Professors are no longer required to teach Winter Term, students only need two instead of three Winter Term courses to graduate and some courses will be offered for academic credit (0.5 credit). These are just some of the changes that were passed at the Feb. 3rd faculty meeting.
Vice President of Academic Affairs Larry Stimpert originally proposed these changes, among others, in a faculty meeting last fall. However, only after many changes to the proposal and various motions by the Committee on Academic Policy and Planning (CAPP), the Extended Studies Committee and suggestions made at faculty forums, were the changes actually made to Winter Term at the February faculty meeting.
"There is no perfect curriculum, but this is a very good proposal, thanks to the input from you [the faculty]," Stimpert said at the faculty meeting on Feb. 3rd. "Today is not the end of the story. CAPP has already committed itself to an ongoing review of Winter Term and ensuring that we can continue to improve Winter Term in the future."
Another modification to Winter Term is changing the name to 'Extended Study Opportunities,' to help encompass the experiential learning courses and the courses for academic credit. Whether they be in the January term, the May term or research over the summer. Financial aid will now be offered for all 'Extended Studies' programs, including on-campus courses and travel study courses.
The main problem that needed to be fixed with Winter Term, according to multiple faculty members and students, was the on-campus experience.
"Who wants to do an on campus winter term? No one," said Biology professor Vanessa Fox.
In the past, students have been required to participate in at least three Winter Term courses. The original proposal of moving the required amount of Winter Term courses from three to two was to compensate for the fact that faculty members are no longer required to teach Winter Term. The university anticipated that fewer professors would teach Winter Term because of the lack of requirement, so the university would not need as many students, but many faculty and staff disagreed with this. A motion to move the requirement back to three was proposed, but a tied vote of 62 to 62 was recorded at the February faculty meeting, resulting in the proposal staying with two required Winter Term courses to graduate.
Due to the changes, a student can now take an extended study opportunity course for academic credit and to fill their credit to graduate. Academic credit courses will be graded on an A-F scale and will count toward students GPA.
The main changes faculty will now have to decide is if they want to teach an extended study course or a course counting for academic credit. Experiential learning courses with P/F grading scales will still be offered on campus and in the form of trips.
With a period of three weeks devoted to a single class, the University wanted to make sure that students could get the full benefit and experience of the 'extended study opportunity.'
"The thing about that time period, that three week time period, is that there's so much flexibility built into it, that you can do all these field trips," Fox said. "You can run to Indy and go to the zoo, or you can run over to Terre Haute and look at the coal-fired power plant if you're studying greenhouse gas emissions. You can't do that during the regular academic semester because we all have such crazy schedules."
Although faculty are no longer required to teach a Winter Term course or trip, there is still incentive to teach a course since professors will be compensated for their course, just like during the regular semesters.
Monetary compensation aside, many professors say that they enjoy teaching Winter Term courses and will continue to do so even though it's not required.
"Experiential learning to me has been rewarding," said English professor Tom Chiarella. "I've had classes that I've worked very hard on in Winter Term, and not having to give credit has freed me in the same way I hope it frees students. But I really do understand, because I was department chair for five years in English, that some people feel really handcuffed by Winter Term. [The changes are] probably an intermediate step towards a better model, or the better model itself."