Planning for student-initiated courses is well underway, and as
early as this spring quarter students may be able to register for
courses developed by their fellow students.
The Academic Affairs Commission began working on the concept of
student-initiated courses last spring in a program called the
experimental college, an extension of the diversity requirement
campaign.
Despite the defeat of the diversity requirement proposal,
Michelle Sassounian, a staff member with the academic affairs
commission, said she believes the experimental college now has the
support of the administration and faculty to be approved before
this spring quarter.
If approved, students would be able to register for a training
course in the spring and teach or facilitate a course next fall
quarter, which Sassounian said she hopes will make it easier for
students to initiate courses.
One course was successfully started last spring, and will
definitely be offered this spring as well. Environment 185, a
one-unit course on sustainable living, brings a different professor
to lecture each week. The class was initiated by fifth-year
political science student Michael Cox, who estimated that by the
end of last spring quarter, the course had over 60 students.
Cox said the course is a great introduction, especially for
first- and second-year students, and that it takes “a
different approach to ecology.”
“It’s illustrating the interconnectedness and
interdependence of all forms of life in a very creative way,”
he said.
His goal now is to establish action research project groups this
spring. The groups would have three to five students, who would
earn four units to design a project related to improving the
quality of life on campus or in the community while working with a
professor.
Cox said the action research groups are an effective, affordable
model that universities anywhere could adopt.
“It’s the best model I’ve seen for really
combining activism and education, creating a win-win situation with
everybody,” he said.
Environment 185 and the action research groups were both part of
an initiative by the California Sustainability Coalition that was
implemented on five University of California campuses.
The research groups were so successful at UC Santa Barbara that
students opted to expand the program, which grew from four groups
in one department last spring to 12 groups in five different
departments in the fall.
Katie Maynard, the director of group studies projects at UCSB,
said the research groups accomplished concrete goals such as
reducing packaging and food waste in the dining commons and
connecting two local farmers to the dining commons purchasing
director for negotiations.
One student even received three job offers after his final
presentation on recycled items and sustainability, and currently
works for UCSB purchasing, Maynard said.
“Student-initiated classes really give (students) a chance
to say what they’re excited about, what they want to work on,
and gives them an opportunity to really give feedback in way
they’ve never been able to before,” she said.
At UCLA, Sassounian said she and the academic affairs commission
hope to bring the same excitement and active learning to the campus
that student-initiated courses bring to other campuses.
Unlike the sustainability courses, the experimental college
courses would be taught or facilitated by students, modeled after
the DeCALs at UC Berkeley.
Sassounian said the experimental college faced challenges in
selling the idea to faculty, who she said were “not really
ready for what they perceived to be a totally different form of
education.”
After explaining the program to professors, Sassounian said the
infrastructure for the program is in place.
The courses would be two units and be graded pass/no pass, which
Sassounian said promotes a “democratic educational
setting.”
“All too often at UCLA, students are not exercising their
own insights, they’re just listening and regurgitating. In a
democratic educational setting, they are forced to kind of exercise
their own valuable insights,” she said.