Students one class short take directed study
From Emerging Scholars to the SSRL, there are plenty of ways for students to pursue their academic and professional interests.
Among those is the independent or directed study course. Unfortunately, some students are misusing this opportunity.
When it comes to the semester before graduation and someone realizes that he or she is a class short, he or she often turns to directed study.
Jeff Cass, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, is a little wary about independent study being used for that purpose.
“It should be rare,” says Cass. “I’m not against it as a specialty project, but occasionally we have allowed it for a student that needs a course to graduate.”
One of those special cases is Elizabeth Cottle, a senior music and French double major from Monroe.
Aside from fulfilling the last three hours she needed for her second major, Cottle’s course is a special interest class about 19 century French literature by people of color.
Cottle says, “I kind of foresaw this problem last semester. I hadn’t heard anything about it, but I had a friend who’d done [an independent study course] in the English Department.”
Dean Cass is also taking the faculty into consideration because there isn’t a way for the university to pay for those classes.
Also, some independent study courses just aren’t possible because ULM doesn’t have the right equipment or qualifications.
“I’d love for someone to do a directed study in nuclear physics, but we don’t have a nuclear reactor,” says Cass.
Furthermore, teachers have to make sure they don’t get overburdened, so a system of checks is in place to approve directed studies.
“I think Dr. Michaelides had to get permission from Dr. Smith and. . .the dean. He wanted to wait until it was absolutely necessary,” says Cottle.
