A common misconception among students is that a professor's role is to teach and conduct research. In addition to those responsibilities, though, professors are also vital members of the standing faculty committees at Tufts.
"A university is ideally a democratic institution," Dean of Academic Advising and Undergraduate Studies Carmen Lowe said. "The faculty governs the university, [designs] the rigor of the curriculum and votes on committees."
The contributions that faculty make to the university are represented in the many committees at Tufts. In looking at the list, however, the responsibilities of many of the committees seem unintelligible.
For example, it might not be immediately clear what the Educational Policy Committee (EPC) does. The Educational Policy Committee addresses issues in overarching policies that affect the university as a whole. Although Tufts has separate academic and curriculum committees for the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering, the EPC provides uniformity for all faculty and students.
"It's an important faculty committee - that includes students and administrators - because it gives us a chance to review Tufts' academic policies and educational policies, and change policies as the world changes, as Tufts changes," Lowe said.
The EPC consists of Arts and Sciences and Engineering (AS&E) faculty representing many different departments, as well as administrators and students. The students' perspectives on their academic experiences are critical to the decisions the committee makes, Lowe said.
"I don't know what kind of democracy it would be if you didn't take student voices into account," she said.
According to current EPC chair and Professor of Geology Jack Ridge, the members of the committee discuss issues that do not involve individual programs or specific courses, but instead relate to uniform educational policies.
"[The goal is] to create educational policies that promote a good education," he said. "Sometimes we're sort of a police force, a little bit. We try to prevent things from happening that we think are going to be detrimental to students, and we try to create policies so there's some uniformity and understanding of what's required."
In the past, the EPC has dealt with the number of Advanced Placement (AP) credits students can apply to their degrees, the grading system and the terms for an 'Incomplete' in a course, the indication of participation in Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) on transcripts and many other issues.
"We're essentially the go-to body when an issue comes up that can't be resolved within a single school," Professor of Biomedical Engineering Mark Cronin-Golomb, an EPC member, said. "We field questions about issues that might affect the overall educational mission of the university
[and] we try to make our best efforts formulating policy that's in the best interest of the university."
According to Ridge, the administration generates many suggestions for the EPC to review because they deal with the policies on a daily basis. Faculty members, though, rely on the EPC to police the policies of the institution and therefore submit their concerns regarding specific policies.
The members of EPC will conduct several meetings every semester and will contribute their opinions on the topics of that meeting's agenda.
"We need to figure out ways to make a conducive learning environment and to bridge the gap between the students and the teachers," EPC member and TCU Senator Arielle Evans, a sophomore, said. "One way to do that is to have them in a room together and figure things out [to] accommodate everyone."
Many issues are cleared by a vote of faculty members on EPC. Other issues - those considered broader or overarching - require the EPC to organize a proposal to bring to the entire AS&E faculty for a vote.
A significant issue that was assessed last year was Tufts' antiquated course evaluation system. According to Lowe, the current process is both costly and inefficient, and despite some resistance from faculty it was made clear that the method was not working for logistical reasons.
Within the EPC, a separate subcommittee was formed to tackle the process of setting up the online evaluations, including communicating and working with the Center for Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) and University Information Technology (UIT). Although the evaluation will look the same the first year it launches online, the subcommittee will next address the concerns with the questions asked.
"Then the plan for this [sub]committee is to make a new course evaluation form and ask different questions," Ridge said. "There is a lot if dissatisfaction with the present paper form. We're trying to deal with that problem."
This year, one particular issue of great concern to the faculty that has occupied much of the discussion within the committee is online, distance-learning courses. Last year's summer session piloted Tufts' first online course. According to Lowe, there are currently no policies regulating Tufts courses online.
"There's a whole list of policy points that might need to be dealt with that we're trying to develop, and then we'll have to try to make an educated decision about what to do with each one," Ridge said.
The maintenance of the quality of Tufts' courses, the approval of and guidelines governing the courses and the residential requirement for undergraduates are all challenges contributing to the difficulties that the committee has had in undertaking this issue.
"When you offer online courses, you're able to offer them to people outside the university, and so, it has the potential to make money," Ridge said. "We just want to make sure that's not driving the issue and that we maintain high quality standards."
In this case, the student voice is substantial. Evans, who took an oncourse last summer, has been able to bring firsthand experience to committee discussions.
"Especially with the online courses, there is that generation gap," she said. "A lot of the professors were really against it at first. It was not something they were comfortable with or had ever done before, but a lot of colleges are now doing online courses. So we're trying to figure out how to balance classroom learning with online learning."
In addition to concentrating on policy issues, the EPC is also in the process of restructuring its bylaws to ensure accuracy.
"We are editing or revising the Bulletin where it applies to general educational policies," Ridge said. "But it's basically to update what we do and bring the bylaws to conformity with what we actually do. The old bylaws are actually very confusing to us [with] a lot of old language."
Despite the adjustment in the official writing, the EPC is fundamentally working to fulfill the academic objectives of the university as a whole, as compared to focusing on the individual schools separately.
"Obviously certain elements of an Engineering education are different than certain elements of an Arts and Sciences education, and we want to keep that flexibility," Lowe said. "But there's a certain central Tufts identity that we want to maintain, certain standards of rigor and certain kinds of requirements, and that's what the EPC does."
