Archive for June, 2011
School board to teachers: Why don’t you consider Asia?
Things are getting even worse for new teaching graduates
Yesterday, we wrote about the desperate situation for newly-minted teachers across Canada. Just to offer one grim figure, there’s 67 per cent underemployment rate in Ontario in the first-year after school. Things are so bad in that province that the government has capped new enrollments in teacher’s colleges.
Today, CBC News reported that job prospects are about to get even worse in Alberta. If the Calgary Board of Education’s budget passes, there will be 172 fewer teachings jobs in the city.
What’s even worse for graduates is that if Calgary decides to hire again in the future, it has committed itself to giving priority to laid-off staff. That will only make it more difficult for new teachers to get hired.
But those graduates may wish to take the advice the board gave to it’s own teachers. They’re encouraging current staff to take leaves of absence, during which they can easily find jobs in China or South Korea.
The Calgary Board of Education’s Karen Demassi, a human resources official, told CBC that the advantage for teachers who pick the Asia option is that time spent overseas will count towards their seniority, should they ever be rehired in Calgary.
UBC residents appeal to premier after losing hospice fight
“Women and children” face psychological trauma: opponents
Condo residents opposed to a recently-approved hospice that will be built next door to them at University of British Columbia have written a letter to Premier Christy Clark, asking her have the decision reversed. Residents — many of them are of Chinese heritage — say that they believe the 15-bed facility will bring “ghosts” to the area. Others have accused them of worrying only about the possibility of declining property values.
In the new letter, which was sent to the Vancouver Sun, residents report that nearly three-quarters building’s owners are opposed to the hospice. They also claim that the controversy is harming their health.
“Do you know some residents, as a result of the proposed hospice, have been diagnosed to have worsening medical and new psychological conditions that need professional help?” they wrote in their the letter to Clark. “Women and children too have been affected.”
Billy Ayers prevented from entering Canada
University association says academic freedom was violated
There’s something worse than physics on the MCAT
Hint: it’s not chemistry.
Photo courtesy of Nic's events on Flickr
Ever since I started studying for the MCAT, I’ve been worried about the physics section.
Apparently it’s just an irrational fear. Whenever I’ve brought it up here in my blog, most commenters have assured me that the physics questions are so basic, Forrest Gump could answer them all correctly and have enough time left over to start narrating his life story to the person sitting next to him. Which, of course, is why everyone who writes the test gets a perfect score on the physics section.
It turns out I might have been worrying about the wrong section. Apparently the lowest-scored section on the MCAT isn’t the physical sciences. Or biological sciences. It’s the verbal reasoning section.
According to this chart from the AAMC, verbal reasoning had the lowest mean score among test takers in 2010. The physical sciences, which consists of general chemistry and physics questions, had a mean score of 8.3. The verbal reasoning section had a mean score of 7.9 (this is on a 15 point scale). And Examkrackers claims that the average score on verbal reasoning is a 61 per cent.
For some reason I always thought that verbal reasoning was the section that most people could expect to score decently on. Perhaps it’s because, unlike the physical or biological sciences, there isn’t any specific background knowledge required.
But after looking at some practice problems, I think I’ve realized why it’s the toughest section. Most of the questions were apparently designed by Confucius, with some editorial input by Yoda and Master Po.
For instance:
1. According to the passage, an image is a versatile tool that:
A) is always visual, never abstract.
B) can be either abstract or visual.
C) is always abstract, never visual.
D) is neither visual nor abstract.
That leaves me with a new hobby for this summer. Instead of whining about physics, like I’ve been doing for the past couple months, I plan to whine about verbal reasoning instead.
Leader has PhD yanked for plagiarism
German politician missed 120 footnotes
The University of Heidelberg has withdrawn the PhD of a notable German politician after a committee found plagiarism throughout her thesis, reports Deutsche Welle. The German school’s investigation found 120 passages without footnotes that should have been credited to other sources. Sivana Koch-Mehrin was vice president of the European Parliament and head of the German Free Democratic Party until she resigned last month over these now-proven allegations. The story comes as the University of Alberta investigates Dean Philip Baker’s speech to graduating medical students, in which he said he was “inspired” by another academic’s address.
