The Saint

Story by News Editor Zoebelle Bean

Entering its fourth block of classes, the block model is still going strong. Students have successfully completed 12 credits by now and are well on their way to their last four. However, there are several considerations for how the block model has both succeeded and struggled during the past three months. As students and faculty alike have grown more accustomed to this new way of learning, several challenges and further improvements have become clear.

Three hours every day is a long time to teach, and professors may experience more burnout. Also, students who miss a class will, in theory, miss about a week of material. Not only that, but science classes require labs, and the college may have to rethink the way labs are provided, whether that be an extra requirement in the afternoon or splitting it between professors.

           As of now, the block schedule has also functioned solely as a series of General Education classes, with every block student being a freshman. The main concern here is that the block schedule hasn’t been tested on mixed-grade classes, nor has it been run with upper-level classes yet.

           During the block panel on November 8^th, Student Senate Vice Chair Jean Tissot asked the faculty members present about upper-level courses, expressing concerns about whether or not students would be able to pursue more than one major pertaining to their scheduling possibilities; with the block format, it seems as though it may be complicated to fit two majors in a schedule. Tissot asked, “How would you teach content-heavy courses without diluting them?”

In response, Dr. Gretchen Rumohr expressed that, “Whether in a traditional or block approach, this would be a challenge, but there are still plenty of credits available for double-majors.”

She expressed that being flexible, coordinating carefully with advisors, and, as the college does currently, attending closely to course-sequencing will become more important as Aquinas pursues the block. In our current system, if a course is missed, there is still the possibility of offering it as an independent study to catch up, and that is unlikely to change. Rumohr also doesn’t anticipate stringer-courses, the one- or two-credit courses that run in the background of a semester, going away, which will help students accumulate credits.

Though most faculty initially approached the block with skepticism, there are many upsides to this new model, including the fact that faculty are receiving funding for course redesign, and it’s been an opportunity for donors to remodel classrooms, resulting in the downstairs middle wing of the Academic Building receiving a full remodel specifically for the block.

Images Courtesy of Aquinas College