In Wednesday night’s student senate meeting, the group discussed student government’s “One is Too Many” anti-sexual assault campaign, potential options for study abroad students, and other upcoming events this week.
Coccia said the campaign has received support from students.
“We had about 2800 signatures,” student body president Alex Coccia said.“And around 1100 students indicated that they would be interested in becoming more involved in some form or capacity. … We’ve been discussing various video series ideas among other things.”
Student body vice president Nancy Joyce said approximately 50 students have applied for the Food Services Student Advisory Board. Applications are due this Friday. The advisory board will be announced at next Tuesday’s town hall meeting run by Food Services. Senate debated a resolution penned by Department of Academic Affairs director Max Brown, which seeks to simplify the process of obtaining credit for courses taken while studying abroad.
After studying abroad last summer, Brown decided to attempt to simplify the process. “It was really complicated for me to get credit accepted, and it seemed strange to me that there should be such a complicated process,” he said. Emanuele Barrufaldi, who presented the resolution with Brown, added that the University as a whole is becoming increasingly international with more and more students choosing to study abroad.
However, every college has a different method of applying for transfer credit, as well as different policies for accepting it, Barrufaldi said. Additionally, many students—especially engineers—choose to study abroad during the summer because their curriculums allow little to no room for electives.
The goal for the Department of Academic Affairs is two-fold. First, they aim to standardize the process of applying for credit across the colleges. Second, the department will try to follow in the footsteps of peer institutions such as Vanderbilt University and Duke University by establishing an online database to supply data on courses that the University has pre-approved for transfer credit. That way students taking a class previously approved by their college would not have to re-submit its syllabus for approval.
“The first thing we’re going to do is look at the last 4-10 years where students have studied abroad and received credit. The idea is to encourage students to go to really competitive international institutions, places we can be sure that we can give transfer credit for,” Brown said.
Classes that aren’t pre-approved would be subject to a standardized approval process and, if approved, would have their information added.
The resolution, which officially requests the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Internationalization work with the Deans of the Undergraduate Colleges and Schools to establish the database and begin the process of standardization, passed unanimously.
