Journal 3

During the PEP sessions students talked about things they could do to change Rollins for the better. Many of these ideas were very interesting. Ones that I strongly agree with are hiring more professors so more courses can be offered, more course selection, more options for smaller majors, and opening student records for schedule changing before classes start. Things that I don’t think are as necessary to enhance Rollins are having a community service requirement for graduation, and having rewards for good grades. The list covered a whole bunch of different areas so I can’t think of anything to add to the list that isn’t already on it.

The first thing that I think really needs to be changed is hiring more professors so more courses are available and it is easier to complete course requirements. Right now at Rollins, I feel that it is really hard to get into courses that fulfill general education requirements. Usually there are a lot of people trying to get into these types of courses because everyone is required to take them. Therefore it makes it really hard for people to get general education requirements. I know it personally took me 4 semesters to get into a course that I wanted to take because it went toward a general education requirement. The fact that there are limits to how many students are allowed in each class makes it even harder for students to get into classes. However, if more professors were hired more courses could be offered. It would even make it easier if there were multiple times offered for the same course therefore popular course could accommodate more people. Since I have been here I haven ‘t really seen any department offering more courses for students. I think the administration could help make theses changes possible. If the school thought they wanted more courses because students weren’t able to get into courses they wanted than Rollins might actually decide to offer more classes. However I do understand that hiring more professors would cost the school quite a bit of money, so I am sure it would be hard for them to hire more professors without increasing the cost of tuition or something similar.

Another thing I agree with is that there should be more options available to those who are in smaller majors. I know personally for my major not every course is offered every semester, and usually only one course is offered for the upper level courses so if it doesn’t fit in your schedule you are screwed. However if there were more options than it would be easier for students to complete their majors. Right now if you can’t take a class one semester than you probably would have to wait a year or more to take it. This problem could also be solved by hiring more professors. Also, it seems to me that in my major there are way more general education requirements offered than other courses. Which takes professors away from teaching the upper level classes cause they have to teach the lower level classes. I think Rollins should really try to fix this problem. If they did they may get more students majoring in different areas than just a lot of students majoring in a few areas and few students majoring in other areas. Again this problem could be solved by hiring more professors, and if the administration recognized it as a problem they could take steps to do something about it.