A Couple More Chickering/Reisser Thoughts...

In reading the criticisms of Chickering and Reisser (in Evans, Forney & Guido-DiBrito), I found it interesting that the motivation for Chickering's initial 1969 model was not for student affairs administrators, but for professors in hopes they would take student development into account in their curriculum. It seems that from this first model, it was the student affairs professionals that responded and where Chickering found his true audience. (And was perhaps his and Reisser's intended audience for the 1993 version.)

I've also given my blog address to my mom who was intrigued by the choice of Chickering to refer to vectors as vectors. In the book, the word "vector" is used to imply both magnitude and direction. My mom (who was a physics major) pointed out to me that "vector" is a physics term used to imply speed and direction. For example, mph is only speed, but a vector would imply both speed and direction. Chickering must have had this in mind when creating his inital model.....