Sunday, February 25, 2018

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Our Terrible Recommendation Academic Culture

You are indeed right!  References play only a part in certain contexts but is all in others.  Whichever we take those references need to be well prepared for record purposes.. 

was listening to a radio program a few days ago  and a caller said he applied for a job  and was goung for an interview for which he was I'll prepared.

On the way to the interview he researched the establishment and found he was class mate of the managing director's  brother.  He said he brought it up at the interview and was happy to say he got the job and was starting the following Monday.



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Date: 25/02/2018 14:18 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Our Terrible Recommendation Academic  Culture

The only fields I can speak about with authority are literature and cinema, and that mostly includes those in foreign languages as well as English. In our dept having a degree from Harvard or yale does not guarantee much of anything. I remember one search where spivak called to support her candidate, who still didn't get the job. There are 2000 or so universities, so I think Michigan state university, a middle research one school represents better the average than do the elite schools. In any event, my impressions are mostly from what I know in my own local bailiwick, and not for other disciplines.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday 25 February 2018 at 07:19
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Our Terrible Recommendation Academic Culture

 

Ken:

 

The cumulative impact of references in the American academy must not be exaggerated!

 

To the contrary about 12 schools control over 50 per cent of all academic jobs. If you get your PhD in these schools, you actually need a reference of one page, not three pages.

 

In History jobs in some fields, only 7 schools control them, and the reference is just to satisfy regulations.

 

If you have a PhD in Latin American history, two schools control 99 per cent of the jobs and you don't need any long reference whatsoever if you graduate from those two schools!!!

 

Then jobs, in some situations, are tied to political identity. Once they tie a position to identity, the references given to those outside of that identity are useless.

 

And where a specific identity controls power, what drives relevance is "belonging", not references

 

In some degrees, like Law, some states, like Tx, have law schools, as in UT law school, that actually dominate an entire state and yields very limited space to others

 

Now, those who believe in meritocracy will say I am exaggerating. Well, I can give you a reference of ten pages with a PhD from the University of --- in Nigeria or Ghana, and let us see what you get!

TF

 

 

Toyin Falola

Department of History

The University of Texas at Austin

104 Inner Campus Drive

Austin, TX 78712-0220

USA

512 475 7224

512 475 7222 (fax)

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Sunday, February 25, 2018 at 5:57 AM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Our Terrible Recommendation Academic Culture

 

I endorse almost everything moses said. I would add that when I sign up to be the director of a student's committee, or even to serve on it, I will have signed up to write reference letters automatically. I received a few, or several, requests to write letters of evaluation for candidates for promotion, especially in the summer. I write letters of rec when my grad students go on the market.

 

It is very time consuming to do it properly. A good letter can run several pages, up to five single spaced or more.

If it is too long, the reader will tire of it. If it is brief, no one will take it seriously.

If it is unadulterated praise, no one will take it seriously, unless backed up with very solid explanations of what the work contains and why it is so good.

I don't agree that the superlatives make the letters unimportant; they matter enormously, and most people on hiring committees or promotion committees know or learn how to parse, to read the letters. Moses's views were my own.

 

He commented on british differences, and African differences. That is true of French as well, French and francophone African recommenders, who believe that their name and rank confer credibility and the readers' deference are out of step with the times. If they think making a real case for the candidate is not something they do, they harm the candidate's chance and are themselves disregarded.

But the American academy weighs on them with our approach, and they are learning to change.

 

I want to repeat one thing: it takes a lot of work to write a letter. Can take a couple of days, even for someone whose work you are directing. As for letters of evaluation, it can take me a week or more to read and write letters for promotion. I would never in a million years agree to do the kind of evaluation moses says he was asked to do for a Nigerian institution. I know there are continent wide standards that are now involving evaluations that involve details about each pub in each journal, but that is going far beyond what is reasonable. It is already hard enough to do it properly.

 

Lastly, when I have a grad student, I want that person to get a job, and am willing to do my share. But I try to be honest to the profession. I can write a letter that describes the candidates' work, without overdoing the praise, and I know that proper letter readers can get the point.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "meochonu@gmail.com" <meochonu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday 24 February 2018 at 21:21
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Our Terrible Recommendation Academic Culture

 

A few points as a response to Oga Falola and others:

 

 

