The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate's Education Committee is leading an effort to foster intellectualism and promote interaction between students and faculty.
Education Committee Co-chair Brandon Rattiner said that while Tufts does cultivate a relatively intellectual environment, there are insufficient opportunities for connections between undergraduates and faculty members. "We're trying to make [this process] easier," said Rattiner, a junior. "A lot of the time, students are forced to do this stuff on their own."
"Student government doesn't do enough to foster a rich intellectual environment on campus," TCU President Duncan Pickard added. The Education Committee is seeking to address this through fostering initiatives ranging from conversations in the style of the Synaptic Scholars' Fireside Chats to an online forum where faculty can ask for student volunteers to help them with research.
"We want to try and make the learning experience more personal and more meaningful," Rattiner said.
The committee is seeking feedback from both students and faculty on how to best improve on-campus learning, with the goal of introducing programming next semester. Rattiner said the committee plans to sponsor roundtables, focus groups and surveys of students beginning next semester to get a sense of student opinions. At the same time, the committee will survey Tufts' faculty members, asking what they believe needs to be improved.
Both Pickard, a junior, and Rattiner pointed to the Synaptic Scholars' Fireside Chats, where students and faculty come together to have conversations on broad topics such as "Is There a Right and a Wrong?," as a model of the kind of interaction they hope to promote. The Institute for Global Leadership established the chats program during the 2006-07 academic year "to connect the knowledge and expertise of Tufts faculty with undergraduate interests and academic pursuits," according to the institute's Web site.
Pickard, who is also a member of the Education Committee, said the committee would like to sponsor its own fireside chats and at the same time "work with other student groups that are already using the format" to promote dialogue between students and faculty.
Other potential initiatives include holding a debate between faculty members next semester and hosting more public lectures by members of the Tufts faculty. "Instead of bringing in outside people to Tufts to speak about issues, [we should] have our professors give lectures about what they've been researching," Rattiner said.
Additionally, the Education Committee plans to lobby for the creation of an online forum where faculty members "can talk about what they're researching and solicit volunteers," Rattiner said. The committee also proposes to arrange for professors to publish syllabi online before course registration so that students can get a better sense of course material before signing up.
Pickard said he expects other groups to pick up on some of the goals of the Education Committee's plan. "Some administrators have described it as the next trend here in student programming," he said, referring to increasing faculty-student interactions.
Pickard stressed that faculty and students alike are interested in establishing better connections outside of classes. "We want to find ways to fulfill that interest," Pickard said.
Rattiner echoed the belief that interest on both sides is present and noted that it is up to both students and faculty to get involved. "I think it's time that students demanded that their teachers be more engaged, and I think it's time for teachers to demand that students be more interested," he said. "It works both ways."