Two-thirds of new teachers can’t find full-time work
Province reacts with “hard cap” on new enrollments
Photo courtesy of woodleywonderworks on Flickr
Few other graduates in Canada have as much reason for pessimism as those who finished teacher’s college this spring. A study from the Ontario College of Teachers shows that two-thirds (67 per cent) of education graduates from Ontario’s class of 2009 found themselves unemployed or underemployed in the following year. And, the unemployment rate among new teachers has exploded to a staggering 24 per cent — up from just three per cent in 2006.
The job market is bad in western Canada too. In British Columbia, 2,700 new students were certified by the College of Teachers last year. The BC Public School Employers’ Association says that only 1,000 are needed, according to the Victoria Times Colonist. Even in fast-growing Alberta, many school boards are laying off.
The situation has caused Ontario to take an unusual step. In May, it placed a “hard cap” on funding for newly enrolled education students. Caps are usually reserved for medical professions only, but John Milloy, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities for Ontario, explained that the supply and demand is so out of whack that teacher’s college enrollments needed to be culled.
“We recognize that not every graduate of education programs wants to be a teacher in Ontario,” says the Minister. “But at the same time, we want to make sure that when people leave [teacher's college] they have a realistic chance of getting a job.”
The problem for grads is that Canada has fewer school-aged children, fewer retiring teachers and yet teacher’s colleges have chosen to pump out more grads over the past decade. The new cap in Ontario will force first-year classes to shrink by 885 students overall by 2012-13. That means a maximum of 9,058 new students will start next fall.
But is that enough? The new cap is still far above the 8,077 teachers from Ontario schools who registered with the provincial college in 1999 — a period when an average of 7,200 Ontario teacher’s retired each year, creating many spots for new grads. In the period between 2005 to 2009, average annual retirements fell to just 4,600, meaning thousands fewer jobs per year.
And now? “Teacher retirements are forecast to remain under 5,000 annually over the next seven years,” concluded the College of Teachers’ report. That means the bleak job market for new teachers is unlikely to improve any time soon.
Ryan Gosling attended McMaster convocation
Why was the Oscar-nominated actor there?
LaineyGossip.com reports that actor Ryan Gosling was at McMaster University’s humanities convocation on Monday. He was overheard shouting “Love you Mom… you’re the best mom ever,” just as Donna Gosling, his mother, crossed the stage to claim her English degree. Gosling, 30, was born in London, Ont. and attended Lester B. Pearson High School in Burlington, Ont. He was nominated for Best Actor at the 2006 Academy Awards for his role in the film Half Nelson.
University students with early classes sleep more, not less
The reason? Late risers are big drinkers
Photo courtesy of Mark Sebastian on Flickr
University sudents who start classes earlier in the morning sleep more — not less — than those who start classes later in the day, says a new study of 253 American students. The reason is that those without morning classes are more likely to stay out drinking on school nights, which leads to a lower quantity of sleep overall, according to study co-author Pamela Thacher, a psychologist from St. Lawrence University in New York State. Night owls also reported lower grade averages than their early rising peers. The study also found that the average amount of sleep students report getting each day is 8.0 hours — exactly what experts recommend.
Ontario’s Top 10 Colleges ranked by graduate satisfaction
Is your school on the list?
Want to know how colleges are doing? Just look at the “Key Performance Data” that the Ontario government makes colleges and universities publish each year. The information is based, in part, on surveys that students complete six months after graduation.
The new 2010 figures suggest colleges are better than they were in 2005. The graduation rate is up from 60 per cent 64 per cent. Employer satisfaction — always high — nudged up from 92 per cent to 93 per cent. Graduate satisfaction also inched its way from from 78 per cent to 79 per cent. The only notable decline was in the employment rate six months after graduation, which slipped from 89 per cent to 83 per cent.
The numbers also show a big range in student satisfaction, so we thought we’d share some details. Of the 24 Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario, these 10 had the most graduates who answered that they were “very satisfied” with their college experience when asked six months after graduation in 2010.