1. I don't accept the premise that references are no longer useful. It is true of course that if a candidate is weak, a glowing reference would lack credibility and would not change anyone's mind. Such a letter would even elicit scorn or stoke suspicion. It is also true that, like student evaluations, reference letters that are non-specific and/or employ superlatives to either praise or condemn are usually ignored as they should be. However a recommendation letter that is substantive, specific, descriptive, and gives a detailed idea of an applicant's academic trajectory, their research experience with the letter writer, and their evidenced accomplishments is quite useful and is often considered in making admissions and fellowship decisions. If a letter contains superlatives but the same letter also contains a thoughtful, substantive set of informed commentaries on a student's strengths as observed closely by a teacher/mentor, such a letter would be quite useful. In fact letters that are descriptive and show where a student started, what obstacles they encountered, and how they emerged stronger academically or accomplished their academic/intellectual goals or produced impressive work at the end are often the strongest, weightiest ones. In my program, rec letters are carefully considered, controlling of course for fluffy superlatives that are not borne out by the substantive, narrative portions of the letter. Even if an application is not stellar, a detailed recommendation letter that touches on the contexts for certain deficits and reasons why the student may not have done as as well as they could have or why they underperformed on a certain project could tip the scale in the applicant's favor. On the flip side, an applicant that appears stellar on paper but whose letters are weak and cavalier invites scrutiny and skepticism. In some cases, the dissonance between stellar application materials and weak letters raises red flags and vice versa. Sometimes the question is asked as to whether the student is can be managed or why his teachers are not offering endorsements that are commensurate with the brilliance evidenced by his credentials. Everything is weighted together to arrive at a conclusion about the applicant's strengths, prospects, and abilities. The final thing to say in support of Falola's earlier quip about the British tradition that Nigerian academics seem to uphold is that the British are notoriously stingy with praise and detest superlatives. In fact in my program, we have inside jokes about British recommendation letters and have developed a mechanism for controlling for the British factor. The difference between the British and Nigerian letters, however, is that the former are detailed, descriptive, analytical, and specific while the latter are sketchy and general and thus often useless as a guide to the strengths and promise of an applicant.

 

2. A recommendation letter is just that, a recommendation. In and of itself, it is not a game changer one way or the other. Therefore, we cannot blame the failure of Nigerian applicants solely on lecturers' reference letters. Nigerian applicants are also often guilty of submitting terrible personal statements that do not advertise their strengths, their academic trajectory, their intellectual interests, research experience, and academic aspirations in specific, captivating ways. They undersell and shortchange themselves by not putting their best foot forward. It is my opinion that they therefore put themselves at a disadvantage. Somehow, they seem to think that exhibiting false academic modesty by not talking about their accomplishments and academic strengths is a good thing that would endear them to admission evaluators. It is also a cultural problem related to the British-American higher educational divide. The Americans want you to toot your own horn; the British prefer that you simply let your credentials do the talking--at least that used to be the case. Many Nigerian applicants also simply do not understand the concept of a personal statement or what it entails. Nor do they understand what a writing sample is. I've encountered Nigerian applicants who submit poor pieces of writing as their writing sample in an application simply because it was published in some junk journal. They don't understand that the writing sample is supposed to be the writing that best advertise your scholarly repertoire, especially in the protocols of your discipline. They are very proud of a particular published work so they assume that others too would appreciate it. They probably should have submitted an unpublished piece of writing that showcases their research ability and their understanding and deployment of sophisticated disciplinary methodologies.

 

3. Falola is right about the unfortunate quantitative turn in Nigerian promotion evaluations. I have an ongoing personal experience in this regard. I recently agreed to review a colleague in Nigeria for promotion to the rank of Full Professor, not knowing what to expect since I hadn't done one for a Nigeria-based academic. I thought it would be a similarly qualitative evaluation as the ones we do on this side. When I got the package containing the materials I was shocked at the lengthy guidelines. The whole exercise is portrayed in the guidelines as a jumble of bean counting. Every kind of academic publication from journal article to book chapter to monographs to edited books have different, complicated methods for scoring them and assigning number grades to them. Multi-authored chapters and articles, have their own complicated quantitative scoring formulas. It is clearly about the quantity, not the quality, of a candidate's publication record.  By the time I finished reading the guidelines, I was dizzy and confused. It was ridiculous. This is not an evaluation, I thought. It's a formulaic and inadvertently anti-intellectual attempt to develop a fair, objective metric for promotion evaluation. Good intention, probably. Bad outcome. They also wanted me to evaluate every publication separately with a narrative assessment instead of an analytical overview that makes judgments about the quality and influence of the scholar's body of work, his oeuvre. Who does the former? It would have been hellish conforming to this extremely restrictive set of criteria. I immediately wrote to the guy who requested the evaluation and told him my reservation. I also requested that I be allowed to do a qualitative rather than a quantitative evaluation. He gave me the permission and I will do a qualitative evaluation.

