Katie Hynd works with Professor Elizabeth Toohey to schedule her upcoming years. photo // Alex Clapp

Chair of the College Curriculum Committee (CCC), Dr. Julie Blase, joked that the switch to semesters is waking her up at 4:30 in the morning, but some do have genuine concerns about the transition. Are these legitimate? The administration and professors have put in countless hours to make this as smooth a transition as possible.  Although much of the work has been done, the students also must do their part to be proactive in planning their education.

As the deadline approaches, students are setting up adviser meetings and finishing their TAPs, or Transition Advising Plans. Each plan serves to fulfill Principia’s pledge to the students that the transition will not cause students to lose any credits they have already earned and it will not delay any student’s degree completion so long as students fulfill their responsibilities of the plan. Students must map out when they will complete all of their distribution and major requirements with their advisers and turn in the necessary forms to the Academic and Career Advising (ACA) office to be reviewed. Midge Browning, director and academic adviser in the ACA office, said, “I think it’s a wonderful process and opportunity for students to learn about majors, combinations of gen-eds, electives, abroads, and internships.”

Browning also stresses that if a case does come up such that a student will not graduate on time, the school will make arrangements for them as long as the problem was due to the transition. For example, if a student fails a course or takes a quarter off, he or she is held accountable for not graduating on time, and will have to continue to pay for their prolonged education.

Dr. Blase thinks that the switch will be a big improvement overall, but also holds some hopes and concerns. “There are still a lot of unknowns with scheduling of times. Students should be direct and communicate with faculty in their majors and minors about requirements they need to meet, and when these classes might be scheduled,” she said, “The sincere hope of the faculty is that students’ problems are minimal.” Blase also wants the students to keep in mind that they should try to complete their P.E. credits as soon as possible if they have not already because they may find it more difficult to do so within the new semester system.

Student Activities Board (SAB) Scholastic Representative Amy Baldauf is not having trouble finishing her rigorous double major of Education and Sociology/Anthropology, and does not seem too worried about the transition. “I feel that the new schedule will take time for us all to adjust to what with our greater course loads, different breaks and lengths of quarters,” she said, “While I personally am not really looking forward to having to go through a transitional period during my senior year, I’m not too concerned. It will be fine.”

Deep thought has gone into the review of every course and major. Baldauf said, “I don’t know of anyone who is having issues finishing their major on time. I do know that students are concerned about whether or not all of the classes that they still need to take will fit into their schedules, but I know that teachers are working to make sure that everything will work out.” Blase added that some of the majors made little tweaks, such as adding or dropping courses, but a few were greatly reconfigured, one in particular being the Global Perspectives major.

This multi-disciplinary department overwhelmingly feels that the changes made are a much-needed improvement. Prior to the redesign of the major, students took a variety of courses across the curriculum and then completed their capstone, but now there are three major points to the structure and focus of the major. First, students will study issues with no geographical bounds. Second, they will analyze the very complex problems behind these. And lastly, they will choose two disciplines to approach their universal issue with, for example: deforestation from the angle of both Environmental Studies and Economics. The Department Chair of the Global Perspectives major, Dr. Faith Paul, said, “This is 21^st century, cutting edge—we can’t use the old lens of nationalism.”

There is an overseeing board of professors from various disciplines to make this possible. Dr. David Winder, a History professor on the board, is certainly energized about the new program. “Our mandate in the past to be global was limited because we lacked the faculty to support such a mission,” he said, “Now a new advisory board can offer not only more expert guidance but also necessary added resources and different disciplinary perspectives.” In regards to that, many courses will also now be team taught, he said, “The result is a coherence in our approach to issues perhaps as broad as refugees, drug trafficking, immigration, environment, ethnic and religious tensions, and international security that was not possible before.”

Jenn Odell, a senior Global Perspectives major under the old requirements, said, “You’re required to go on an abroad, which is really cool.” Majors will in fact be required to go on an abroad or work with an international organization to gain an international experience with the issue that they have chosen. This should not be a problem to fit in, according to Paul. With the restructuring, the major requirements were also decreased, so it will be much easier for students to fit in an abroad and even a second major if they want. Additionally, majors will be required to gain proficiency in a foreign language relevant to their focus.

