As the time to select fall classes draws closer, students will once again look at their degree audits and try to figure out how to fulfill all of their degree requirements, including their General Education requirements (GE’s). Transy has a broad GE curriculum, thanks to the pursuit of a liberal arts education, but some argue that the way Transy has built this broad system does not do justice to certain fields of study. This column will examine whether Transy GE’s should include a stronger math and science section.

As the GE requirements for math and science currently stand, a student is only required to take one math course and one science course during their entire career at Transy. While students have an opportunity to use math and science classes as Area IV requirements, it’s only rarely that students outside the math and science fields choose to use math and science courses to actually fulfill their Area IV requirements. It’s also true that many students come to Transy with AP math and science classes, and this lets them avoid ever stepping foot in BSC. Such a minimal math and science requirement does not seem to conform with the ideal of a liberal arts education. Taking a single class in the fields does not allow students to gain an appreciation for the skills of that discipline, and one class is not a nearly comprehensive enough representation of the disciplines that we expect from the liberal arts.  

However, this argument— that one class does not adequately represent an entire discipline or expose students to enough skills within a field— can be made for every section of the GE requirements. Taking a single Humanities, Fine Arts, or Social Science class does not make you an expert within one of those disciplines any more than taking a single math or science class does. Many students just happen to take more of these classes because they use them to fulfill their Areas IV and V. Those same opportunities exist in the math and science fields; students just choose not to take them because of the skill base that is required. That’s not something that Transy can control. Additionally, changing the number of math or science courses required would probably force a similar expansion in the other GE requirements, and students simply do not have room for that many classes.

The larger issue that’s at stake is whether our current GE system is viable. This debate over math and science GE’s represents a microcosm of the larger issues regarding the GE system and the potential changes people want to make. Though this column has merely explored the issue, rather than advocating for one side, students need to consider how they feel about the current GE system—would you keep or change our current system?

This discussion illuminates the broader point that the GE system is designed to foster the spirit of liberal arts education, yet may be failing students on that point. The good news is that there is currently a review of the GE system happening to address any issues with the current curriculum. So, if you get asked your opinions on the GE system, please give your honest opinion. Maybe you think the current system perfectly exposes you to various disciplines, or maybe you think the GE’s do not really encapsulate the liberal arts. You might not even be sure what the goals of the GE system are currently. Regardless of your opinion, be honest and constructive when considering how Transy can better improve our current system of GE’s so that we can produce effective change for the entire system, not just one segment, like math and science.

This is Part 2 of a 2-Part series arguing that Transy should charter its own undergraduate research journal. Read Part 1 here.

When discussing the benefits of publishing scholarly research, much of the attention (rightly) focuses on the benefits to the authors. However, since this is an argument for chartering an undergrad research journal here at Transy, it’s only reasonable to also examine the benefits of publishing research gained by the publishing institution itself. In this case, that’s Transy.

Let’s start by looking at the purely intellectual argument for publishing. As a liberal arts college, Transy encourages its students to look into, study, investigate, and research a fantastically broad and eclectic hodgepodge of areas of study. Some of these areas, naturally, are more obscure than others. In research terms, that means there are areas of study that are of interest to Transy students that have an underdeveloped literature. In short, there may not be a lot written about an area that a Transy student is interested in . It only naturally follows that this is an opportunity for that student to research and publish in that area. Not only is this of benefit to the student, it is also to the benefit of Transy as an institution dedicated to the furthering of its students’ knowledge. Not only allowing but actively encouraging students to pursue their academic and intellectual interests is the highest goal of a liberal arts institution like Transy. And chartering a journal to help students do so is itself a step in fulfilling that goal.

However, we also live in the real world. So pie-in-the-sky intellectual arguments don’t by themselves carry the day. Let’s look at some more concrete benefits to the university.

While Transy is a liberal arts college, not primarily a research institution (like, say, UK), it’s undeniable that most college and university reputations are build in significant part by the quality and quantity of the original research they produce. As a university that’s currently attempting to figure out its place in the changing landscape of modern academia, Transy has a chance to create a culture of not just scholarship, but scholastic achievement, where the work done by Transy students has a chance to gain a wider audience and influence. This will in turn boost Transy’s regional, national, and international profile, giving the school a reputation as a place for students who are serious about their academic work.