 

4. It is true that America is built on self-promotion and self-inflation. It is the root of grade inflation and resume padding. It is also the root of embellished rec letters. But we have mechanism for controlling for the excesses when considering application materials. The point in all this, moreover, is to understand the game and play it well to make yourself competitive rather than take yourself out of the pool or put yourself at a disadvantage by insisting on applying to things on this side while observing rules and conventions that are the norm on the Nigerian/African side.

 

5. A guideline for our Nigeria-based colleagues in this regard would be great, and Dr. Bridget Awosika (a member of this list) suggested same on my Facebook page, although she requested that a sample be provided, which I modified as a guide. If you simply send samples of letters to colleagues back home, many will lazily plagiarize them, even if the particulars in the sample letter does not apply to their students. This would defeat the purpose and premise of reference letters, which are meant to be personalized testimonies about a student/prospective student from people who taught, mentored, and got to intimately know the student's abilities, academic journey, accomplishments, and aspirations. Such a guide would contain phrases and words that do not translate as endorsements in North American academia. The guideline would also explain what a recommendation letter should contain and highlight and what it should not. It would list Nigerianisms that would hurt rather than help an applicant. Finally, the issue of length, context, substance, and specificity should be stressed in the guide. The most effective letters are the ones that tell a story of the interactions between the letter writer and the student/applicant. Such letters not only establish the letter writers' authority and credibility as people who are vouching for the applicant, they also take the evaluator on a journey, enabling them to see what the applicant has done, what challenges they faced, how they overcame them, how they responded to instruction, direction, advice, and correction, their work ethic, and their unique intellectual talents that could be nurtured and developed. 

 

On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 5:22 PM, 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Ko bad, as Gloria observed. 

 

However, my point is that applicants should know that they are not likely to benefit from man know man abroad especially if they are looking for funding. If they can pay their way, there will be many institutions begging for the tuition, references or not.

 

Having participated in a commiittee that interviewed and shortlisted candidates for highly conpetitive scholarships that even the most powerful references would not sway, I suggest that our candidates should adopt the attitude that their admission chances are within their control rather than believe in the Naija mythology that oga lecturer go help them.

 

Correct me if I am wrong but these are crucial elements in the application letter that students should start building long before graduation:

 

Team sports experience shows that you can be a team player

 

Leadership experience in extra curriculat activities shows that you have leadership potentials

 

Volunteer experiences show that you are a compassionate prifessional and not a selfish hustler

 

Experience of assisting lecturers or communities in research or internship shows that you can meet deadlines

 

A writing sample shows that you can think critically

 

A plan to go beyond Master's and pursue the PhD shows that you are serious about becoming a scholar.

 

A review of their website to link your research interest to researchers in the program shows that you have done your homework.

 

An identification of an unanswered question that you propose to address indicates that you are capable of originality.

 

Letters urging the department to admit the bearer would not wash.

 

Biko

 

On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 5:39 PM, Toyin Falola

Biko:

We also use "okay" a lot, which is treated by others as understating.

"Interesting," which we deploy, can be treated as mediocre!

 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <
usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, February 24, 2018 at 4:36 PM
To: dialogue <
usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Our Terrible Recommendation Academic Culture

 

A good example of what David Dabadeen calls other Englishes is the use of 'quite good' to mean very good or even excellent in Naija expressions.  Chinua Achebe was fond of this expression and he also said that would be quite happy if his novels teach readers about the history of Africa. Apparently, Achebe adopted this expression from one of the English teachers at Government College Umuahia who graded all assignments on a scale from Quite Good to Quite Useless.

 

What do you know? As a graduate student in Scotland, I went to see a play and later commended the lead actress by saying that she was quite good. 'Only quite?' She screamed at me. 

 

I stopped using the expression after my supervisor presented an excellent paper and I commended him by saying that it was quite good. Only quite? He screamed as if I had abused him.

 

This may be an indication that quite good had become less valuable through overuse. I now use superlatives like excellent and outstanding when that is what I want to say.

 

On a lighter note, Americans amuse me everytime they are interviewed on radio or tv and they thank the interviewers for having them on which means pulling a leg or teasing in England.

 

Applicants to graduate schools should aim to make at least a GPA of 3.0 on a 4 point scale, ace the GRE and write compelling letters of application to get in because no letter of reference will make quite a difference if the bases are not covered.

 

Biko

 

 

On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 4:34 PM, Toyin Falola

Gloria:

 

The American references, like the American book reviews, have actually become un-useful [as I don't want to say useless as if you write a bad book review, you are accused of sending your colleague to depression and medication!]. What folks now do it to obtain references via the phone.