1. St. Lawrence – 85 per cent
2. Sault – 85 per cent
3. Northern – 84 per cent
4. St. Clair – 84 per cent
5. Georgian – 83 per cent
6. Confederation – 82 per cent
7. Collège Boréal – 82 per cent
8. Cambrian – 82 per cent
9. La Cité collégiale – 82 per cent
10. Conestoga – 81 per cent
Former Toronto mayor will teach at NYU
David Miller chosen for his “low carbon leadership”
David Miller, the former mayor of Toronto, has been hired to teach at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University reports CBC News. He’s been named the Future of Cities Global Fellow, which will require him to lecture on the use of technology in urban settings. ”Under his leadership, Toronto received numerous honors such as the low carbon leadership award from the climate group,” the university wrote in a statement explaining their choice. “It is acknowledged as one of the worlds’ leading business destinations and as a city that respects social justice.” Miller currently works at Toronto law firm Aird and Berlis and is president of Urban Green Jobs.
Student never complained about alleged harassment
Prof. was suspended after questioning failing student’s PhD
The University of Manitoba didn’t issue Gabor Lukacs a cease and desist order, it’s president, David Barnard, didn’t warn him about his impending suspension and the student who Barnard accused Lukacs of harassing never even filed a complaint against him. That’s what a Manitoba labour tribunal heard from Lukac’s lawyer yesterday, reports the Winnipeg Free Press. Luckac’s is the 28-year-old math professor who was suspended for three-months without pay last year — on the president’s recommendation — after he lobbied against a dean’s decision to award a PhD to a student who had twice failed the exams required to graduate. The dean had accepted that the student could not pass the exams because of his disability — “extreme exam anxiety” — which Lukacs believed was an abuse of the rules. Barnard argued that a 2009 reprimand from the dean to stop talking about the student’s alleged medical condition should have been enough warning to Lukacs that he might be suspended. He also said that the university would not have suspended Lukacs had the professor not named the student and his medical condition in a lawsuit he filed to try and get the PhD overturned.
Read more Maclean’s On Campus news and commentary about the Gabor Lukacs case here.
McGill medical school apps. up 50 per cent
School says dropping MCAT was successful
The number of applicants to McGill’s medical program 50 per cent higher this year and officials are attributing that growth to the fact that they dropped the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) requirement. The number of students vying for the program’s 183 spots rose from 1,689 last year to 2,538 this year. Only 500 will be interviewed.
“It was successful beyond our wildest dreams,” Dr. Saleem Razack, assistant dean of admissions, equity and diversity at McGill told the Montreal Gazette, referring to the decision to drop the test that most English-Canadian medical schools and nearly all American medical schools require. “The MCAT is seen as a barrier — it is expensive to write and we find our new multiple mini interviews have a great ability to predict the future performance (of applicants).” It’s especially problematic for francophone students, he says, as there is no French-language MCAT test.
Dr. Maureen Shandling, former associate dean of admissions at the faculty of medicine at the University of Toronto told the newspaper she doesn’t believe that multiple mini interviews can replace the MCAT entirely. Instead, she says multiple mini interviews should be “complementary.”
University returns to all-male and all-female dorms
President says single-sex residences will reduce binge drinking and sex
Photo courtesy of adpowers on Flickr
The president of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. says his school will return to all-male and all-female dormitories in September. Here’s his reasoning. “The two most serious ethical challenges college students face are binge drinking and the culture of hooking up,” wrote John Garvey in The Wall Street Journal Monday. “Here is one simple step colleges can take to reduce both binge drinking and hooking up: Go back to single-sex residences,” he writes.
His only evidence appears to be a study by Christopher Kaczor of Loyola Marymount University that shows students in co-ed dorms report binge drinking more than twice as often as students in single-sex housing, and that students in co-ed housing are significantly more likely to have had a sexual partner in the past year. What the article doesn’t mention is whether Kaczor’s study controlled for the fact that many students who live in single-sex dorms have chosen to live there precisely because they wish to avoid alcohol and sex.
