Soon to be a junior, a current sophomore struts into the Registrar office with high hopes of landing a schedule full of choice courses at convenient times to fulfill final core curriculum requirements. The kind employee behind the desk speedily enters keystrokes of course descriptions into the computer and, to the surprise of the student, reveals that the core classes carefully selected by the student are full. Outraged, the upperclassman demands answers. The only response offered by the innocent work grant student employee is that the spot that could have belonged to the weathered college student has instead been locked for an upcoming freshman who decided to take the course as part of a Learning Community because the common link subject matter sounded “cool.” Denied the necessary course, the second year student is forced to choose an alternate course not full of freshmen whom share similar interests.
If this scenario sounds familiar, you are not alone. Many upperclassmen have recently been forced into undesirable courses because of course clogging caused by a new program being implemented for the fall semester intended to bring freshmen with common interests together in and out of class to discuss material covered by a common theme strung through each course.
Although this sounds like a travesty, Cabrini is adopting this program based on its success at many major colleges, and to take a gigantic evolutionary step to make Cabrini a more appealing institution.
It is true, of course, that some upperclassmen may suffer the annoyance of rearranging their rosters to a less convenient schedule. However, in the future, the potential success of the Learning Community program could very well prove to be an asset to the Cabrini graduate as well as future freshmen generations.
Think of the graduates of 1992, for instance. When they received their diplomas, they were also handed a degree. Ten years later, with Cabrini flourishing into a major local college, their degrees are more credible and more impressive.
As with anything new and experimental, bugs can be expected in the early stages of the Learning Community program. Instead of sweating the stress of course denial, however, the future alumni (current students) should support the efforts of Cabrini to expand and grow.
If the forthcoming of Cabrini was to remain stagnant, without change, then the degrees of graduates could appear to be stale to potential employers as well. After all, Cabrini is as much a representation of its students as its students are symbols of the college.
