Senate Report: The New Proposed Orientation Program

For those who may not know, UW has a senate. Similar to national governance, the Senate at Waterloo approves University policy after it has passed through the various levels that operate beneath it. It is the second highest policy considering body, the highest being the Board of Governors (the Board and Senate handle distinctly different matters). If you are interested in university governance and getting involved at the Senate level, my term as Senator ends May 2011, and elections will be held in Winter 2011. It doesn’t matter what year you are, as long as you are in engineering, you can apply! Email me (senate@engmail) if this interests you, we can discuss the roles/responsibilities more.

Some interesting statistics:

Engineering Enrolment for 2010 is 103% of target, meaning we are 3% over enrolled. In contrast, UWaterloo’s enrolment as a whole is 109% of target.

Undergraduate tuition in Ontario was up 5.4% year over year, for an average dollar amount of $6307 (annual). In contrast, Graduate tuition in Ontario was up 10.6% year over year.

United Arab Emirates Campus Statistics:

1. 2009 = 21 Students, 20 of which made it to 2A
2. 2010 = 81 new students accepted
3. There are 8 Faculty, 4 Staff, 3 TAs, 1 Co-op Coordinator in our UAE Campus

NEW STUDENT TRANSITION PROGRAM

DISCLAIMER: All information in this article is what I am piecing together from verbal conversations; a formal written report/presentation from the administration will proceed in Oct to clear up many details.

At the last EngSoc meeting I ‘spilled the beans’ on some details of the vision that the UWaterloo administration has for how we should be transitioning students in their first year. Many will remember that last year there was a proposal before Senate to start classes during the Thursday and Friday that we would have traditionally been doing O-Week activities in. This proposal did not proceed, largely in part due to the strong student opposition and the concerned ear of Provost Feridun. This year, discussions have started on how the university plans to do better with student transition. The vision changes the transition as we have known it for many years into something much bigger, much broader, and much more encompassing. There are of course trade-offs to accomplish a lot of what is being proposed, one of those trade-offs is that the proposal does include classes on the Thursday and Friday of O-Week. The structural changes to the transition process can be seen in the two associated figures. I have tried to sum up the ‘big points’ below:

1)      Concerning O-Week itself, move-in will be bumped up a day. All ‘informative’ style activities will be moved into the new “Pre-Program”, and Thursday/Friday will be ‘soft classes’. The idea being that these classes aid in getting students introduced to academic life at Waterloo, not necessarily the start of course material. Thurs/Friday evening programming is do-able. It is important to note, that Upper Years will also be required to attend their classes on Thursday and Friday, their classes will not be ‘soft classes’.

2)      The Pre-Program is intended to engage students as early as possible, right from when we confirm that they intend on coming to our university. It will help parents learn what they need to know to support their children through University (potentially even allowing them to see Single & Sexy). Prep-tests will be moved into this area, potentially including an online ELPE. Students will be invited to campus to do a lot of the informative style activities that, as we know it now, still reside during O-Week.

3)      The Post-Program will support first year students academically in a profound way (and help upper years too). A Fall reading week will be introduced to give students a much needed break and a change to recoup and reset their trajectory if things weren’t going well in the first bit of the term. New facilities will be put in place to identify as early as possible students who are at risk academically, and support structures will be made more available. To support students who struggled with 1A, they will be able to have a reduced core course load in 1B while taking on an extra UNI101 course that would help them improve the skills they need to succeed going on without struggling as much as they did in 1A.

Something that has been very comforting to see is the rationale for all these changes. Last year, the rational was that we need 60 teaching days and that because Labour Day can move around so much it makes certain years really difficult to reach the 60 days. While this is certainly a legitimate logistics problem, the solution to truncate the orientation/transition program did not seem appropriate.

This year things are differently, and in radically positive way. New initiatives including the creation of a Director of Student Success are all in the name of exactly that, student success. A huge driver to the sweeping changes we are seeing in the transition program are all based on a desire to help students transition and succeed in their first year and beyond. A lot more implementation details will be available in October (things like the timeline for implementation, who will implement/lead certain elements, logistical details); everything here is my best attempt at summing up what we do know.

I have no doubt that there are certain elements that the student body may be uncomfortable with, so let’s cut all the emotional attachment and drive down into the real purpose: student transition and student success. Let’s figure out what works, what doesn’t, and why not. Let’s not be attached to the past simply for the sake of being attached to what is familiar. If we come together and think about this and really decide that what is being presented is not good for the students then so be it, but let’s decide that like true engineers: completely and totally objectively.