Conan O’Brien’s commencement speech
Comedian says that dreams can change, but that’s OK
Conan O’Brien is just one of the many comedians who have given commencement speeches at U.S. schools this graduation season. His was arguably the funniest — and the most wise. Here’s a recording of Sunday’s speech to the Class of 2011 at Dartmouth College. Here’s how it started:
“Graduates, faculty, parents, relatives, undergraduates, and old people that just come to these things: Good morning and congratulations to the Dartmouth Class of 2011. Today, you have achieved something special, something only 92 percent of Americans your age will ever know: a college diploma. That’s right, with your college diploma you now have a crushing advantage over 8 percent of the workforce. I’m talking about dropout losers like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg…”
He also poked fun at the general laziness of today’s college students, their propensity for stimulants and Wikipedia, like this:
“When I got the call two months ago to be your speaker, I decided to prepare with the same intensity many of you have devoted to an important term paper. So late last night, I began. I drank two cans of Red Bull, snorted some Adderall, played a few hours of Call of Duty, and then opened my browser. I think Wikipedia put it best when they said “Dartmouth College is a private Ivy League University in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States.”
And, more seriously, he talks about how found success, by accepting that “dreams change.”
Your path at 22 will not necessarily be your path at 32 or 42. One’s dream is constantly evolving, rising and falling, changing course. This happens in every job, but because I have worked in comedy for twenty-five years, I can probably speak best about my own profession.
Way back in the 1940s there was a very, very funny man named Jack Benny. He was a giant star, easily one of the greatest comedians of his generation. And a much younger man named Johnny Carson wanted very much to be Jack Benny. In some ways he was, but in many ways he wasn’t. He emulated Jack Benny, but his own quirks and mannerisms, along with a changing medium, pulled him in a different direction.
And yet his failure to completely become his hero made him the funniest person of his generation. David Letterman wanted to be Johnny Carson, and was not, and as a result my generation of comedians wanted to be David Letterman. And none of us are. My peers and I have all missed that mark in a thousand different ways. But the point is this : It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It’s not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound re-invention.
So, at the age of 47, after 25 years of obsessively pursuing my dream, that dream changed. For decades, in show business, the ultimate goal of every comedian was to host The Tonight Show. It was the Holy Grail, and like many people I thought that achieving that goal would define me as successful. But that is not true. No specific job or career goal defines me, and it should not define you. In 2000—in 2000—I told graduates to not be afraid to fail, and I still believe that. But today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.
Should physics be on the MCAT?
Unless the patient is on a train, physics doesn’t help
Train photo courtesy of kaffeeeinstein on Flickr
I forgot how much I hate physics.
If studying for the MCAT only included biology, chemistry, and verbal reasoning, I might have a serious shot. But throwing physics into the mix has me worried.
Way back in first year, almost three years ago, I thought I was saying goodbye to physics. Forever. After writing my exam, I would never have to see its face again. No more calculating the distance traveled by a projectile. Or determining how long it takes a soccer ball thrown from a height of 80 metres with an initial velocity of 10 metres per second to reach the ground. As for those two trains —the ones that are speeding towards each other, with hundreds of hypothetical passengers’ lives at stake — who cares what their final speed is, or how long it takes them to collide? Not me.
At least, I didn’t care until this summer. Now that I’m studying for the MCAT, physics has returned from the past — like a bad guy in an action movie who I thought was dead, but instead of shooting him a second time (just to be sure), I turned my back and didn’t notice the ominous music.
The problem is that the last time we saw each other, it didn’t end very well. Every time I tried to patch things up, physics would bring up the centrifugal force. Now, I’m asking myself: why is physics even tested on the MCAT?
Biology makes sense. Mostly. Some of the specifics seem a little irrelevant, like the details of cellular metabolism, but hey, med school is all about biology, right? And as much as I hate chemistry, I grudgingly accept the fact that it has a place in med school, too. Sure, I’d like to lie to myself and claim that chemistry has no real-world applications in medicine. But then I’d have to ignore the existence of pharmaceuticals (even the boring sections in my organic chemistry textbook are important for future doctors).
But for some reason, back when the MCAT was being created, someone stupidly invited physics to the party. I just don’t see how physics can help a doctor treat their patients. Unless the patient is a passenger on a train. A train that is heading south at a velocity of 80 kilometers per hour, on the same tracks as a train that is heading north at a velocity of 72 kilometers per hour…
Canada’s youth unemployment isn’t so bad
In Spain, youth unemployment is 44 per cent
Photo courtesy of joshuahoffmanphoto on Flickr
Statistics Canada tracks unemployment among university and college-aged students who wrap-up school in April and who plan to work during the summer before returning to school in the fall. Their first figures for this summer show that the unemployment rate among 20- to 24-year-old students has fallen from 16.5 per cent in May 2010 to 15.0 per cent last month.
