Last week, the Student Senate unanimously approved the appointment of David Fannon ’04 to Judiciary Board Chair. They also appointed Melenie Greene, Victoria Gardner, and Kevin Kane to the Student/Faculty Senate Joint Commission on Academic Integrity. The job of this commission is to look into revisions of academic dishonesty policies and rules with new modes of teaching, such as group work projects and back files of exams.
The Committee approved increasing in the number of credits required to graduate from the School of Science from 124 to 128. The reason for this change is to allow majors to require more science courses and help to maintain the integrity of the program. The Class of 2006 will be the first class affected by the change.
The Senate set office hours for itself. For the rest of the semester, two senators will be available to hear questions and concerns in the Rensselaer Union between 8 pm and 9 pm Monday through Thursday.
The Academic Affairs Committee meets every other Thursday at 7 pm in the Student Government Suite in the Union. It is chaired by Graduate Senator Ayala Cnaan.
This year, the Academic Affairs Committee is focusing on four main issues.
First, the committee is looking at the issue of prestige pricing. According to Committee Chair Cnaan, this is the biggest issue facing the committee this semester. Prestige pricing is the practice of raising the cost of tuition in order to make the Institute appear to be on a level with more expensive but more prestigious schools.
Although the Institute denies that it practices prestige pricing, Cnaan states that the steady tuition increases—which are greater than would be expected due to inflation—amount to the same thing. The tuition increases hurt many students since financial aid is based on family income, not how much the school costs.
Furthermore, the financial aid award a student is offered their first year remains the same for his entire education at RPI. It does not change, even if family income or tuition change. These factors, with the rising income, mean that more and more students aren’t able to afford RPI.
The Committee is currently collecting information on where financial aid comes from, where it is going, what other schools are charging, and how they set their prices, with the end goal of creating a report to be presented to the Senate and distributed to the students.
They are also looking at the issues of temperature control in classroom, especially in Ricketts, Sage Lab, and the Carnegie Building. Many classrooms in these buildings are either too hot or too cold.
A survey is in the process of creation and will be given to professors in order to determine which rooms are most affected by the heat problem. The committee also plans to talk to Physical Facilities about what can be done about the problem. Eventually, they will be making a recommendation for this problem.
They are working on the problem of the limited English language skills of some graduate TAs as well. This is not only a problem for students who have trouble understanding their TAs but also for the TAs who are frustrated by difficulties communicating with their students.
The committee is looking at a number of possible solutions, including advocation of all international graduate TAs taking English Speaking programs several months before coming to RPI and on-going friendly English lessons after they arrive.
"The goal is not to try to limit them from being TAs, but to facilitate a better TA student relationship," says Cnaan.
Finally, along with the Senate Computing Committee, the Academic Affairs Committee is evaluating the laptop program. It mainly wants to examine how useful the laptops are in the classroom by creating a survey for professors.
