Le Provocateur

Issue date: 12/5/02 Section: Lead Stories

A first year student enrolls in courses prior to the Fall ´02 semester

Despite rumors regarding changes in the student course enrollment minimum required to run a course, little changes have been made to restrict courses.

Some Assumption College members were concerned the enrollment minimum was being changed from five students to ten, which would result in the cancellation of several core and/or major course requirements.

However, according to Mary Lou Anderson, Dean of the College, that is certainly not the case. Furthermore, the minimum has always ideally been ten, but due to the number of diverse majors, forcing a ten-student enrollment minimum could not be carried out at Assumption.

Anderson commented that the only change which occurred involved the merging of course sections that were deficient in the number of students enrolled. For example, one section of Accounting, in which six students were enrolled, was combined with a section of nine students to make one section of 15.

Keeping more sections open could require additional faculty and therefore could potentially increase tuition costs. As a result, Anderson believes that merging sections will serve students more efficiently, without wasting financial resources.

Although combining sections resulted in the cancellation of 15 sections, according to Anderson, "No students were shut out of a course." Also, there are still several courses with fewer than 10 enrolled running this spring.

The Chair of the Foreign Language Department, Dona Kercher, expressed apprehension regarding this issue. Kercher said she is "indeed concerned about the impact that a ten-student minimum enrollment would have on offerings in foreign languages, other than Spanish."

Yet, Anderson commented that most departments, including Foreign Languages, would not be affected by a course enrollment minimum, considering most courses in Greek and Latin, in particular, do not enroll more than ten students per course. Anderson also said that while language and culture is extremely important, "because Assumption does not have a foreign language requirement, it is difficult to enroll students in courses, other than Spanish."

Further, Anderson attests that the College's main goal is to serve more students and that Assumption "aims to meet the needs of the students for core and major courses, then allow them some choice of electives as well."

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools