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Window to a world of knowledge
by Jacqueline Couillard
The University has finally woken up to look out the world's windows. Studying abroad is and has been a viable option for U students at least since the middle of this century with the inception of the SPAN program. However, as our feature story this month points out, IT students have long had concerns about losing time they could have spent on their major requirements when going abroad. Programs encompassing IT options abroad were past due.
Perhaps one of the reasons I chose to discuss this in this month's editorial is that I believe strongly that a research institute the size of the University has no excuse not to have programs designed to offer international experiences in any major. As students, we pay for tuition and services, and I would hope, and am pleased to see happening, that one of the services a large research institution can provide would be to organize programs abroad from as many different fields of study as possible.
My experience abroad is limited to the summer I spent attending a German Gymnasium (the equivalent of a college-prep high school), and living with a host family. If I could go back to being a freshman, I would probably jump at the chance to study abroad in my major. Next year will be a test run of programs for just that. Staff members at the Global Campus expect to have a full line-up of study abroad options for all IT majors within a year, and the IT administration is helping fund the effort.
Nearly all the students profiled in this issue's "Exploring IT Abroad" story went abroad despite the possibility that it might delay their graduation or leave them with more liberal arts credits than they need for graduation. A lesson that University administrators could take from this situation is to be proactive in designing programs and policies to meet student needs. Like the study abroad programs for IT, many policies, procedures, and programs have been overdue at the University. Unfortunately, many still are. It is a bureaucratic nightmare to get both an IT major and CLA major to appear simultaneously on a transcript. Many advisers at the University don't even know that it is possible to work toward two degrees in two different colleges at the University simultaneously.
That may seem to be an esoteric example. So here are a few others. If you have an ongoing scholarship that requires you to send in a transcript quarterly, you already know that the Office of the Registrar does not store the recipient's address on the same computers that they use to call up your transcript. You have to bring the address every time.
Or let's say that you are a part of a campus life organization, either a sports club, a residence hall, or an IT student group. The University will have changed your group's financial system to CUFS, and now you can no longer simply write checks or get reimbursed without advance paperwork for the little expenses in life like stamps, parking for guest speakers, or highway tolls when travelling with the group.
All this may sound menial, but the point is that the University is large enough to employ people to work out these problems before they arise, to think ahead. And we, as students, should not expect the administrators to be the only proactive arm of the University.
In this issue's story about IT students and communication skills, students had some firm opinions on the senior writing requirement, yet the same students are sitting by and letting others draft a better set of requirements without offering input. I am one of those students. We all are, sometimes. But imagine what this place would be like if we all were to wake up from our apathy and take charge of what matters to us.