Dr. Paul believes that the new major will make students much more marketable for endeavors such as working for NGO’s, governmental organizations, the UN, and getting into good graduate school programs. Dr. Winder agreed and said, “The more we can empathize with others, speak their languages, know their culture, study their economies and political institutions, the more informed and the better equipped we are to offer practical assistance and contribute to international understanding.”

A message that Odell wanted to pass on to new majors was, “[you] need to be self-directed, need to be able to design your own major, and if you’re passionate about two majors, it would be great.”

Though Browning and Dr. Blase are both academic advisers, they would also support the “self-directed” portion of this statement in regards to all students undergoing the transition. Everyone plays a vital role in the process, and as Dr. Blase said, people will need to be “patient and gentle with each other because change is beneficial, but can be stressful.”

However, there remains a lingering community perception that the administration has ignored the voices of the students and faculty at times, and has made and delivered some policy decisions unilaterally. Why does this perception persist, and how can we as a community address and correct it?

The decision to switch to a 15/2 semester form seemed like a unilateral one. We were all away on winter break when the announcement email came pinging into our inboxes, and even though the administration maintains that community input was used to make the decision, exactly how that input was used was not originally made clear to the community. The impression created by this misstep — that the administration solicits community input but does not necessarily utilize it — has taken the better part of two quarters to begin to fade. As we are now facing another big decision — the crafting of next year’s daily schedule — we hope that the administration will recommit to the ideal of transparency and demonstrate an understanding that the process of arriving at a decision is often just as important as the decision itself. 

The semester daily schedule models posted in the concourse last week were created based on the values, ideas, and desires of students, faculty, staff, and administrators. We applaud the daily schedule Tiger Team for posting the five potential models with space for comments on the benefits and drawbacks of each. The models generated a healthy amount of (mostly) productive discussion.

Now comes the hard part: the models have been taken down, the Tiger Team is working to craft their recommended schedule for Dr. Palmer’s consideration, and we need to know how our input is being used. The comments on the potential models illuminated strengths and weaknesses of each and included suggestions for improvements and changes to each one. In essence, the whole community has been helping to craft the shape of a new daily schedule for the College. It will be up to the daily schedule Tiger Team and the administration not only to respect this craftsmanship in determining the final model, but also to communicate clearly how they are doing so.

This communication should take the form of regular updates on the decision-making process as the final model is fine-tuned. These updates should inform us of how our concerns are being met. The Tiger Team must also understand that simply settling on one of the five models posted last week will not be enough. As our comments showed, the strengths of certain models should be combined to minimize the weaknesses of others, thus resulting in a schedule that reflects the values and needs of the Principia community as a whole.

Will the new daily schedule satisfy everyone completely? Of course not. But if we feel that our opinions were valued and used throughout the process of creating a tangible piece of administrative policy, we should be satisfied with that, even if not all of our individual preferences are reflected in the final schedule.

If we make the daily schedule in a transparent way, it will be something of which the whole community can be proud and can feel that they had a hand in crafting.

Yet with each new change slated for Principia College, work for the planning committees responsible for structuring initiatives like the revised daily schedule and a possible new sophomore-year program becomes increasingly complicated. One of the challenges of re-examining several areas simultaneously is that the process of making decisions and instigating change becomes somewhat circular. 

“So much is happening at once,” said Philosophy professor and general education requirements committee member Chris Young. “A lot of this stuff is going to come to a head in the next year … and one thing that is missing [in this process] is how it’s really going to connect with all the other projects. How are gen-ed [requirements] going to fit into a daily schedule? We [as a committee] haven’t talked with the daily [schedule] team about that. That’s a huge thing that no one around here has really done.” Registrar Patty Langton, chair of the daily schedule committee, agrees that occasional frustration “is a shared opinion. I do think [the process] is a challenge, but I also think it’s very good because none of these [initiatives] are independent, so everything is informing the other discussions. I also think that because that’s true, we aren’t going to be able to make a decision and say, ‘there, that’s done.’ Even though our recommendation will be in, our work is not done.” 

