Spring Break
Registration loophole may be fixed
Sara Spivey
Daily Staff Writer
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"Completion of core G.E. is supposed to be a prerequisite for all advanced G.E., but the computer doesn't enforce that," said Robert Cooper, associate vice president of Undergraduate Studies at San Jose State University. "It depends on individual faculty members to ask their class if they have completed core G.E."
Core G.E. is made up of 39 units of lower-division courses, which may be either completed at SJSU or transferred from a community college, said Gail Evans, the associate dean of Undergraduate Studies at SJSU.
She said the 12 units of advanced G.E. required for an undergraduate degree are made up of upper-division courses that must be taken at SJSU.
The PeopleSoft system would be able to determine if a student has met the requirements to enroll in advanced G.E. using a student's official transcript, which is located online.
"PeopleSoft will have a computer check and see if all of the core G.E. is completed, and will keep people from registering if they don't have it," Cooper said. "It's something that we might look into and get people talking about."
Campus discussion, as well as communication at both SJSU and community colleges, would need to happen before SJSU decides if the new technology will be used, Cooper said. He said the earliest it might go into effect would be during the Fall semester of 2006.
"You never want to do something that would prevent the students from (registering) and they would not know why," Cooper said.
He said it would take the away burden of checking G.E. requirements from the faculty, and would also allow students to be informed of their G.E. statuses well before registration time.
Although students may not have completed core G.E and would be prevented from enrolling in advanced G.E. courses, Cooper said they may have completed other courses that would serve as preparation for a particular area of advanced G.E.
These students would have to wait until the first day of instruction to get permission to add the course.
"There's pluses and minuses," Cooper said. "Faculty, students and administrators need to have a discussion before we change the way we do things." In addition to completing core G.E., students must also pass the writing skills test, which Evans said PeopleSoft does currently check for, before they may enroll in advanced G.E. Students can use the new degree progress report within MySJSU to determine how far along they are in completing their G.E. requirements, Evans said.
"I think it's terrific," Evans said. "Students go into the degree (progress report) and it will tell them if they've met the requirements."
However, Evans said transfer students who started at SJSU prior to the Fall semester of 2003 would find G.E. courses taken at other institutions would not show up in the degree report because SJSU is still working on writing the software.
"What has to happen is that they have to write all of the programs and rules for every course that's transferred from every other institution," Evans said. "That's going to take a very long time."
Alexandra Zvereva, a senior graphic design major who transferred to SJSU from De Anza College, said she finds the degree progress reports useful, but said none of the G.E. courses she took at De Anza show up on the report even though she transferred in 2003.
"Some classes that I took don't show up that they counted for G.E. even though I was following the (Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum)," Zvereva said.
The Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum is the core curriculum of lower-division G.E. that is supposed to fulfill the requirements of any public California university, she said.
Zvereva was waiting to see a counselor to find out whether the problem with her G.E. courses was with the computer or the courses she took at De Anza. She said she didn't think using PeopleSoft to determine eligibility for advanced G.E. courses was a good idea because it would have prevented her from taking them.
"I think it's no good," Zvereva said. "It could cause problems because mistakes happen all of the time."
Galait Tuzman, a senior graphic design major who transferred to SJSU from San Francisco City College in 2003, said she had a similar problem with the degree report.
"Two classes show up, but it looks like they didn't transfer them for G.E. credit," Tuzman said.
Students who transferred to SJSU prior to the Fall semester of 2003 need to go back to the archives of records used before the PeopleSoft system, Evans said.
The combination of those records and the courses they have taken at SJSU will determine how far along they are with their G.E. requirements, she said.
If students have problems, Evans
said they should see either a major or
G.E. adviser who will do an unofficial
evaluation.
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