College Council Talks Registration, SEEQ and First Year Experience Changes

By CONNOR MANNION

On Thursday, Feb. 12, Fordham College at Lincoln Center’s (FCLC) College Council met to discuss multiple topics, including the approved motion for simultaneous registration between FCLC and Fordham College at Rose Hill (FCRH). Both colleges will begin registration March 23, the day classes resume following spring break, according to Robert Grimes, dean of FCLC.

Robert Moniot, associate dean of FCLC, said “IT has prepared for the possibility of 2400 simultaneous logins … the main issue has been, according to IT, that students are logging in multiple times on different computers and laptops.”

Grimes acknowledged the difficulty of having students comply with being asked to not register early. “We asked students not to register for classes [at Rose Hill] when they weren’t allowed to, but they went and registered anyway.”

Gwenyth Jackaway, associate chair of the communication and media studies program at FCLC, raised a concern among her faculty “that academic advising would be taking place during midterms … this seems like it would be really stressful.” Grimes agreed, and while “midterms have not been officially rescheduled, you can ‘play it by ear’ and use discretion in scheduling exams,” he said. “But grades are necessary for advising purposes.”

For rising seniors, registration dates have been split into two days. Seniors with 83 or more credits will be able to register on March 23, while seniors with 60 or more credits may register the following day, March 24.

Other topics included a poor response rate for the electronic SEEQs (Summary of the Students’ Evaluation of Educational Quality). “For some of the more popular majors, the response rate is hovering around 50 percent, which is nothing to champion,” Grimes said.

“Past SEEQ results are available online for students, however I’m not sure where,” Grimes continued.

Jackaway agreed, she said “I wasn’t even aware they are available online for students to look at.”

Past SEEQ results are available online, through the MyFiles feature of my.fordham.edu. However, there has not been any recent attempt to publicize this, as there has been in the past.

Leighton Magoon, FCLC ’17 and treasurer of United Student Government (USG), asked “Maybe professors or the administration could email us a link to past SEEQs … it probably be a little better than RateMyProfessor if it’s publicized enough.”

The final major order of business was a proposal from Dean Grimes on the future of First Year Experience (FYE) and how it may be restructured completely in the next few years.

“The idea would be that Eloquentia Perfecta I [EP1] would be separated entirely from freshman academic advising … and that freshman advising itself would become a one credit class.”

The reasoning behind the motion to restructure FYE comes from the introduction of McKeon Residence Hall to FCLC. “McKeon was designed to solve the problems of resident students hiding in the ‘fortress’ of McMahon,” Grimes said. “As a result, the integration of freshman commuters and residents is not a much of a problem anymore, and [FYE] is designed to fix an issue that isn’t really there, because of McKeon.”