For Langton and the rest of the daily schedule committee — many of whom were involved in gathering information and community input regarding the potential quarter-to-semester transition — work began with the administration’s go-ahead for the move to semesters. “Once we got approval, then it became about the daily schedule. Part of our job was research, becoming experts ourselves. And we’ve done a lot: we’ve looked at academic and daily calendars for small liberal arts schools, big schools, comparative schools, as many as we’ve been able to. We’ve looked at what shapes these schedules have … how many hours a week do they have class? Is it three days, or twice a week?” Soliciting community involvement has also been part of the committee’s process, ranging from public forums in the chapel during winter quarter and one held in Wanamaker so far this spring to a board in the concourse displaying five possible schedules with room for community members’ comments. The tiger team has also received suggestions from faculty departments. “They’ll send e-mails saying, this is the kind of course we teach and this is why we need this particular shape of class,” said Langton. 

The Tiger Team plans to submit a proposal to College President Dr. Jonathan Palmer by the end of this week. “[Dr. Palmer] would like to make the announcement [regarding daily schedules] before graduation activity begins. What I envision, without talking to the team, is that our proposal will be a daily schedule [model] with a rationale explaining why we made the decisions we did,” said Langton. Yet no schedule will leave everyone satisfied, she maintained, because so much of the community’s input was conflictive. “A lot of people are giving us input about what is naturally most important to them. Someone says, we want more night classes, and someone else says, I wish we didn’t have night classes at all. So we’re going to have to make some compromises about what’s best for the majority.” 

It’s a common conundrum in making far-reaching decisions, said Assistant Dean of Academics Joe Ritter, who also serves as the committee chair for the general education requirements tiger team. “It’s a challenge any time you want to make a change. People have given input, and it’s been heard, but [there's still a perception that] if you understood me, you would agree with me.” To that end, Ritter believes the college community must improve its communication skills — on both sides of the fence. “It’s about relationships. With Dr. Palmer, there’s a window for input and then if he feels like he’s hearing the same thing over and over, he says, ‘okay, let’s move on.’ I do think this administration can do a better job of saying, ‘yes, we heard you, you have been listened to.’” 

Easing occasionally fraught administrative and faculty relationships has been just one of the challenges Ritter’s committee has had to grapple with over the past year. First and foremost, they’ve been charged with the task of updating the liberal arts requirements each Principia student must fulfill outside of their major in order to graduate. For a majority of professors and administrators, the current system has been left outdated and outmoded for too many years. 

“Some of our classroom styles are based on what was important in education 10, 15, even 50 years ago,” said Young. “Students should know that there is a lot, and I mean a lot, of effort going into trying to give students cutting edge pedagogy in the general education requirements.” At last year’s retreat to Pere Marquette, 90% of faculty voted in favor of updating the requirements from where they stand now. 

Under the upcoming proposal, students would be required to take two credits from all units, with only one Bible requirement, but an additional Fine Arts requirement included. “The non-labs have been cut entirely,” explained Cate Norton, who serves as the committee’s student representative. “The options are broader as well. Now it’s just two humanities, which is more open than a literature requirement and a religion/philosophy requirement.” 

The committee is also proposing the induction of a new “Sophomore Year Experience” program, designed in part to incorporate skill-based learning and integrated course work. In one possible variation, students would learn within a “shared experience” format “rooted around big-idea questions,” said Ritter. “One possibility is, say, have Chris Young with the Philosophy perspective teaching a course on ‘Are You Free?’ Then maybe you’d bring in a physicist’s viewpoint, and maybe everyone would be reading Herman Melville’s Moby Dick to look at, was Ahab free? Did he really have to chase Moby Dick?” Young said, “With a team of five or six faculty, we could both be breaking into smaller groups of about 10 or 15 and then coming back together to model debate and persuasive speaking around a given topic.” The program would, in Ritter’s words, be “all about content courses.”

Yet new initiatives will be more difficult to successfully implement since the recent budget cuts put a freeze on hiring searches for some new faculty. “[Originally the faculty's view] was that there would be additional faculty and resources for these new ideas … really, the sky was the limit. Now there’s no additional faculty,” said Ritter. According to Young, “when it was presented to us, we were told [by the administration] that resources were not what we should be considering. It was just, ‘what’s the best program you can come up with?’” As a result, when faculty began proposing an increase in integrated-learning and skills-based programs, they “factored in five to ten extra faculty for this. Now not only is that an impossibility, but faculty have been cut back a little bit now that we just pulled the searches,” Young said. “I think it’s a concern for all faculty: what’s the faculty load going to be and is that going to impact our ability to give as much time to the students, to be as dedicated as we are here compared to other schools? [I believe] that will change if we have to teach four courses a semester and are just trying to stay above the water. So it’s a concern that we all share I think, trying to make sure we can give that •same level of commitment.”