 

There are regulations in a no. of states that you cannot say what is bad about someone, especially in writing or why someone is fired. Second, in ethical cases, unless the court proves it, you cannot say what you know. When I sat as Chair of awards committees, allegations of plagiarism were routinely reported to us, but we cannot act on them as regulations say that they are allegations, even when I see the data.

 

I have had cases of folks who engage in all sorts of malpractices, but written references don't allow them to say so, other than smuggling into the letter a signal such as "As to his personal character, I have not been privileged enough to observe those!"

 

You may not remember, we are making this part of TOFAC, and you were tasked to chair the first panel on it in Durban.

TF

 

http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue   

 

From: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Reply-To: dialogue <
usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, February 24, 2018 at 3:21 PM
To: dialogue <
usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Our Terrible Recommendation Academic Culture

 

Well if you look at it the other way, some would consider American recommendations  (of students) to be  effusively couched in  hyperbole.

American speech is known for what some would call an exaggerated use of superlatives.

 

" How was the food?"  "Fantastic", says the American.. Someone else from another culture may say the food was  "good." 

 

" How are you today?"

  "Excellent" shouts the American. Someone from another culture may say " Not bad".

 

I don't think there is an intentional plan to sabotage applicants.

 True, there are cases where the recommenders are unfamiliar with  American expectations or the recommender

 may be downright lackadaisical but  we have a translation problem here, generally. It really is  largely  a cross- cultural translation 

challenge, for want of a better concept.

 

Olayinka will have a better terminology for this.

 

A similar situation  applies to grading, somewhat. As you know a grade of  60 in some non- American institutions may be the equivalent 

of 80  or 90  in the US - and that also affects the overall recommendation. A student once complained to me that

her GPA  was brought down by the low grade she got from a summer abroad class she took in  a  Nigerian  

institution. She was convinced that she would have gotten an A if marked in the US.

 

 

Making  up a list of guidelines is a good idea and will  be instructive - although  you have to see the phenomenon  in  cultural  relativist terms

and not pathologize it in absolutist terms. 

 

 

GE

www.gloriaemeagwali.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2018 2:21 PM
To:
usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Our Terrible Recommendation Academic Culture

 

Victor, 

 

The cheapest, easiest pushback against change and against the effort to highlight a problem is to engage in this non sequitur of throwing out the cop out of generalization. For goodness sake, why is this always our go-to canard? Shouldn't it be clear that not every Nigeria-based lecturer writes scanty, non-specific, and weak letters and that some American professors also lazily write similar letters? Oya help me insert the needed qualifiers and caveats so that our colleagues back home can feel better and be reassured that we're not smearing all of them as bad reference writers.

Sent from my iPhone


On Feb 24, 2018, at 12:58 PM, Victor Okafor <
vokafor@emich.edu> wrote:

Does this commentary represent, perhaps unintentionally, a sweeping generalization? Does this pattern of conduct apply across-the-board to all or a majority of the federal, state and private universities that are based in Nigeria? Amongst Nigeria-based academics, is this a common practice or is it a pattern of conduct limited to some frustrated academic practitioners within Nigeria's academic world? What I know, for sure from experience, is that graduates of Nigerian universities tend to experience difficulty with procurement of their transcripts. I feel it necessary to say as well that in my own decades of teaching and performing academic administrative functions here in the USA, I have received and read both ebullient and lukewarm letters of recommendation from both foreign-based and US-based academic practitioners for both students seeking admission and job-seeking academics. In any case, I humbly submit that we ought to exercise some caution and restrain the language that we deploy in our portrayals to the outside world of Nigeria's academic institutions and academic practitioners. In short, let's avoid sweeping generations.

 

On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 9:37 AM, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:

 

This, below, is a Facebook post I made yesterday. It has gone viral and sparked discussion and a healthy debate on a pervasive problem.

 

 

Let's discuss how Nigerians unintentionally--or as a compatriot told me recently, intentionally--sabotage other Nigerians' chances of upward socioeconomic and educational mobility.

A talented Nigerian student/graduate is applying to a graduate program in Euro-America and asks her current or former lecturers to write her the required recommendation letters. Some of the lecturers don't even bother to write the letter. The applicant has to chase them down and plead. Sometimes they have to travel from one part of the country to the other to plead in person as phone calls, texts, and emails don't work with the lecturers. 

It's as though the lecturers don't want to support the applicant's foreign educational aspirations. It's part of their job, but lecturers act as if they're doing their current and former students a favor by writing these letters. Many applicants have missed critical application deadlines because of this attitude. 