Students might see a drop like that as good news, but that’s not what The Globe and Mail or the National Post saw when they wrote about it this weekend. They called the situation “bleak” and “woeful,” because of the fact that students have double the unemployment rate of Canadians overall.
But students in Canada have a much better chance of landing a job this summer than students who live elsewhere in the western world. The New Zealand Herald reports that youth unemployment is 29 per cent among those aged 18 to 24. The Telegraph reports that youth unemployment is 36 per cent in Greece, 29 per cent in Italy, 32 per cent in Ireland, 24 per cent in Sweden and 20 per cent in the United Kingdom and — get this — 44 per cent in Spain.
The only big European countries with lower youth unemployment are Switzerland, Austria and Germany. However, in Germany, where it’s 8.1 per cent, students attend school year-round and don’t pay tuition, meaning far fewer of them look for summer work. In the United States, youth unemployment hit a record high of 19.1 per cent last summer.
Opinion: Four reasons Dean Baker should resign
Would you trust your cancer diagnosis to someone who had cheated on an exam?
This morning, the news broke that on Friday, Philip Baker, Dean of The Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry* at the University of Alberta, delivered a speech that was largely plagiarized from a speech given by Atwul Gawande last year at Stanford. Baker has issued an apology, but an apology is not good enough. He should resign immediately, and here’s why.
1. On principle. As Dean, Baker is responsible for the academic integrity of the programs he oversees. Deans are called upon every day to make decisions that impact students and faculty in the most basic ways: hirings, promotions, sabbaticals, grade appeals — it’s hard to think of an important university function that does not involve deans. Baker made a mistake, and he may feel bad about it, but he cannot now be trusted with the grades of students and the careers of faculty.
2. It sets an impossibly bad example. How can the university enforce its rules about plagiarism (for which students can be expelled according to U of A policies) when one of its own deans has admitted to plagiarism himself? What could a faculty member say to an offending student who points out that what he has done is no different from what his own dean has done? Is a professor of obstetrics supposed to look a student in the eye and say that students have to be held to higher standards than university officials?
3. The scandal may hurt students, the integrity of whose degree might be called into question.
4. “What I stole was really good” is no excuse. According to the Edmonton Journal, Baker’s apology suggested that while he did lift the content of the Gawande speech, it was only because the original oration “inspired me and resonated with my experiences[...] The personal medical traumas which I detailed were wholly genuine and did indeed engender the sense of inadequacy I highlighted.”
Such an excuse, though, is no excuse at all. For one thing, there are well-established ways of using the words of another in an ethical way: paraphrasing and quoting with attribution. If the Gawande speech was so inspiring, all Dean Baker had to do was say, “In thinking about my address today, I recalled a wonderful speech delivered at Stanford last year, in which Dr. Atwul Gawande said…” and so on. Why didn’t Baker do that? Because according to witnesses who read compared the two addresses, Baker lifted almost the whole thing, and to admit to that would be to look like you hadn’t written your own speech. Which, of course, he hadn’t. So he passed off a counterfeit.
But to do so at a university event, in his capacity as Dean, is to show a shocking disregard for a basic principle of academic integrity: you don’t knowingly take credit for someone else’s work.
Baker’s programs are in obstetrics and gynecology. Would you want your baby delivered by a doctor who hadn’t written her own papers? Ask yourself: would you want your cervical cancer diagnosed by someone who cheated on their oncology exam?
*This post originally referred to Dean Baker with an incorrect title. It has been corrected.
Graphic anti-abortion displays have no place near schools
Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform targets children
An anti-abortion group in Calgary has decided it is appropriate to take up on public sidewalks and parade graphic displays in front of public school students.
The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform did a tour of sorts last week, visiting at least 12 high schools and setting up poster boards of aborted fetuses in order to win over young supporters.
“Our philosophy is if someone is old enough to have an abortion, they’re old enough to see the aftermath of an abortion,” Stephanie Gray, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, told the National Post. “Many of these young people are having abortions because they haven’t seen what an abortion looks like.”
