Students bored by the same classes offered year after year now have an opportunity to shape their academic fate and more easily create new classes.
Student Council's Academic Affairs committee, working in conjunction with Associate College Dean Gordon Stewart, created the Student Initiated Course Proposals program earlier this month to make proposing a class easier, according to Academic Affairs Co-Chair Kathryn Serra. Serra said students can now propose INST courses to be added to the fall 2007 Course Offering Directory.
"It's a very, very flexible program designed to help students who want a specific class that is not being taught," Serra said. "Say that there is a class that I want that the University doesn't offer, and it's in a subject that I know a lot about. I can go to the template and design a course."
The template is available on the Student Council Web site and serves as a guide for students to propose and design a course, Serra said.
"Before there was all kinds of red tape that made the process difficult for students," Serra said, adding that the program aims to make the process easier by giving students autonomy to create courses that best fit their individual needs.
According to Serra, students must first find a faculty sponsor to agree to either teach or facilitate a proposed class. Stewart will then review the course and put it on the COD upon approval.
Stewart said he and Richard Handler, associate dean for academic programs, review proposed courses on behalf of the Committee on Educational Programs and the Curriculum, which is in charge of reviewing all new courses in the College. If the course is approved, it is placed on the COD under the sponsoring instructor's name as an INST course and must follow the guidelines of INST courses. Stewart said proposed courses are not permanent and therefore do not appear in the Undergraduate Record.
He added that because these classes are INST courses, they will be offered on a Credit/No Credit basis and will not be worth more than three credits. Students will only be allowed to count two such INST courses towards the 120 credits required for their degree.
Serra said the guidelines require an instructor to be involved in the course because undergraduates are not allowed to grade other undergraduates.
Stewart added that he is "always happy" to work with students and faculty who would like to sponsor a course to ensure they meet the proper requirements.
Serra added that such a program could help the University's reputation by improving student-faculty interaction and giving students an opportunity to strengthen self-governance.
"These classes give a signal to the administration about what students are interested in and what they need to do to meet those interests," Serra said. "It also goes along with student self-governance in allowing students to choose their own academic options."
The new program may also signal the need for new courses and faculty in underdeveloped academic programs, according to Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, an advisor for the new African Studies minor, which was recently added to the Undergraduate Record.
"If proposing a course is a way of documenting an interest that is not currently satisfied in the scope of the University, then it might serve to address to a certain extent that we do not have enough faculty to currently satisfy the [students'] interest" Hoehler-Fatton said.
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