The ones who agree to write the letter take the most cavalier attitude to it. They write unusably perfunctory nonsense such as "Ms so and so was a student in our department; she was a well behaved student; she worked hard and performed well in her classes; she has a good character and is very respectful; she is humble and God fearing; her academic record is okay."

Far from helping the applicant's chances, this type of letter actually damages and puts her at a disadvantage in relation to her fellow applicants. I should know, since I've served on both graduate admissions and fellowship and grant committees many times.

Where to begin? First of all such a letter says nothing, absolutely nothing, about the applicant's intellectual abilities, unique academic skills, or the specificities of their academic record. It is too general to be useful. It does not offer any insight into the lecturer's academic/intellectual relationship with the applicant, so why should we take the letter writer seriously as someone who can vouch for the applicant?

There is no mention of classes the applicant took with the lecturer, how they did in such classes, how they stood out, what they did to impress the lecturer, why the lecturer believes the applicant would thrive and blossom in the graduate program, etc.

There is no praise, no enthusiasm--only bland, lukewarm, generic comments. It's better not to write a recommendation than to write one that does not endorse the applicant or highlight her intellectual promise and quality. 

Then there is the issue of brevity. Some of these letters that I've seen are one paragraph or at most two--too sketchy to offer any substantive glimpse into the applicant's abilities or give one a sense of the applicant's unique talents and intellectual drive. You can't say anything compelling about an applicant in two or or three sentences.

Finally, there is the annoyingly meaningless deployment of Nigerian idiosyncrasies and cliches. When a Nigerian lecturer writes "hardworking," the North American evaluators of the applicant's materials read it as "mediocre." When the evaluators see a word such as "solid," they don't think it indicates excellence, as it might in Nigeria. In popular and even professional Nigerian usage, "okay" means good. Not so in the North American educational parlance. It does not mean good. Rather, it denotes bad or mediocre. Saying someone is "okay" indicates reservation, that the letter writer is holding back outright praise because the applicant does not deserve it.

And nobody wants to know or cares about the applicant's personal character, so commenting on how well behaved or respectful she is is an unhelpful digression at best and at worst a damaging indication that you have nothing substantive or glowing to say about her academic abilities and intellectual talent. What has the applicant being "kind" got to do with her ability to undertake graduate work, cope with its rigors, and do well? 

The phrase"God fearing" and the word "humble" are staples of Nigerian academic recommendation letters. They are red flags like no others because they simply don't belong in an academic reference letter. Our tendency to religionize every aspect of our lives and explain everything in religious idioms is now infecting our academic enterprise. Religious references presuppose that everyone shares that frame of reference, which is quite presumptuous and thus off-putting. As for being "humble," humility is not, in and of itself, a treasured academic quality or an indicator of academic talent. Unless humility is being advanced to balance out superlatives used to describe an applicant's exceptional intellectual talents, it is a meaningless quality to underline in an academic reference letter.

I don't know whether it is laziness on the part of the lecturers or a lack of awareness about Western higher educational conventions. I suppose it's a mix of the two.

Whatever it is, these lecturers are destroying the chances and prospects of talented Nigerian applicants, who lose out of opportunities because their former or current teachers write non-recommendation recommendation letters on their behalf. 

I've lived and worked in America long enough to know that, in making admission and other decisions, no evaluator will ignore a sketchy, general, and lukewarm endorsement from a person who purportedly knows and has taught and mentored the applicant--the recommender. If the recommending lecturer doesn't sound so enthusiastic about the applicant, why should I? That's the general attitude.

Ignorance of what is expected in the letter is no excuse. I've even seen such a letter which was written by a Nigeria-based lecturer who studied in the US and is thus aware of how critical recommendation letters are and how they should be written. This lends credence to the theory that some of this could be intentional sabotage on the part of some recommending lecturers.

It is sometimes so sad and frustrating for folks like me to read recommendation letters from North American professors saying that such and such applicant is a reincarnation of Albert Einstein and Jacques Derrida in one flesh and then to read a meaningless three-sentence recommendation letter from a Nigerian lecturer about a Nigerian applicant you know is much more talented than the North American applicant whose abilities and talents are being advanced in highfalutin, exaggerated terms.

The interesting thing is that I read recommendation letters written by academics in other countries for other international applicants and they conform for the most part to the North American convention of high praise and substantive commentary on the applicant, her accomplishments, and her ongoing work. 

We're shortchanging ourselves and putting ourselves at a disadvantage in a globalized, hyper-competitive world.

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