Off-campus group is in touch
By Margaret Darrow, Guest Columnist, and Chair, Committee on Off-Campus Activities
Published on Monday, April 9, 2007
To the Editor:
The Committee on Off-Campus Activities is a standing - i.e., permanent - committee created by Dartmouth faculty to oversee Foreign Study Programs and to make recommendations for their improvement. It includes representatives from the administration, the faculty and - guess what - students. I am currently its chair.
The committee ensures that no department becomes complacent about its off-campus programs ("India FSP and student demand," April 6). Periodically, departments report to the committee about how programs are going and student evaluations are a part of this report that the committee takes very seriously.
Departments revise their programs to solve problems, take advantage of opportunities and respond to student interests. Some recent examples are the biology department's change of one segment of its FSP from Jamaica to Little Cayman Island (much richer coral reef), and the German department's decision to offer an LSA during the summer term.
Your editorial raises the issue of student integration into the surrounding culture. The committee reads comments in student evaluations that they have had little contact with local people - for example, with other students at the foreign university with which their FSP is affiliated. But many evaluations also confess that they did not seek out contact nor even take advantage of the opportunities for it built into the program. As the students involved in creating an FSP in India have discovered, it takes student input, rather than simple acceptance of what is offered, for students to get the most out of an experience.