The statement came on the heels of a visit by semester conversion consultant Coleen Pantalone, who met with faculty, staff, and administration before Week 8 to analyze the College’s process and progress.

Faculty members had previously expressed hesitation about the speed of the transition, questioning if the 2010 conversion target was achievable. After Pantalone’s visit, Palmer said he agrees.

“What has been reported to me is that there has been a general sigh of relief,” said Palmer. “It seemed to make more sense to do it, that 2010 was a push … in fact, everything would have had to go right to make it to 2010.”

“It delays the benefits,” Palmer cautioned. “I don’t think it weakens it, but it delays it, so we’re paying an opportunity cost by not making the transition sooner.”

College Development Officer Steve Shedd, who is the head of the semester implementation team, said, “We didn’t think it was humanly possible to get everything done [by 2010] without negatively impacting students … when Coleen Pantalone showed up, she thought that ’11 might be a little aggressive, but ’10 was out of the question.”

Palmer, who said he had “been hopeful” of a 2010 conversion, said Pantalone provided insight into critical elements for the delayed transition.

One of Pantalone’s recommendations, said Shedd, was the suggestion that the Curriculum Committee establish guidelines for the conversion before departments began to develop their specific programs. He added that without those guidelines, departments would be “spinning their wheels or going in the wrong direction.”

Until Assistant Academic Dean Joe Ritter, College Registrar Patty Langton, “and I had really gone through the schedule in some detail,” Shedd said, “There were a lot of people saying, ‘Oh yeah, sure, we can do 2010; we can get going right away.’ And they didn’t really know all of the puzzle pieces.”

“Joe and Patty and I put those pieces together, and could see for the first time that 2010 was not going to work,” he added. However, he asserted that pushing the conversion back to 2011 “is not in any way, shape, or form slowing down or backing off.”

“Things are still proceeding, full speed ahead,” Shedd said.

Philosophy professor Chris Young, a transition team member, said that according to Pantalone, a 2010 switchover was not doable if it would make graduation in four years impossible for current students.

“I think when she shared that with the administration,” Young said, “that they heard that and pushed the date back.”

“The main concern was, how can we do it without harming students who are here?” he explained. “We can’t harm students, or else it shouldn’t be done.”

According to some faculty members, a perquisite of the postponement is the extended time to evaluate curricula. The semester conversion calendar that Palmer emailed to the Principia community lists curriculum development workshops for this quarter, spring quarter, and summer break.

“One of the real benefits … is the opportunity for every department to really reevaluate their program, and to try and make some changes for the better,” said Young. “If you don’t have time to do that, if you’re just rushing to do mathematical changes … then you’re not really getting the worth of the review that comes with something like this.”

“Our biggest concern right now is making sure that the timeline doesn’t drive the curriculum,” he said.

“It’s a much more complicated process than anyone imagined,” Young said, “but it’s doable.”

Barbara Palmer / photo

In light of budget cuts and potential faculty reductions, the reformative measure could be approved and forwarded to the next checkpoint, or it could be postponed indefinitely or denied.

Yet either way, its architects all agree that it will have to be redesigned in light of a shrunken budget, as the proposed overhaul cannot be implemented in its current condition.

The first problem with the proposal is that the gen-ed committee designed it “as if resources [weren't] going to be limiting,” said Assistant Dean of Academics Dr. Joe Ritter. But when the economy broke down and Principia’s endowment dropped, the original parameters no longer applied.

“We designed this with an addition of seven to ten faculty,” said Sociology professor Dr. Pamela Kaye. “At that time, our president urged us to create a curriculum that would require seven to ten more faculty, which is what we did.”

“Not only are we not going to get an increase of seven to ten, we’re now talking about a decrease of as much as six,” she added.

