Although service-learning classes are offered in many different areas through all of Washington University’s schools, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) is specifically institutionalizing community-based learning in its curriculum.

Across departments at the University, there are more than forty service-learning classes taught each semester. According to Jennifer Harping, the program manager for the Gephardt Institute for Public Service, these courses have been on campus for quite some time. However, they have only recently become popular.

The Gephardt Institute’s brochure on community-based learning courses emphasizes their many advantages, which include applying learning in real-life and developing critical thinking skills.

“You are engaging with whatever it is you’re learning about in a different way, so the community component becomes a new way to learn,” Harping said.

The Olin Business School is also working on making service-learning a larger part of its curriculum; one plan to achieve this is the enhancement of the Olin Experience program, in which second-year business school students can apply the skills they learn in non-profit consulting roles.

Neither WGSS nor the business school require all of their students to participate in the programs, but students are encouraged to do so.

“It’s not advisable to have students in the community who don’t want to be in the community, because that can often lead to projects that don’t go as well or students [who] aren’t as invested in the work,” Harping said.

Next semester, three community-based learning classes will be offered in WGSS. These courses will be capped at 12 to 15 students.

Unlike many of the service-based courses, Jami Ake’s course, “Projects in Domestic Violence,” has been offered for many years. Ake’s students work with Lydia’s House, a transitional facility for abused women and their children.

Ake believes that the service component of the course also allows students to better contribute academically.

The course concludes with a final project including research, reflections and students’ ideas about how to proceed with research after their new service experience.

Other courses offered include “Sexual Health and the City” and “Sex, Lies, and Myths of the Mother.”

The Gephardt Institute offers faculty grants each semester to encourage professors to add a service-learning component to their courses. Faculty can apply for grants in November, and they are given out in January. They then have three semesters to start a community-based learning course. These courses are generally based on professors’ research interests.

The Gephardt Institute is working with departments to assist them in implementing new courses and making connections with community partnerships.

“There’s more courses offered, so more students are involved,” Harping said. “I think we’ve also heard from students that [these community-based courses are] something they want.”

(Erin Mitchell | Student Life)

The only official pieces of information available to all students when choosing classes are a short course description that rarely changes from year to year and numerical course evaluation scores. Other information comes from unreliable sources, such as friends who have taken a class (sometimes from a totally different professor) and Web sites like ratemyprofessors.com.

I believe this information is woefully inadequate and makes it very hard for students to make important decisions regarding what classes to take. While we all have requirements we have to fulfill to graduate, one of the joys of being a college student is being able to take a class totally unrelated to one’s major or focus just for fun. In addition, many majors require only a certain number of electives to complete, leaving exactly which classes to take up to the students themselves. Thus, the academic part of our college experience is largely shaped by the classes we choose to take. As an economics major, my education could be very different from that of another economics majors because of a few clicks on​

WebSTAC each spring and fall. The importance of choosing classes cannot be overstated, and students ought to have a better idea of what they are getting into when they register for classes.

I would first like to applaud last Monday’s staff editorial requesting that syllabi for courses be posted online in order to assist students in choosing courses. I think that it is a great idea to improve upon the serious lack of information that is available to students when they choose courses. I would also like to suggest that an additional measure be taken. I propose that when courses are posted on WebSTAC each semester, each listing should be accompanied by a short description written by the professor who will be teaching the course next semester.

What would this accomplish? It would make students aware of possible differences in a given professor’s teaching style, grading style and philosophy when teaching the given course, compared to previous iterations of the same course. A professor’s description would also let students know what really will be taught, instead of a stock course description that sometimes poorly describes the course.

In large introductory classes like calculus and chemistry, the classroom experience may not differ greatly from professor to professor, but in upper-level elective courses, the same class taught by two different professors may not even seem like the same class at all. This is not necessarily a bad thing—intellectual diversity rarely is—but as a student, it would be nice to be made aware of this possibility. This simple addition to the course listings would make choosing classes much easier, and it would reduce the number of mistakes (often followed by dropped classes) that students make.

Signing up for a class amounts to an agreement on the part of the student to tens of hours of class, homework and studying over the course of the semester. In addition, all of the Wash. U. professors I have encountered take their teaching very seriously and devote significant time to their courses. Knowing this, is it too much to ask professors to take 20 minutes to summarize their courses? Professors might even be happy to do this, knowing it may lead to more motivated students.

