By YOVANNA GARCIA
Nearly 100 students, faculty and staff attended a town hall meeting to ask questions about and learn the reasons behind the most sweeping changes to Ramapo’s class schedule in a decade, a switch that increases the number of times a class meets each week and eliminates the experiential learning component.
News of the changed schedule earlier in the month generated 137 emails to Provost Beth Barnett. Barnett and Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Chris Romano, at a town hall on Feb. 12, listed accreditation and student’s responses to drinking on Tuesday nights as some of the key reasons for adjustments to the interim schedule.
Under the new Fall schedule, meeting times for classes will require students to attend each class two or three times a week as opposed to once or twice, for a total of 200 minutes per week. The interim schedule is experimental for two years, officials say.
Some classes will meet on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday for 70-minute periods, while others will run for 100 minutes per class on Tuesdays and Fridays; with some Monday and Thursday classes and fewer Monday and Wednesday night classes.And instead of having a “common hour,” where both students and faculty have breaks from class, two 55-minute breaks from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays will take place.
Only some senior seminar class schedules will go unchanged in addition to some labs, the RN-BSN and graduate programs, which will follow an alternate schedule. Faculty will be in charge of deciding what meeting times worked best for certain types of classes.
“This is not that we are moving towards three-day a week classes and every single class is going to be three days a week, but it’s an opportunity to implement a combination schedule so students and faculty have the option of the number of times per week those courses are going to meet,” said Barnett. “So that’s an important component as we look at the other schools that we compare ourselves to.”
In a Feb. 3 email from Barnett, Romano and Acting Dean of Students Melissa Van Der Wall informed Ramapo College students about the interim class schedule.
Accreditation and the impact at Ramapo
At the forum, Barnett explained that the schedule changes, resulted in part, from recommendation, the accrediting agency for the College. Every 10 years, Middle States comes to campus with about five evaluators to perform an analysis of the College, examining programs and services within the context of the 14 standards outlined in the Commission’s Characteristics of Excellence in Higher Education and the college’s own mission, according to the Ramapo website.
“…Accreditation matters,” said Barnett. “Ramapo College is accredited by Middle States Commission on Higher Education. They are the individuals who are charged with making certain that, in fact, the education that we are offering to our students is of higher quality. And, of course, that it meets all of the federal standards.”
The current schedule made it difficult to comply with federal and Middle States regulations that legitimize institutions of higher education, according to administrators.
If they are not happy with changes made by the college, Middle States can write letters of reprimand or they actually pull certain privileges from the college. One privilege, Barnett mentioned, is Ramapo’s ability to award financial aid from the federal government to students. Middle States can also list Ramapo as a non-accredited college.
“If anything were ever to happen to our accreditation, there would be some very swift and negative consequences,” added Barnett.
The end of the CEC component
Another change will be in the CEC. Between 2005 and 2006, a new curriculum was implemented at the College that instated 4 credit courses for most classes, and since 3.6 credits of the 4 credits earned are spent in class, the remaining 0.4 credits (5 hours per semester) constituted the Course Enrichment Component (CEC).
Middle States was pleased the college was doing a good job with the type of experiences being offered to students, but they were concerned that Ramapo was awarding students four credits for classes that were only meeting 180 minutes a week, despite requiring students to complete the course enrichment component in each course.“They asked us, well, show us the evidence that every single class is requiring the CEC, and that every student is doing the CEC. And we had a little bit of trouble with that,” she said.
Ramapo conducted a survey last semester and got responses that students were not completing the required CEC, as required by Middle States to remain an accredited college.
The CEC, a staple of the College that requires students to complete a minimum of five hours of unmonitored outside-the-classroom experiences to enhance student learning, will cease to exist with the new schedule because of the added 20-minute periods. However, individual faculty may still choose to utilize enrichment experiences in their courses.
Some students are disappointed by the elimination of the course enrichment component.
“I think the CEC requirement really added to my educational experience here at Ramapo,” said Angie Arias, a junior communications major. “It’s not a big of a hassle as some students make it seem and professors are usually pretty good at implementing unique learning opportunities into the component.”
To make up for the elimination of CEC, some classes will meet on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday for 70-minute periods, while others will run for 100 minutes per class on Tuesdays and Fridays; with some Monday and Thursday classes and fewer Monday and Wednesday night classes.
Conducting class courses with rigor
Barnett also addressed students’ concerns about the three-day course meeting times for the fall semester, adding that the college needs to be able to prove that all courses are being conducted with rigor.
“As far as the federal government is concerned, rigor is measured in the amount of time your class meets.” According to the federal government, in order for a class to be considered rigorous, it really matters how often you’re actually sitting in a seat.”
Barnett assured students that there is about 100 years of research in this type of research that addresses students learning better in classes where they can learn how to apply information as opposed to just memorizing.
Barnett also talked on the number of classes and labs that are not being utilized on Wednesdays, expressing that the college saw a major spike of alcohol consumption on Tuesday nights because there are not many classes on Wednesdays.
“We looked at other factors that impact students and one of the things that we see reported from students is what occurs on Tuesday nights if there’s no classes on Wednesday morning. In our First Year Survey, for those students who completed AlcoholEdu, they reported the number of drinks per week. There’s a major spike for Ramapo on Tuesday nights, which is very distinctive to Ramapo.”
The majority of schools that the college compares itself to all have a combination of once a week, twice a week or three days a week courses. There will still be opportunities for once a week classes depending on the nature of the course.
The town hall concluded with a question and answer session, where students were able to raise final thoughts on policy ranging from the ability of adjunct professors to teach certain courses that meet more times a week and how commuter students felt under threat of the new policy since they felt blindsided by the changes.
The schedule will be posted the first week of March, 30 days before registration begins so students are able to see what their schedules will look like and so that the administration can solve any problems with the schedule in those 30 days. Registration begins on March 30.
Very interesting, i had no idea. Also, very thouroughly reported.