Dr. Greg Sandford, History professor and head of the Humanities unit, agreed, “It’s a resource issue…We have faculty who are really strapped to get everything done that they need to get done, and will be more so if we cut faculty members.”

The second issue facing the gen-ed overhaul is that it will land in the administrative offices along with other crucial measures, including the transition to semesters, a daily schedule transformation to fit semesters, and a project-centered committee to streamline the transition in line with the Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP). “I’m not sure that we have the administrative capacity to lead this many initiatives all at once,” said Kaye. “With budget cuts, that adds another layer of complication.”

English professor and Writing Center director Dr. Lynn Horth called the slimmer budget and the semester conversion “twin pressure points” moving in on the gen-ed discussion.
“The budget crisis that’s affecting all schools leads us to the conclusion that maybe we have to make some changes in the plan,” said Dr. Dave McFarland, Mass Communication professor and head of the Creative Arts and Communication unit. The committee would take “more drastic” actions than simply postponing the measure, he added. “[We'll] probably redesign it.”

Sandford said, “The gen-ed program cannot be implemented in full without additional resources. We are not going to do gen-ed the way we originally planned to do it, and we’d be foolish to try.”

The entire project will be reduced, and certain elements will have to shrink or be eradicated. Components of the original plan that now face postponement include a remastered freshman year experience (FYE), a new sophomore year experience (SYE), and integrated learning courses (ILCs) to teach rhetoric, critical thinking, and speech.

“It appears to most of us that that probably can’t all happen within the budget constraints that we’re facing,” said McFarland, “and certainly not within the time constraints they’re talking about. Even if [we] wait until 2011 to put semesters in, it’s pretty iffy whether we could get all this accomplished by [then].”

Sandford said he disagrees with cherrypicking parts of a proposal to reduce the cost, saying, “All those components were complementary. The package had to be considered as a package, and you can’t just take one or two pieces out of it and try to implement them.”

However, if rejected or split, the proposal would not be the first of its kind to meet its demise – “yet another terminal case,” according to McFarland.

“Every gen-ed reform we’ve attempted has had success at the level of the faculty,” said Kaye, “and has fallen at the level of the administration.”

This proposal follows a long line of gen-ed redesign plans which flourished in the 1990s but were all rejected after the faculty approved them. The gen-ed requirements in use today were first implemented in the 1960s, and have changed little if at all since then.

“There seems to be general agreement that the gen-ed program is in serious need of updating,” said Sandford. Members of the gen-ed committee all expressed the desire to move from a checklist to a more integrated and intellectually stimulating method of teaching skills, rather than just knowledge.

What happens next? The committee isn’t sure, said library coordinator Lisa Roberts. She explained that it depends upon Ritter’s approval to keep the proposal moving through the administration.

Yet Ritter said it “would be almost irresponsible to come up with a timeline right now,” as the next move will be predicated mainly on the rate of the semester conversion. The discussion is progressing, he said, especially with the visit this weekend of semester conversion consultant Dr. Coleen Pantalone, a professor of Finance at Northeastern university. Pantalone has already analyzed Principia’s process so far, and has offered suggestions for a streamlined transition.

Despite the stall, the professors involved in the proposal and eventual redesign said they are determined to craft a better set of general education requirements to improve current and future students’ time at Principia.

“[Gen-eds are] the heart and soul of the change that we want to be able to hand to incoming students,” said Horth. “At the core…it’s not just moving around the deck chairs of requirements.”

It is time for Principia’s administration to put its emphasis on partnership into practice. The students are waiting.

We strongly believe that the processes used to make decisions ought to be conducted in an open, honest, and transparent manner. In a community such as ours, it is essential that we trust each other enough to let this happen.

Three major decisions in particular come to mind as relevant to a discussion about processes. They are the switch to semesters, changes to the daily schedule, and the revision of the general education curriculum requirements. While the Pilot does not intend to take a definitive stance on the issues pertinent to these three decisions, we want to ensure that a policy of transparency is evident in the processes leading to them. 

Many students are frustrated by the decision to switch to a semester system. More importantly, nearly all wish the decision-making process had been handled differently. If the administration would like to avoid the same frustration when subsequent decisions about changes to the daily schedule and general education requirements are made, the process of soliciting community input should be seriously reconsidered.

