2008 Woodie Awards
Adding to the controversy
Linda Hua
Issue date: 11/21/06 Section: News
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Saint Mary's College of California's Mission Statement: To probe deeply the mystery of existence by cultivating the ways of knowing and the arts of thinking, to affirm and foster the Christian understanding of the human person which animates the educational mission of the Catholic Church, to create a student-centered educational community whose members support one another with mutual understanding and respect.
There are perpetual complaints and remarks on how Saint Mary's students do not fulfill these principles and statements, but there are 2,525* traditional undergraduate students. Is a handful of them enough to generalize to the rest of the student population? What of the faculty? There are 197* faculty members. How many of them fulfill these declarations? I can distinctly think of a few who do not.
Furthermore, quite a few of them do not follow the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education: student-faculty contact, cooperation among students, active learning, prompt feedback, time on task, communicate high expectations, and respect diverse talents and ways of learning.
Fortunately, my professors this semester follow these 12 principles and fulfill the mission statement well. However, I've run into quite a few bad apples. Some of them are in no respect Lasallian, others completely disregard the mission statement, and a handful that do not have good practice in education.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, Saint Mary's students do receive a quality education-we really get every penny's worth in that respect. However, respect is a huge part where there is much to be ameliorated.
If I was to pick one principle/statement from each of these three traditions, I'd say the ones that need attention are "respect for all persons," "to create a student-centered educational community whose members support one another with mutual understanding and respect," and "respect diverse talents and ways of learning."
True, respect between two individuals is a double-ended situation. True, respect is either added to or subtracted from. However, for some professors to just blatantly disrespect students is wrong.