2008 Woodie Awards
Syllabi to aid in class selection next year
Heather Turner
Issue date: 1/31/08 Section: News
The life of a Student Senate resolution can be a long one.
After six years of effort from the Senate academic affairs committee and a mandate passed by the Missouri legislature, students should have access to course syllabi when deciding on classes by 2009. Senate passed a resolution Sunday that begins the process of updating TruView with information on courses and professors.
Sophomore Lizz Esfeld, chair of the academic affairs committee, said the project has been passed down from committee chair to committee chair. She said the idea originally was sparked by Web sites that rank professors, such as ratemyprofessors.com.
"It was recognized by the Student Senate that students were using those sites to decide on courses," Esfeld said. "And they also recognized that a lot of that information was extremely biased or written by a lot of very angry students. So a lot of faculty members weren't represented particularly accurately."
She said Senate began to consider how to give students a Truman-specific way of giving feedback on what a course and a professor are like.
She said that at first, resolutions encompassing that idea encountered some resistance from faculty members who were opposed to their personal information being available on the Internet. From there, the idea evolved into making course syllabi available for students to view before choosing their classes. Esfeld said this gives professors a way to present their ideas about a course.
The Senate revisited the resolution after the Missouri Legislature passed HB 389, the Higher Education Student Funding Act, during the last session of 2007. According to the bill, public higher education institutions are required to make "pertinent information regarding course offerings and instructors available on its Internet Web site."
Esfeld said the faculty have had mixed reactions to the bill.
"That bill, obviously, upset some people on campus and in the state because it forces faculty to accept something they didn't want to accept," she said.
After six years of effort from the Senate academic affairs committee and a mandate passed by the Missouri legislature, students should have access to course syllabi when deciding on classes by 2009. Senate passed a resolution Sunday that begins the process of updating TruView with information on courses and professors.
Sophomore Lizz Esfeld, chair of the academic affairs committee, said the project has been passed down from committee chair to committee chair. She said the idea originally was sparked by Web sites that rank professors, such as ratemyprofessors.com.
"It was recognized by the Student Senate that students were using those sites to decide on courses," Esfeld said. "And they also recognized that a lot of that information was extremely biased or written by a lot of very angry students. So a lot of faculty members weren't represented particularly accurately."
She said Senate began to consider how to give students a Truman-specific way of giving feedback on what a course and a professor are like.
She said that at first, resolutions encompassing that idea encountered some resistance from faculty members who were opposed to their personal information being available on the Internet. From there, the idea evolved into making course syllabi available for students to view before choosing their classes. Esfeld said this gives professors a way to present their ideas about a course.
The Senate revisited the resolution after the Missouri Legislature passed HB 389, the Higher Education Student Funding Act, during the last session of 2007. According to the bill, public higher education institutions are required to make "pertinent information regarding course offerings and instructors available on its Internet Web site."
Esfeld said the faculty have had mixed reactions to the bill.
"That bill, obviously, upset some people on campus and in the state because it forces faculty to accept something they didn't want to accept," she said.
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