A lot of recent community conversation has centered on the jarring discrepancy between last quarter’s SAB survey, which placed student opposition to semesters at an alarmingly high 75.5%, and the administration’s assurances that the semester system will enjoy community support. If, as the administration has stated in explaining the discrepancy, the students did not fully understand the arguments for and against a possible switch to semesters, why were no additional efforts made to get more information to them? To be truly effective, a campaign aimed at disseminating information must consider its audience. Students, with their full schedules and myriad extra-curriculars, would have been more effectively reached by informational pamphlets, concourse surveys, or some other centralized information hub, than by meetings in the Chapel. The problem, then, is not that a student survey was conducted, but that it was conducted at the very end of the quarter — far too late in the process to have any serious impact. A series of concourse surveys throughout the quarter, each designed to isolate specific areas of importance to the students, would have been far more productive — especially if coupled with a website or pamphlet detailing the Tiger Team’s findings. The administration should then have made a credible effort to address substantively, rather than superficially, the resulting concerns, allowing the student body to feel that their voice is truly valued in practice. 

The purpose of this article, however, is not to chastise but to advise. When proper consideration is paid to student and faculty input, the administration can further its progressive vision with the full support of a proud and united community, not the opposition — or, at best, the ambivalence — of a confused and disillusioned group of faculty and students. 

The community members tasked with revisiting the general education requirements will be meeting on W6 of this quarter. We hope that this meeting will include student representatives, that the results will be shared fully with the community, and that additional student input will be solicited based on the meeting’s outcome. Furthermore, the administration must communicate that student input is considered and valued, even if it is not fully reflected in policy. The Tiger Team focused on restructuring the daily schedule is making moves in the right direction. According to Dr. Palmer, the members are preparing a survey for the student body and will host at least one more “open meeting” in the Chapel to solicit community input. We hope that this meeting, along with others advertised as forums for community input, will be scheduled at times when the majority of community members can attend–during the lunch hour rather than during athletic practices. 

Principia, as an academic institution, could not exist without its students. It would be ludicrous, then, to assume that major decisions could or should be made without taking into serious consideration the views of the student body. We are not implying that every decision should be made in perfect accord with student opinions, as Principia is not and cannot be a democracy. It is not an understatement, however, to say that a true partnership cannot survive long if one partner (even a senior partner) only pays lip service to the wishes of the other partners.

Student opinions are important. If the students do not have enough information, then it is the administration’s duty to get them that information. We will not be able to move forward united if the administration does not make every effort to include all members of the community in their appropriate roles as valued junior partners, in practice as well as in theory.

The proposed 2010 deadline for completely converting to a semester system poses problems for some departments. 

Currently departments have begun to convert course curricula to match a 14-week semester. Some, like the Biology and Natural Resources department, are nearly finished. Others are finding the transition more challenging.

“We’re going to end up having more of a teaching load in languages than some of our colleagues,” said Dr. Duncan Charters, Chairman of the Languages and Culture Department. “That’s something else that we’re going to have to think through a bit.”

Plans for the 2009-2010 academic year are just now jelling. Several professors are concerned that setting up the 2010-2011 year while simultaneously transitioning to semesters will double the extracurricular commitment in planning as well as teaching.

“Working a year out with just a normal schedule in place is a full-time job,” said English professor and Writing Center Director, Dr. Lynn Horth.

In a quarter system, professors usually teach two classes per quarter, whereas in a semester system, they teach three classes per semester.

“A lot of faculty are saying, ‘So why now? Why by 2010?’” said Mass Communication professor Dave McFarland. He compared the semester conversion to a concept car that is not yet ready for production, saying that the administration’s 2010 goal was “not feasible.”

Horth said, “I think probably the main question is whether a one-year turnaround is absolutely necessary…one-year planning is pretty tight, especially since we’ve already basically got 2009 in place, so we’ve got no room to make mistakes.”

College president Dr. Jonathan Palmer said he thought the timing was “pretty clear,” explaining that he wanted to make semesters “available to our students as soon as we could, and I think 2010 is the earliest we can make that happen.”

Palmer said, “I’m anticipating a fairly smooth transition, because something on the order of 85% of our courses are pretty clear easy transitions…They’re semester-compatible, easily.”

