After a failed campaign last year to repeal the Expected
Cumulative Progress requirement, the Undergraduate Students
Association Council is focusing on minor adjustments to ease
student compliance with the policy, rather than aiming for its
elimination.
The Academic Affairs Commission is working to get units offered
for internships, community service and leadership involvement,
which would allow students with extracurricular activities to take
fewer classes and still meet their requirements.
ECP, first enacted for students enrolling in the fall of 2001,
requires that students meet cumulative unit requirements which
increase with the number of quarters in attendance, as well as
minimum progress of 13 units per quarter.
ECP mostly affects third-year and fourth-year students because
their course loads consist mainly of upper division classes.
These classes are usually only four units, so upperclassmen must
usually take four classes to meet minimum progress.
The campaign was chosen as an action agenda item last year,
which required all USAC offices to work on the campaign.
This year, the issue has not been directly addressed at Council
meetings in months.
Despite the failure of past efforts and the fact that USAC has
not chosen the campaign as one of its council-wide goals this year,
a handful of council members committed to the cause say they will
continue their efforts.
“USAC is actively working towards lessening the burden the
current program has on students,” said USAC President Jenny
Wood.
Wood said they are in the midst of developing a new joint
committee of USAC members and academic counselors to address
ECP.
“This committee will work to improve the ECP policy so
that students understand and are aware of the policy before a hold
is placed on them,” Wood said.
When a student falls below the current ECP requirement, they
must meet with a counselor and create a plan which organizes future
classes and clarifies the units they require to comply with the
policy.
Last year, USAC created a task force to address the negative
aspects of ECP and to help ensure a holistic college experience for
UCLA students, said Tommy Tseng, a former USAC general
representative who headed the ECP Task Force and is now a staffer
in Wood’s office.
The task force’s proposal and information gathered from an
online student survey were presented to faculty governing bodies in
the spring, but a vote to overturn the requirement has not been
taken by those groups.
The proposal aimed to prove that meeting the ECP requirement
places an undue burden on students that has negative consequences
for their academics and quality of life in college.
Although no concrete changes came out of the Task Force’s
proposal, Tseng said their efforts were not in vain, because the
administration was alerted to the fact that students are negatively
affected by ECP.
Their new goal is to make UCLA students more aware of the ECP
requirement and its negative effects, as well as help alleviate
them, said USAC Academic Affairs Commissioner Michelle
Sassounian.
The Academic Affairs Commission is planning a program which will
allow students to receive credits for activities beyond their
academic classes, such as internships, community service, and
campus leadership roles.
Sassounian said these activities are inherently academic and
students deserve credit for their hard work, rather than continuing
to fall behind.
UCLA students in particular have many rewarding and educational
opportunities available to them, and ECP requirements should
account for this, Sassounian said.
“Students at UCLA are in a unique position because we are
the only major public research university in a major city,”
Sassounian said.
“There’s so much opportunity that it infringes upon
our academic success,” she said.