Kristilyn Webb (Dabb)

Synthesis 1 Mapping the Conversation

Fall Semester 2014
Writing 2010

Synthesis 1 Mapping the Conversation

When I first began plotting out my map for this synthesis, I was a little overwhelmed
with the complexity of the topic diversion between each assigned article. All but one of the
articles seemed cohesive in their thesis. It wasnt until I began to connect clusters that I
realized that Sylvia Huertas paper, although different in topic, converged with the other
articles when it came to the camps of diversity, reform and student exploitation, and public
right to education.
The main or master topic that every paper is features is represented in orange. I came
up with each camp that is situated beneath the master topic by summarizing the main thesis of
each article with one word. They are represented with green highlighting and will be referred
to as camps. After that, I broke down each article and found key words that would become
the cluster heads for which conversations seemed to define and build from. From the green
camps, I connected the clusters.
At first, it seemed like a simple and organized pattern to lay out, but when I began to
connect each of the articles listed at the bottom to the main camps and then to clusters from
different camps from with the conversations converged, my map began to look like the back
alley ways of Venice convoluted and confusing with no clear organization. It looks like a
city that is built upon and interconnected with no grid layout to make sense of the address
system. So, I will attempt to fix this here and then revise the map for the next assignment so
that it is easier to read.
1

The master topic is The Higher Education crisis. Each paper clearly revolves
around issues regarding higher education. There are convergence points at the clusters of
corruption, institutional ethnography, student exploitation, academic instruction, treatment of
faculty, funding, research, neoliberalism, public right to education, enhancing liberal arts
education (although this last one is a little bit of a hidden cluster with some of the articles),
CUS, and also problem solving of funding and corruption issues.
It seems that three of the articles merge on the issue of corporate funding and the
negative and positive impacts it has on higher education and one article talks implicitly about
diversity within the university and the need for institutional ethnography and the promotion
of social progress in intergroup relations. Its main convergence point with the other articles
comes at the cluster of public right to education and the camp of reform, but the thesis of it
differs much from the other three in which they exclude the issue of diversity.
Not all of the articles use the same vocabulary, although they merge in places by
definition. And although the main camps are different they ebb and flow into one another
through the embodiment of similar concerns.
One thing that I found a point of interest was that all of the articles except for
Linking Diversity with Educational and Civic Missions of Higher Education, by Sylvia
Hurtado, were written within in the last couple of years. When I first read Hurtados article, I
found that I was closed minded about what she had to say simply because I felt that her
research didnt paint an accurate picture of todays crisis with Higher Education. There is
discontinuity between the dates her article and research was done and the time in which the
other articles were researched and written. Figuring that out, I was able to go back fight my
urge to argue her thesis and find out where the clusters converged with the other articles.

After that, I was able to join her conversation in my map creation with the other articles and
fit into place where I felt correct. The layout of my maps is as follows:
Higher education crisis
Corporate Relations with Higher Education:
Funding: Private and corporate, Grants, distribution
Research: Impact on academic instruction, corporate sponsored faculty,
treatment of faculty, student exploitation, and open information
Governing board infrastructure: corruption
CUS
Problem Solving corruption and Funding Issues
Academic Capitalism:
Corruption
Privatization
Globalization
Neoliberalism
Student Exploitation
Diversity
Initiatives
Inequality
Multicultural Social Acceptance

Enhancing Liberal Arts Education

Public Right to Education
Promotion of Social Progress
Reform
Tuition Regulation
Neoliberalism
Political Awareness and Aid
Institutional Ethnography

Hurtado, S. (Winter 2007). Linking Diversity with the Educational and Civic Mission of Higher
Education. The Rview of Higher Education, 30(2), 185-196.