No professor wants half of their class to drop out in the first several weeks simply due to an inaccurate course description that they may not even have had control over. Simply put, additional course descriptions would benefit professors and students alike, and implementing one would have minimal cost. I hope this suggestion is heard by the relevant administrators and is given some serious thought.

Starting in fall of the next academic year, Organic Chemistry Laboratory will be a two-semester course.

“This is going to be great for the students. The primary drive behind this is discussion amongst the faculty that this is the best way to teach the subject. This is going to be the best for the students and show how laboratory contributes to an understanding of the material,” Undergraduate Organic Laboratory Supervisor Steven Kinsley said.

Currently, the organic chemistry lab is taught as a one-semester, two-credit course, generally taken in the spring semester of a student’s sophomore year.

“To teach the course in one semester we cover the equivalent amount of information that is covered in a two semester course,” Kinsley said. “Wash. U. frequently has to furnish a letter to medical schools that says that our one semester course is actually equivalent to two semesters.”

The University’s shift is in accord with the structure of most universities, which teach the laboratory portion of the course over two semesters in conjunction with the organic chemistry lecture.

Washington University students enrolled in organic chemistry currently take three credits of organic chemistry lecture in the fall semester and three credits of lecture in the spring, with two additional laboratory credits.

Next year, students will take four credits of a combined lecture-laboratory each of the two semesters.

This switch to the two-semester laboratory course does not mean that students will be spending more time in the lab. According to Kinsley, students should be spending a few less hours in class.

With the current setup, students have 12 organic laboratory periods once a week from 1 to 6 p.m. during spring semester. Next year students will have 14 laboratory periods every other week from 1 to 5 p.m. over the course of two semesters. Students will be taking 56 hours of lab compared to the 60 hours taken now.

“It’s a good thing that it is every other week, because the once a week for five hours is very difficult. It’s very long and tiring,” said sophomore Lily Kuo, who is currently enrolled in the lab portion of the course.

According to Kinsley, the change to this class will be beneficial to students since the laboratory portion of the class will now be taught in tandem with the material covered in the lecture portion of the course throughout the year.

“One of the best things about it is that with doing the full-year course, the lab serves as a complement with the lecture. When a topic is covered in the lecture it is covered simultaneously in the laboratory,” Kinsley said. “It will really reinforce the lecture and they will mutually support each other better than they do now. It’s more challenging to do it the way we do it now.”

Sophomore Michael Post is currently enrolled in the lab and lecture and said that in lab he is currently going over material that was covered in lecture in October.

“I think the fact that lab is correlated with the lecture will be really beneficial to learning the material,” Post said. “It will really solidify what you’ve learned.”

Additionally, Kinsley said that the changes to the course allow for more flexibility and creativity in the experiments conducted in laboratory. Next year there will be 14 experiments—four more than the 10 in which students participated in this year. 
Included in the 14 experiments are two that Kinsley personally designed and will only be performed at Washington University.

Because of moving to the two-semester sequence, you do get a chance to have more variety in the chemistry. Basically, about 40 percent of the course is different stuff than we are currently doing,” Kinsley said.

According to Kuo, one of the drawbacks of this switch is that it will be more difficult for students to take organic chemistry over the summer at other colleges.

Kuo took both semesters of the lecture at another university over the summer, and is now enrolled in just the lab this semester. Next year—since the lab and lecture will be combined as one course—this option will not be available.

“For students who decide they want to take it over the summer, it will encourage them to take it here since you cannot take the lab later,” Kuo said.

Kinsley said that the organic laboratory and lecture will still be offered as separate courses during the summer at the University.

“There will be a little bit of a transition period, but we don’t anticipate it will involve many students,” Kinsley said.

Instead of receiving a separate grade for the laboratory portion of the class, students next year will receive one grade each semester for the combined four credits of organic lab and lecture. To account for the fact that most students tend to perform slightly better in lab than lecture, Kinsley said that the curve would be a little higher next year to keep the grades consistent with previous years.

So far, Kinsley has heard a favorable response to the revamped course structure. 
“This is done with the intent that it will work better and I think that having a lab every other week will be much more comfortable for the students,” Kinsley said. “The shorter lab period will also be much more comfortable for the students, and they will learn more.”