Nearly 30 members of the DePauw faculty debated potential changes to the current Winter Term model in an open forum yesterday afternoon.
Proposed changes to Winter Term include: the availability of classes for one-half credit, optional participation for faculty, one required off-campus experience and a one-time-only $5,000 grant for students to participate in or design their own off-campus experience.
Larry Stimpert, vice president of academic affairs, in collaboration with the DePauw deans sorted through comments and concerns from recent student and faculty forums.
"We have written down every comment, and we've tried to understand what are the patterns or commonalities of the kinds of things we've been hearing," Stimpert said. "We have a sense, that the key thing that we need to address, is this lack of consistency across the Winter Term."
Stimpert was referring to the inequality of the ability for opportunities for student socioeconomic class to participate in off campus winter terms.
The possible introduction of a $5,000 grant, under the working title of the "DePauw Opportunities Grant," would allow students who were previously unable to afford off-campus Winter Term experiences to do so. It would also reduce DePauw's financial expenditures on total aid by committing money previously given by merit aid.
"We right now, are giving $50 million to financial aid to our students, to put that in perspective, we spend $30 million on the entire academic program," Stimpert said. "Let's turn $5,000 of those merit aid awards into these 'Opportunity Grants,' which we would give one time. So we would actually save $15,000."
Many members of the faculty expressed concern about the incorporation of Winter Term with fall or spring courses as outlined in one of the initial proposals on Winter Term changes.
"There are many models out there, and the devil is in the details," said Raj Bellani, dean of academic affairs. "There's no wrong way to do it, it can be seen as extra or it could be part of the course."
Anne Harris, professor of art and art history and chair of the committee on experiential learning, said there are distinctions between previous Winter Term discussions and the current debates.
"Before, we did a grassroots survey first, proposal later," Harris said of the approaches taken to adjust winter term. "Here we're getting the proposal first and the discussion right away. I love having a proposal to think about instead of a survey to answer."
In addition to administration and requirement changes, Stimpert and many faculty members also discussed extreme concern with the social culture of Winter Term and the persistence of the "Winter Term Challenge" and binge drinking.
Harris said that she hopes minimizing the drinking over Winter Term will occur naturally if the classes are offered for credit. However, according to Stimpert, student reactions towards putting a stop to the "Winter Term Challenge" were different than faculty expectations.