this case, the recruiter's. This
approach, he said, applies to many things
in life; many times, you need to take a step back and look
at the situation with a fresh
perspective.
"The process of reason, intuition and judgment, and
putting all the pieces together,
is really important. That is hopefully what will lead them
into a successful career and
successful life," he said. "I'm not sure I'm making a dent
or having much of an impact on
them, but I feel good giving them this advice."
Nick Arora, a sophomore public health major, said that
he's getting what he hoped
for.
"I registered for the course because I liked the idea
of learning how to think in a
different way," he said. "I thought I could learn from Dr.
Brody's experience and see if I
could adopt a more practical, realistic way to approaching
life. I guess, too, we're all
impressed with what he has to offer."
This intersession, Brody also wanted to pass on his
love of flying to students, so he
created the new course An Introduction to Flying: So You
Want to Be a Pilot, also in the
School of Engineering. Brody, who has logged countless
hours in the air, holds a private
pilot license with airline transport pilot and flight
instructor ratings.
In collaboration with two colleagues, including a
former flight instructor of his,
Brody designed the class to offer an introduction to the
basic principles of flight and the
process of obtaining a pilot's license. It includes a
series of lectures that provide
preparation for the private pilot rating, including talks
on aerodynamics, weather,
instrumentation, communication and regulations. The course
also employs a PC-based
flight simulator, set up in Nichols House (Brody's campus
residence), and one hour of in-
flight instruction in a training aircraft at flight school
at Martin State Airport, located in
northeast Baltimore.
Brody calls the class "an experiment."
"I thought there might be students interested in
flying, and there were many more
than I thought," said Brody, who had to limit the class at
10 due to practical
considerations.
One of these students, Brian Miller, said that he's
been interested in learning how
to fly and took the course to see if it was something he
wanted to pursue. Miller, a senior
in engineering, said that the course also offered him the
opportunity to meet President
Brody.
"I had never spoken to him before, so this has already
been a good experience for
me," he said. "He's very approachable and has a lot to
offer."
One such pearl of wisdom was what to do when an air
traffic controller talks way
too fast and you have no clue what to do next. Brody had
such an experience during a
training flight, and the California native politely told
the controller, in the best Southern
drawl he could muster, that he was a student pilot and not
used to people talking that
fast where he was from. The controller got the hint and
repeated himself more slowly.
Brody passed his test. You could say it was another victory
for common sense and reason.
GO TO