Such a reputation, of course, would also help Transy in the never-ending recruitment search. Undergraduate journals are not so uncommon as to be unique, but they’re hardly an expected feature of the American university. Because of this relative scarcity, Transy could use the existence of its own undergrad journal as another selling point by which it distinguishes itself from all the other possible institutions a prospective student could attend. And even if the existence of an undergrad journal turns out to be a minimal factor in school selection, the other benefits to Transy still justify the expenses.

Those expenses, moreover, will likely be somewhat minimal. There is a well-established expectation that professional academics engage in peer-review processes; Transy can quite reasonably ask its faculty to prioritize draft manuscripts from Transy students, intended for Transy’s undergrad journal, during their peer-reviewing periods. This can be done at little-to-no extra cost to the university. The only real external costs are ones related to printing, and online storage space for electronic archival copies of the journal. The former is a legitimate concern, but unless Transy’s undergrad journal ends up on the NY Times’ bestseller list, the printing costs are unlikely to be so exorbitant as to seriously affect the budgetary concerns of the university. As for the latter—well, online storage space costs are already basically nonexistent.

Transy has the opportunity to not only benefits its students, but to further enhance its reputation as a premier liberal arts college. In doing so, it can create a space for students to benefit, and that can only reflect well on Transy as an institution. That reflection is likely to improve the reputation of Transy as a school that helps its students succeed in their endeavors, and that improved reputation is itself likely to attract more of the high-caliber students Transy wants to educate. Chartering an undergraduate journal is a cheap and effective way to help both Transy and Transy students. Let’s do it.

This is Part 1 of a 2-Part series arguing that Transy should charter its own undergraduate research journal. Read Part 2 here.

Transy students do a lot of writing. This school is notorious for a writing-intensive curriculum that turns just about every student into a miniature essayist for four years or so. Whether they’re writing for classes, outside projects, or just sheer irrepressible linguistic creativity, the printers on campus always seem to be running low.

Without putting a hard and fast percentage on it, it’s fair to say that a pretty high percentage of that student writing is done for various classes. Some percentage of that class writing, further, is fairly high-level research writing for upper-level classes (though First Year Seminar also leads to some very high-quality work). As of now, most of those papers are turned in to professors, graded, and then returned to the student writers.

That’s all well and good, but this situation represents a squandered opportunity. One of the twin pillars of modern academia is publishing (the other pillar is teaching—see this column on how Transy could further support teaching). Publishing original research papers is the best way for both an individual to propel their academic or professional career forward, and the best way for a sponsoring institution to raise its profile among the academic community. This is often summed up in a pithy saying common among academics: to survive in academia, you have to “publish or perish.”

Right now, Transy faculty regularly publishes a wide variety of research in an even wider variety of publications; this is, to be blunt, a good thing. However, simply looking at the publishing rate of Transy faculty obscures an important truth: there’s a lot of fascinating and original scholarship being written every year by Transy students, for various classes, that’s never being exposed to a wider audience. While Transy students are regularly writing high-level, high-quality research papers, the vast majority of those papers will never see the light of day beyond a particular professor’s classroom. This is a wasted opportunity for Transy students. In short, Transy students have the opportunity to publish their original scholarship while still getting their Transy undergraduate degree. There are serious advantages to doing so, even if those advantages aren’t always articulated very well. So let’s look at some of those advantages.

Many Transy students will go on to pursue advanced degrees in myriad fields; one of the major differences between undergraduate and advanced degrees is the expectation that graduate students will pursue their own research. So for Transy students who will go on to further education, already having some experience with the process of submitting and revising scholarly articles for publication will allow those students to thrive in grad schools. In addition, the mere fact of having published academically rigorous work while in undergrad is likely to make Transy students’ applications to grad schools that much more attractive to grad schools themselves. Publishing in undergrad, in other words, would give Transy students a leg up in grad schools. Further, the experience of publishing an academic article may prompt many students who may otherwise have never considered an academic career to consider it (though whether this is actually a good thing is a matter for another column).

But the advantages to publishing academic works aren’t only limited to the budding academics among the student population. The revision process for publishing academic articles can improve just about any student’s writing, strengthening one of the most important skills someone can have in today’s economy. The revision process may also be useful in strengthening and sharpening students’ reasoning skills. There’s a practical reason to for students publish, in other words.

Transy students could see massive personal benefits, in both their academic and professional lives, from publishing while here at Transy. Transy’s unique curriculum and atmosphere are conducive high-quality student scholarship that offers Transy students the opportunity to create high-quality scholarship that can and should be published. Next time we’ll take a look at how Transy can encourage students to publish their own work.