The Duke Student Government academic affairs portfolio is not an easy one and is often misunderstood. The challenge for this particular vice president is to generate the types of ideas that take years to mature but to work on them for only eight months. Almost no academic affairs project can be accomplished in a single year.
The fact that the DSG vice president for academic affairs has to lobby administrators who have vastly more professional and institutional experience is another challenge.
For example, current DSG Vice President for Academic Affairs Kaveh Danesh, a junior, is in his second year working on academic policy issues. On the other hand, Provost Peter Lange arrived at Duke in 1981. Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education Steve Nowicki arrived in 1989. Dean of Academic Affairs for Trinity College Lee Baker arrived in 1995. That’s a combined 65 years of Duke experience—almost 22 times as much as Danesh—for the three administrators who drive the University’s academic policy.
Too often this experience differential gets in the way of meaningful student input on academic or curricular issues.
Chelsea Goldstein, Trinity ’10 and DSG vice president for academic affairs in 2008-2009, said there is “not really a good place in the structure of academic governance to insert student opinion,” and that often administrators, unintentionally I’m sure, show “a lack of regard for student opinion on academic and curricular issues.” The Academic Standards Committee of the Arts and Sciences Council, recently created in large part to accept student input, is now officially defunct.
There is a limit, obviously, in terms of what impact students ought to have on the academic policies of the University. Faculty should be the driving force in developing curriculum. Students need not have a fundamental role in decisions like who gets tenure or which departments hire which new professors. Bringing students into the room is not always helpful, and sometimes might be downright counterproductive, but, as Goldstein said, there is absolutely “value [in] having student opinions in the marketplace of ideas in a meaningful way” when it comes to the academic affairs of the University.
The DSG Senate’s recent approval of Danesh’s proposal to establish two student committees to examine the intellectual climate and curriculum at Duke is innovative and has great potential.
These committees have at their heart research and faculty involvement, marking a fundamental recognition that students are not the only stakeholders—or even the most relevant ones—in these two areas. Danesh noted that the faculty, in many ways, “define” Duke. Their participation in both committees will inform and improve student input. As Danesh cautioned, students “all have ideas about curriculum and [intellectual] climate, but those ideas could well be wrong.” The new committees are forums—notably lacking in the traditional academic governance structures of the University—in which to share the student perspective on curriculum and campus intellectual climate.
The result should be reasoned reports reflecting student experience and ideas that take into consideration thorough research and many consultations with faculty. This type of student involvement won’t be easy to dismiss on the basis of naïveté or brashness. They will, in the words of the DSG statute establishing the committees, “start a dialogue that administrators will be compelled to hear and respect.”
The work of these committees can be a meaningful student contribution to the academic policy “marketplace of ideas.”
Yet, the fact that Danesh is forced to innovate to involve students in the formulation of academic policy is a pity.
Students definitely have some seats at the proverbial table. The DSG vice president for academic affairs and one other undergraduate student representative are full voting members of the Academic Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees. Student representatives sit on the Curriculum, Faculty Interaction, Program II and Global Education committees of the Arts and Sciences Council. Ruth Day, chair of the Arts and Sciences Council prepared a helpful “Student Guide” for the students who sit on A&S committees and has herself been accessible to student leaders wishing to discuss course evaluations and curriculum. These are great opportunities for the University to hear the student perspective.
However, the Arts and Sciences Council lacks a forum in which to receive student ideas generally. This deficiency reduces student leaders to forming ad hoc committees and working to lobby individual administrators like Chair Day or Provost Lange instead of working through accessible and understood hierarchies. In addition to designing a mechanism to more fully incorporate student input (as the old Academic Standards Committee was supposed to do), the A&S Council should also allow a student representative to be included on the Budget and Priorities Committee, much as the DSG president is included on the University Priorities Committee. Students should not be excluded from the important conversations about how to allocate limited resources.
Student advocacy regarding academic policy isn’t easy, hampered as it is by high turnover in elected leadership and short institutional memory. A student commitment to make informed contributions and an administrative commitment to structurally innovate in order to receive student input will go a long way to ensure robust dialogue on campus about the most fundamental function of the University: education.
The “marketplace of ideas” will then be open and ready for business.
Gregory Morrison is a Trinity senior and former Duke Student Government EVP. His column runs every Tuesday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.