Of course, that’s beside the point. While the group isn’t technically breaking any laws, the choice to demonstrate outside public high schools is dubious at best. These types of graphic displays have typically been erected on university campuses, where they have already met their fair share of conflict. But whereas the university campus is absolutely a reasonable forum for such a demonstration, the space outside of high school pushes the ethics of public pandering.
First off, nearly all of the students on university campuses are adults. The opposite is true at high schools. The anti-abortion protesters are essentially demonstrating to children, who—unlike university students on sprawling campuses—often can’t take an alternate routes to classes. Plus, those under 16 are required to be there by law, and so, in an ideal (perhaps kinder) world, they shouldn’t have to worry about being barraged with graphic images on their way to ninth-grade geography. University students are on campus by choice, and are often morally self-assured enough to be able to critically absorb and analyze such a demonstration.
It is true that inside high schools, most kids are exposed to other graphic imagery. However, it’s usually accompanied by some sort of context and discussion. High school students learn about drunk driving, the effects of smoking and drugs, and unprotected sex and STIs — but they are usually warned beforehand about graphic images and encouraged to express concerns in a controlled environment.
Holding up a poster of a bloody fetus provides none of the context, and little of the tact required when dealing with sensitive teens. As well, whereas we can pretty much all agree that driving with a six-pack is not a great idea, the ethics of abortion is a little murkier. Graphic imagery is fine for concerns that are more or less universally shared, but trudge through dangerous ethical waters when used in conjunction with more contentious issues.
The issue is not about being pro-choice or pro-life. The issue is about finding an appropriate venue for a morally controversial and graphic demonstration. The sidewalk outside of a public high school is certainly not the right venue.
Dean accused of plagiarizing convocation speech
Students searching on smart-phones found near-identical speech
Dean Philip Baker of the University of Alberta has apologized to medical students after he lifted the “theme and content” of his address to the graduating class on Friday evening from another doctor’s speech. Those students are now accusing him of plagiarism, which is — ironically — the type of academic crime that would have prevented them from graduating.
Philip’s speech included many of the same type of anecdotes that Dr. Atul Gawande’s speech to Stanford University students in 2010 included, which graduates like Sarah Fung recognized during the speech. Their suspicions were confirmed when they checked The New Yorker magazine’s website using their smart-phones, reports the Edmonton Journal. Philip defended himself to students in a letter obtained by the newspaper, in which he said that Gawande’s words “inspired me and resonated with my experiences,” and that “the personal medical traumas which I detailed were wholly genuine.”
“We were embarrassed and disappointed to find that Dean Baker had given a wonderful speech at our graduation banquet without attributing it to the original author,” Brittany Barber, president of the graduating class told the Journal. ”People should know that we do not stand for academic dishonesty and our deepest wish is that this incident does not reflect poorly on the integrity of our class, the medical school, and ultimately the university.”
Baker, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, has published more than 200 scientific articles and 14 books. A spokesperson for the university, Deb Hammacher, said there will be an investigation. Baker has apologized to Gawande.
To read Cape Breton University professor and On Campus blogger Todd Pettigrew’s commentary on the situation, please click here.
Comedians address the class of 2011
Conan O’Brien, Amy Poehler and Snooki draw big audiences
Photo courtesy of sayhellotojessica on Flickr
American universities are hiring comedians to give commencement speeches — and it’s getting them noticed by hundreds of thousands of people. Amy Poehler, of Saturday Night Live and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo fame, gave last month’s final address at Harvard University. ”I’m truly delighted to be here at Harvard,” she joked. “I graduated at Boston College, which some call the Harvard of Boston.”
Harvard is likely delighted by the 450,000 views that a recording of her speech has received on YouTube. That’s the type of publicity that lesser colleges can only dream of getting.
But not all comical commencement speeches go as well. Some parents of students at Rutgers University were angry when they learned that Snooki, known for her drunken antics on the TV show Jersey Shore, was paid $32,000 for her hour-long “study hard but party harder” message.
Dartmouth University will live stream its commencement ceremony on YouTube next week. That will be delivered by an even bigger star than Snooki or Poehler — Conan O’Brien himself.
Updated: Read the highlights of Conan’s speech and find a link to the video here.