Other Principians predict a more complicated transition, pointing to the high-cost enterprise’s impact on an already wounded endowment. McFarland estimated a minimum of one to two years to achieve a full transition, but even that, he said, would require an incredible amount of effort.

Horth attributed the confusion surrounding the transition agenda to miscommunication on a survey given to the faculty in August. The survey asked if respondents favored “some form of semesters,” but specified neither the semester models in consideration nor the likelihood of a follow-up faculty discussion.

“Because of the wording on the form, many thought that there would be a faculty discussion about what would best fit our programs,” said Horth. “So when…the form was announced as a fait accompli, that was a surprise, that there wasn’t going to be more discussion about that.”

Lack of dialogue about potential semester models exacerbated the blow, Horth said. A 15-week semester is only one of many options, including the popular 4-1-4 schedule found at St. Olaf College, University of Delaware, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In a 4-1-4 calendar, students attend a four-month fall term and four-month spring term with a one-month “mini-mester” term in between. Charters said he was interested in the potential of the mini-mester, emphasizing the “real intensive focus on a particular field” that a concentrated one-class term could provide for languages, sciences, fine arts, and others.

McFarland, who said he is “not opposed to semesters,” said the Creative Arts and Communications unit had expressed interest in the 4-1-4 system as well.

“Nobody was wedded to the idea,” he explained. “[But] we didn’t think it was ruled out. We only learned fairly recently [that the 15-week model had been nailed down].”

Horth, a member of the general education requirements Tiger Team, saw an embryonic version of the semester Tiger Team’s perspective over the summer, and said that the semester model appeared to have already been decided.

“In one of the earlier presentations, the question was asked, did you look at other things [such as] 4-4-1 and 4-1-4, and the response at that time was no, we just went with the one more common variety,” Horth said. “Later, they did go back and do some research, but…I just would love to have seen a little bit more research done on what the other [models were].”

Palmer explained that the semester team’s dictum of “balance and simplicity” pointed them to a 14-1 calendar, though he said he “admit[s] to having driven that decision so we had that design parameter in place.”

“I think it’s the simplest one,” he said. “It allows us to get [a plan] implemented and then begin to take a look at how that best fits us.”

“The proposal that went in front of the faculty for gen-ed…was really built on a semester model,” he continued. “That’s what was presented to the faculty, and that gen-ed model was the model that…90% of the faculty voted positive to move to.”

In only his second quarter as President of the College, Dr. Jonathan Palmer was resolute yet reflective as he discussed what he considers the compelling reasons for, as well as the community’s reactions to, his decision to move the college to semesters. “I think it gives us now an opportunity… to really engage the community in a discussion about how we’re doing things and what we’re going to do going forward.”

Much of the initial criticism from students was drawn from a survey conducted by student government in November that placed the percentage of students that preferred some sort of quarter system at 75.5% and the percentage of students that preferred some sort of semester system at 21.4%. In that survey, 40.2% of the 368 student respondents indicated that they “strongly preferred” the current quarter system to any other option.

When asked what he would change if he had to go through the process again, Dr. Palmer responded to the accusation that the student’s voices had not been taken into account by admitting “we’ve got to find a better way to incorporate all five hundred of us into that discussion. That’s my biggest disappointment, in how that was handled. I don’t think we got enough information to students, that students got enough information to us,” he said. “I met with student leaders this week and said ‘I don’t want that to happen with this next conversation, we’ve got to get better at this.”

He remained confident, however, that despite communication issues during the decision making process, the switch to semesters was a necessary and productive step for the college. “There is a school of thought that because I came from a semester system in my own experience since Principia that I came with the idea that we were going to switch to semesters. The actual history is that this idea came out of the tiger teams this summer, and I… certainly wasn’t trying to espouse advocacy of any position throughout this process, but really just to gather as much data as we could.”

Palmer insisted that, financially, now is the right time to institute this type of overarching and admittedly challenging change. “We expect that there will be some savings, in basically taking off twice and in landing twice, rather than taking off and landing three times.” He added, “I anticipate that we will make some investment in faculty time, because they are going to be adjusting their individual courses as well as the course sequences as well as the majors. …I see the [switch to the] semester as a transitional [cost], so it’s a one-time fee, if you will.”

