Administration slow in reacting to report criticizing precepts

Last spring, a USG committee on precept reform concluded that "the precept system fails to provide an inspiring, intellectually stimulating environment for many students," but the University has made no formal response to the U-Council.

U-Councilors conducted an online survey of undergraduates last fall and received 1,660 responses. The committee of eight undergraduates, chaired by U-Councilor Josh Anderson '04, studied the results, interviewed deans, faculty members and preceptors and presented its findings at the April 8 U-Council meeting.

The report made several recommendations for improving the precept system, including instituting mandatory training for all graduate student preceptors, strengthening the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning's mentoring program, giving awards for excellence in precepting and requiring mid-semester precept evaluations.

At the U-Council's executive committee meeting Sept. 16, Anderson requested a formal response to the report by Monday's meeting of the U-Council, but members of the administration suggested they would not be prepared to respond until the November meeting.

"In my mind this a bit unreasonable," Anderson said. "It will have been six months before we get a formal response."

Associate Dean of the College Hank Dobin, chair of the faculty's course of study committee, said many of the U-Council's suggestions merit further study, but added that he "hadn't looked at it in two or three months."

It is on the agenda for the course of study committee, which has yet to meet this fall, he said.

Anderson expressed disappointment with the delay.

"We think that we have some serious claims that we're making and that they deserve serious consideration, and at the very least it seems that the University should commission their own report to investigate these claims or to find some data that . . . disproves them," he said.

Dobin said the committee would look at altering class sizes and perhaps the "pedagogical" teaching method.

Georgia Nugent, head of the McGraw Center, also said the U-Council report had merit.

"I do think that all of us, both instructors and students, could learn more about how to have useful discussions," she said. "The USG report highlighted that."

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The McGraw Center already runs several programs to help improve precepts. Last weekend, the center held an orientation for preceptors, attended by "80 or 90" people, she said. The orientation included practice teaching sessions in addition to a panel of undergraduates who spoke about why they found precepts useful.

The center also organizes a mentoring program which schedules weekly lunch meetings with the professor and preceptors in some larger courses.

Wilson College, in conjunction with the McGraw Center, is planning a series of meetings this fall for students to discuss precepts and how they could be improved, said Anne Wilson, the college's dean.

The meetings are "a way of following up on what the student government report said last year," she said. "We determined that the most useful way to respond . . . was to continue the dialogue."

The program might be expanded to other residential colleges if it is successful, Wilson said.

However, some students feel that the administration needs to do more. "We believe the administration and faculty can create a better precept system that will inspire students to work harder," said William Robinson '04, who served on the precept reform committee. "I would have liked to see the administration begin to pursue such a system this year instead of, in essence, delaying the process."

The McGraw Center holds mini-courses of approximately four sessions every semester and said that one of this fall's mini-courses would focus on precepting, she said.

Nugent said that this program, founded about three years ago, involves about thirty to forty courses each semester and added that professors have found this to be a valuable program.