Talk:Wentworth Institute of Technology/Archive 1

Archive 1

Untitled

It still reads much like an advertisement -- I'm pretty sure someone at the school is paid to maintain this page....

The first version was partially a copyvio and read like an advertisement, so I replaced it with a stub. ~~ShiriTalk~~ 01:03, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)

  • A lot of the page still reads like an ad; on the other hand, the Criticisms section is completely unsourced. Links to images under http://www.wit.edu/centennial/ are no longer valid. Chonak 06:42, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Gordon College

I know that when Gordon College moved from Boston, Massachusetts to Wenham, the former campus became part of Wentworth. Does anyone know any sourced documentation of this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coemgenv (talkcontribs) 23:52, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Still an advertisement

This is the first time I've ever heard someone speak positively about this school. Most school entries come with some assessment of their ranking/quality. I live in Boston (a really big college town), and everyone here thinks that Wentworth is a joke. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.41.0.50 (talk) 05:41, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Not everyone, Everyone I have ever met talks about how great the college is. I go to it and I love the school, how exactly is it a joke? Especially when it offers a huge co-op program. Wentworth is a nationally ranked institution. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.31.198.127 (talk) 23:02, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Any objections to removing these two comments from the talk page? There are pure opinion, anonymous, and non-constructive. Yes, there are parts of the article that read like an advertisement but this kind of discussion doesn't help. andrew (talk) 02:24, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
They are not particularly helpful comments, but there's no particular need to tidy up Talk pages by removing unhelpful material. If this page gets big enough, someone will eventually make a talk archive and move the old stuff there. --Chonak (talk) 23:54, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Student Life

Student life is unneeded. It is a pointless filler. Also Rouxbury is not at the edge of Boston. It is a part of Boston.

  • Agreed. I cut this section, which was probably just promotional talk copied from some WIT publication. Chonak (talk) 01:18, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Criticism Section

Unless anyone can find a serious reason to keep the Criticism section I see no reason to keep this section. Wikipedia is an encylopedia- not a forum for 1 student to complain about the food service. I will delete this section in a week if there are no objections.

Endowment History

First, the inital endowment claim is WRONG. "The will was contested by his daughter, Susan, and after nine months of negotiation, Arioch Wentworth's estate was halved—his family and the directors of Wentworth Institute each were left with approximately $3.5 million."[[1]]

Using the inflation calculator, the intial endowment of Wentworth ($3.5 million in 1904) is equivalent to $80 million today. As of 2007, the endowment was $91 million according to Petersons (citing Wentworth in 2007). As near as I can tell, they spent no more than 1 million to start the place up so that by 1912 there were students. SO probably around 1912 they had an endowment in the neighborhood of 2.5 million ($50 million).(Ibid all sources).

Apparently Paul Barron Watson, who "as treasurer of Wentworth Institute from its founding in 1904 until 1948, he managed the Institute's endowment masterfully."[[2]]

However, it is unclear how well a job he did. If there were someone who could find out the size of hte endowment in the 1950s, that would be great. This site says that sticking 2 million in a bank account in 1920 would give 40 million today vs. putting it in bonds/money market would give 300 million today.[[3]] Mrdthree (talk) 17:53, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

  • Hi, Mrdthree. The $7M figure doesn't look wrong; it just isn't the whole story. Thanks for pointing out the info about the will dispute. I've incorporated it into the History section of the article. Chonak (talk) 01:13, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
It would be good if we could find a reference that was external to WIT regarding this endowment and the subsequent action regarding it. The three references above look like a web developer's website - ie: an internal WIT document. The Times article says it was likely to be contested but does not say what the result was (because the article in the Times pre-dates the result). Ariconte (talk) 04:15, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
  • The same info is available on the WIT site, so I changed the citation. Also, the NYT has some news items on the will dispute. In addition this law book quotes the relevant part of the will. Chonak (talk) 17:04, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
Great, thanks! Ariconte (talk) 19:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Merge proposal

The The_Center_for_Community_&_Learning_Partnerships is apparently a part of WIT. I will merge the articles soon if no objection. Ariconte (talk) 19:55, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Most of the article sounds like publicity material anyway, rather than something based on independent coverage. Note that the article was created by editor "Witclp", perhaps an employee. (I have left him/her a message about conflict of interest guidelines.) Chonak (talk) 01:05, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I am doing the merge now. Will do a redirect from the original article. Still need thrid party references. Ariconte (talk) 22:19, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Community & Learning Partnerships

In order to improve the substance and factual relevance of this entry, I propose editing the section "Center for Community & Learning Partnerships to:

1) reflect external recognition of the Institute and the Center including it's earning of Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's Community Engagement Elective Classification in both Curricular Engagement and Outreach and Partnerships.[4], [5]

2) include data on community and learning partnerships at the Institute http://www.wit.edu/clp/index.php?page=community-learning-partnerships-about-us

  • During the 2007-08 academic year more than 1,800 students contributed 116,000 hours to community-based work and service.
  • According to Independent Sector and the Bureau of Labor Statistics a volunteer hour in Massachusetts had a value in excess of $24 in 2007. www.independentsector.org a volunteer hour in Massachusetts has a value in excess of $24. Based on this fact, Wentworth’s faculty & student service efforts had an estimated economic impact of at least $3 million for the 2007-08 academic year.

Further, the above information would help clarify the significance of this section as part of the overall article entry (i.e. that the Institute achieve's x and has been independently recognized by x for this work) and would add external citations/references relevant to the Section and overall entry.

UrbanMechanic (talk) 07:53, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for showing an interest in the college. Some past additions have been self sourced and a bit marketing related - see the section above where I moved the Community.... stuff into this article. Certainly balanced content is welcome, see WP:N and WP:RS. Seasons Greetings, Ariconte (talk) 20:13, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Improvements needed

A number of references that were WP:BAREURLS are now dead links, and need to be re-established. At any rate, more refs are needed, including from impartial third parties. The adulatory tone has been moderated somewhat, but the article still needs to be more encyclopedic in tone and content. See WP:UNIGUIDE for guidelines on content and style. Reify-tech (talk) 19:35, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

The article has improved somewhat since I last looked at it, but the cryptic abbreviations in the "Notable alumni" section need to be explained, Wikilinked, or removed. Searching the entire article for the abbreviations reveals nothing useful. Reify-tech (talk) 15:11, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

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