For 15 minutes of the Temple Student Government General Assembly meeting yesterday, Oct. 22, attendees had the opportunity to voice their concerns about the university-wide general education program.
This discussion marked the second open forum in which TSG Student Body President David Lopez and his team has asked for feedback from students. Lopez along with Director of Academic Affairs Patricia Boateng selected Monday’s topic.
“TSG wants to do open forums in general and I thought it would be a really good idea to have one on the general education program as a follow-up to the gen-ed report,” Boateng said.
Some of the concerns raised during the meeting included: the difficulty of gen-eds compared to major classes, the number of books required for gen-ed classes, the disparity between the level of difficulty among mosaic classes and why two science classes are required when the other areas only require one.
“These classes can take a ton of hours per week and weigh as heavily as my major classes. It is important to broaden my horizons, but it shouldn’t affect my GPA that heavily,” John Shaw, junior MIS major said at the meeting.
The most common complaint that Boateng said she often hears is that students feel that the program contains too many classes and detracts attention from their major and class sequence.
“I think that when students can’t make a connection between what they learn in gen-eds and what’s going on in their life or what’s going on in their major that’s when they have issues,” Boatend said. “They almost feel that they are wasting their time, to be honest.”
Similar to the open forum on Student Financial Services, Boateng plans to present the comments from Monday’s meeting with Director of General Education Istvan Varkonyi and invite Varkonyi to a future meeting.
“My committee and I thought it would be refreshing to not just take questions, but then also be able to provide answers not just from us students, but from someone who is in charge of it and has a perspective from the inside,” Boateng said. “We thought that would be more beneficial to the students.”
Other topics discussed at Monday’s meeting included Sustainability Week events and the Zombie Run this Sunday, Oct. 28.
The grounds and sustainability committee is supporting the Sustainability Day Fair at the Bell Tower on Wednesday, Oct. 24, starting at 11 a.m. The fair is in celebration of Sustainability Day on Wednesday and Sustainability Week, which began yesterday.
Furthermore, in the spirit of the season, the local and community affairs committee is supporting the Zombie Run, a 3K race that features obstacles and zombies as hindrances to the runners, on Sunday, at 3:30 p.m. in front of the Student Center.
Monday’s TSG general assembly meeting allowed students to voice opinions about the gen-ed program and learn about events that various student government committees are supporting.
Laura Detter can be reached at laura.detter@temple.edu.
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