Kay Singer knows a secret.
"The deans know that students don't read the bulletin," said Singer, associate dean for Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. "Surprise, surprise."
Every fall, the University produces a bulletin of undergraduate instruction that includes academic procedures and information. Now, rather than flipping through that thick bulletin, students can reference much of that information on a new website developed by a subcommittee of the Trinity College academic deans.
The deans have affectionately nicknamed the site "T-Reqs," short for Trinity Requirements and Procedures, with a Tyrannosaurus Rex logo and dinosaur theme. Singer said the committee wanted a catchy phrase, similar to ACES, and even tried to get permission from Universal Studios to use the Jurassic Park logo.
The website has information and links to other sites on subjects ranging from pass-fail policies and transfer credits to auditing and dean's excuses.
Although the site was organized primarily for Trinity students, Singer said, T-Reqs also contains useful links and information for students in the Pratt School of Engineering looking for answers to similar questions.
The committee - including Martina Bryant, associate Trinity dean; Michael Butzgy, data processing specialist in Trinity; Norman Keul, director of the Pre-Major Advising Center and an associate Trinity dean; and Singer - began developing the website earlier this semester.
"We were concerned that students weren't getting the information they needed," Singer said, adding that she had received questions from both students and faculty about information that they could have found in the bulletin. "We wanted one site for both faculty and students so that everyone's talking off of the same page."
Besides being more accessible to students, T-Reqs will also be more complete than the bulletin because it can be updated, Singer said.
For now, students can access the webpage at http://www.aas.duke.edu/trinity/t-reqs.
Singer said she hopes eventually to create direct links to the site from the main Duke webpage and from the ACES site.
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