The “investment” in faculty time required has been a cause for concern for certain faculty members. The Music department in particular, which sent a memo to faculty in October outlining specific objections to the then-proposed switch, has shown reluctance to accept Palmer’s assertion that the semester switch is a productive step. “We simply cannot see any advantage that would justify the time and effort that would be required to implement this proposed change to a semester system,” the memo states. “In our case, the semester plan would turn excellence into average.”

Though some senior faculty have expressed similar concerns about the time required to successfully implement necessary changes, none have gone so far as to assert that their programs would be significantly weakened by the semester change. “We’re going to have to be very flexible,” said Education faculty member Brian Johnson.

The Education program, which has been ranked the top teacher certification program in the state of Illinois, is unique in that it requires Education majors to double major in order to graduate. Though teacher-candidates may be limited in their choice of second major due to the scheduling restraints of the semester system, Johnson said he didn’t “see any difference” for the success of the program resulting from the shift.

“It’s a difficult dance [balancing efficiency and transparency] for the first time,” Johnson said of the process of decision making that took place in the fall. “This opportunity gives us a chance to see how well we’re doing that dance together.”

Tom Davidson, Chairman of the Economics and Business Administration Department, shares Johnson’s optimism. “We will have a quality program,” he said. Ultimately, Davidson insisted, the semester switch couldn’t make any difference in that respect.

While the Economics program will not change significantly, Davidson said the switch is going to make it more difficult for students who have to retake early required classes, such as Business Administration 251, to complete the Business Administration major within four years. He also said that freshmen will most likely have to declare earlier than has been typical in order to stay on schedule.

French professor Helene Brown pointed to the still murky concept of abroads in a semester system as a concern, but maintained that a significant issue for the language department is continuity, and a semester system schedule allows students to take a language course every semester. As for the language majors, however, a lot “depends on how all the other departments define their individual majors,” because a significant portion of language majors are double majors, and the feasibility of such an arrangement under a semester system is currently in question. “When people translate quarter hours to semester hours, if you add a bit, if everybody adds a bit, I don’t know how you’re going to fit everything.”

Palmer is careful to frame the transition period as an important opportunity to “revisit” everything that the institution of Principia does. “The internal process is the important one. Part of it is to teach us about being nimble and responsive enough in terms of saying we may want to make some changes and to feel comfortable with each other that we are in fact going to do those and that we are capable of doing those and being responsive to those. I think it is the first of many conversations that we are going to have.”

Barbara Palmer / photo

We are pleased to report that the close of this quarter marks the end of a productive ten weeks for your Student Government. If this quarter has gone by half as fast for you as it has for us, you might have missed what we have been up to, so here’s a quick update.

We kicked off the quarter with a “Leadershop” on the Matthew Code and defending campus thought, which was attended by all house boards and the Student Activities board. In the primary exercise of the evening, house boards applied inspiration drawn from specific Bible stories to solving challenges we face in our everyday lives as student leaders at Prin.

In response to the growing percentage of international students on campus, the All-Campus Diversity Head submitted a proposal to the house presidents, suggesting each house create the new position of “diversity head” for their house boards. As a result, houses have found eager students to fill the position who are now busy encouraging a spirit of communication, understanding, and education by bringing a global, multi-cultural perspective to house meetings. 

A survey conducted last fall by Student Government indicated many students are interested in increasing the availability and variety of food on campus. Dining Services concluded the best location for the “convenience store” would be in our current office, located behind the Pub. After further consideration, we proposed moving our offices into the alcoves at the back of the Dining Room. We are hoping to have the offices renovated and ready for the next group of student leaders to move in at the end of Winter Quarter. 

Finally, we have worked with other members of our community to explore the benefits of both quarter and semester systems. All house boards discussed the possibilities each system provided. These ideas were then compiled and passed on to the Tiger Team. Additionally, Student Government conducted a survey in which over 80% of the students on campus responded. 

We’ve loved serving our peers and community this quarter, and are looking forward to doing so in the winter. Please feel free to contact either of us with any questions or comments. 

Happy Holidays,

Johanna Publicover and Kenny D’Evelyn