OUR VIEWS Consensus Opinion

Analyzing academics

The highest levels of Tech faculty and administration came together to explore issues related to the undergraduate curriculum over Fall Break. The weekend retreat saw administrators discussing a variety of proposals to dramatically change several aspects of the way undergrads are educated.

According to Anu Parvatiyar, undergraduate student body president, the last initiative with this sort of focus took place back in 1995, prior to Tech converting to semesters. In light of the vast time gap since the last time undergraduate education received a broad evaluation, it's good to see administrators commencing a review.

Unfortunately, however, administrators only saw fit to invite three students (two of them from SGA) to this brainstorming session. While Ray Vito, the recently appointed vice provost of graduate and undergraduate education, says student participation will be expanded as they "wind down," we hope more and more students become involved during the entire process rather than at the end. Wide student involvement must be encouraged from the outset, and the administration should make an effort to reach out to students with diverse majors and school experiences and bring them into the conversation.

At the same time, as administrators investigate the varied approaches to reforming the undergraduate degree, they must make sure they make changes that are actually necessary and beneficial, rather than blindly following buzzwords like "experiential learning" or "interdisciplinary education." Don't get us wrong-we support both initiatives-but a half-hearted implementation that serves no purpose beyond letting Tech add a line to its brochures helps no one.

Mission critical

T-Square's rollout hit a low point last week as the system saw a series of unplanned outages. Many of the problems were caused by a new tool created to automatically submit assignments causing repeated performance issues and security flaws. The tool was a poor replacement for a feature many were accustomed to from WebCT and WebWork: letting students submit an assignment multiple times prior to a due date. Despite faculty and students requesting the functionality from the earliest trial stages of the software, it is only now being worked on.

Professors will be hesitant to use a tool that sees frequent downtime, and students who are forced to rely on the system to do their assignments are left seething when it goes down. As such, it is crucial that T-Square's rough week is not repeated.