April 15 2008 Re-Rad Proposal to the EPC

When it became clear that the Faculty Meeting would not approve the EPC's Division I proposal in the spring of 2008, members of Re-Rad came together and wrote this proposal, in hopes that the school year would not end without at least a few constructive changes to Hampshire's academic system.

The Proposal
We would like to propose a few minor changes to the Hub. While these changes are small, we believe that they will profoundly improve students’ abilities to pursue a meaningful education. These changes address minor, yet recurrent and frustrating problems that present unnecessary obstacles to pursuing meaningful academic work and can easily be fixed now.

Open Online Class Review System
(e.g. Amherst’s “Scrutiny” System: http://www.amherst.edu/~scrutiny/)

Anonymous student evaluations of faculty and courses should be incorporated into the Hub. Such a review system would provide an invaluable resource to students, both in facilitating the process of registering for courses and in improving overall course satisfaction.

Transparency is key – important and useful information, such as student reviews of courses, should be easily accessible by any person with access to the Intranet. Furthermore, these evaluations should include both quantitative and qualitative data, presented in a way that is easily understood by students (much like the Logo).

Hampshire is already working to put into place a closed system (visible only to professors) similar to the one described above. We suggest these funds and efforts be shifted towards the creation of an open, transparent system instead. While this would seem to present technical challenges, it would not actually be necessary to tinker with the Hub’s programming; the Hub could simply present users with an external link to a system such as Scrutiny.

Presently, students must turn to unreliable systems for such information, such as RateMyProfessor.com or word of mouth, where they are likely to hear only extreme opinions. This system will greatly improve students’ abilities to choose courses that they are most likely to enjoy, benefiting students and faculty alike.

Putting EPEC Courses on the Hub
EPEC courses suffer from a lack of visibility and recognition. While there are good reasons why they are not considered the same as faculty-led courses – they are not taught by faculty members, and the quality of EPEC courses fluctuates highly – we believe that EPEC course listings should be accessible on The Hub (albeit separately from other courses). Making EPEC more visible could potentially increase its popularity, rigor, and prestige, decreasing faculty workload and bringing more variety to our course catalog.

This could be done quite simply, by putting a third link on the Hub’s “Search” page: “View EPEC Courses.” The link could be listed alongside the existing “Search Hampshire Courses” and “View Five-College Courses” links. It would take students either to the EPEC page on the Hampshire website or a Hampedia page with EPEC course listings.

Independent Studies with Flexible Dates
There needs to be an online form available for independent studies with flexible dates. Like other independent study forms, these forms should include space to describe work that is done for the course, and be accessible to students, their advisors, and faculty evaluators. In addition, this form should provide a place for students to specify the start and end dates of the work being evaluated. The dates for initiation and completion must take place between the date of the student’s matriculation and the date of the student’s graduation. There should be no other limitations on the dates set for this work. Once these dates are approved by the student and faculty member, they will be altered only with the approval of both parties. As with other independent studies, evaluations for this work may be included as part of divisional work occurring on or after the date of completion.

This will address a number of issues that can arise when students try to include non-course work in their formal transcripts. As it now stands, meaningful academic work that takes place outside of a course can only be included on the Hub in the form of an independent study. Such independent studies are expected to align with semester long courses, to start before the add drop date and be completed by the end of that semester. Because of this constraint, these independent studies preclude certain kinds of academic work, regardless of either the work’s academic merit or of a faculty member’s willingness to evaluate it. This work includes summer internships and any work that, for what ever reason, spans over more than one semester, such as any kind of research that requires few hours per week but must take longer than a semester to complete (e.g. research that involves observing plants in different seasons, or research that examines students throughout an entire academic year).

This would not in any way erode the academic rigor of the college. Just as with other coursework and independent studies, faculty members would only evaluate work that they believed to be of academic value. This amendment would not force any faculty members to evaluate any independent studies that they are not interested in.

At this time, students can subvert the system by finding faculty members that are willing to “fudge” the dates on the Hub. However, this is not a reliable solution and we feel it is unreasonable to expect students to ask faculty to break the rules in order to get credit for their academic work. This amendment asks for no formal changes to existing academic structure or policy. It would simply allow for better acknowledgement of the academic pursuits that students find to be meaningful to their educations.

Results
Section 1 was approved in the spring of 2008 and the Logo task force was put together in order to put the system into place.

Section 2 was approved in the spring of 2008, on the condition that a clear disclaimer is put on the EPEC page ensuring that students do not confuse them with faculty-led courses. The link is now up on the Hub.

Section 3 was met with widespread agreement within the EPC, however the logistics of making this possible on the Hub, as well as issues surrounding transfer students' transcripts made it impossible for the EPC to come to a decision. The proposal was tabled until the 2008-09 school year.