What is the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education? Our name does an effective job of describing our purpose as an organization -- representing the interests of Penn's 10,000 undergraduates on all issues pertaining to our education. With such a large student body, separated into four different schools, determining what those interests are can be a monumental task.
In our 35 years, we have created or pushed for some of Penn's most popular and important educational innovations and programs. If you have ever attended a preceptorial, filled out a course evaluation, taken a class pass/fail or participated in the expanded New Student Orientation, you have felt SCUE's impact on campus.
Still, Penn students have a right to ask, "What has SCUE done for us lately?" The answer: "not enough."
Yes, the recent Major Advising Program and last semester's early registration "Worst Case Scenario Handbook" are important new contributions to education at Penn. However, we have not done enough to publicize who we are, what we have done and what we want to do.
To start, here's a few things about some of our newer initiatives. There is our "Take Your Professor to Lunch" program. Any student with a PennCard can take an instructor to lunch at The Faculty Club.
Freshmen and sophomores can sign up to spend a day with a student in a major that he or she is interested in as part of our Major Advising Program, which will begin in mid-February.
If you have already declared your major, you can help to support MAP by signing up to allow an undergraduate to shadow you for the day, to help make the difficult decision of choosing a major a little easier.
Finally, if you are a freshman or sophomore, apply to join SCUE. Fill out an application, come in for an interview and help to shape education at Penn.
What do we intend to do in the next year? We will take our ideas on a whole host of issues ranging from the study abroad program to early admission policies directly to the student body through a series of position papers, discussions and town hall meetings. Hopefully, this will not only help to inform the student body about its education, but will also lead to future innovations on par with our past ideas. We will also continue to discuss ideas for reforming the "big picture" educational issues at Penn: teaching, undergraduate research and writing, to name just a few.
As an unelected body, our plans do not have political overtones. We understand that change takes time and that many of our plans will not affect our education. Future generations of Penn students will hopefully benefit from a University that offers them even more ownership over their undergraduate education.
SCUE is the student group that offers you the most avenues by which to attain that ownership. We hope you will join us in our ongoing projects to improve the intellectual environment on this campus and to continue the noble task of reforming the educational system, with the help of the administration, the faculty and other student leaders.
Look for our application on-line at http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~scue. The deadline for applicants is Jan. 25.
Jacob Cytryn is a sophomore Classical Studies major from St. Louis, Mo., and chairman of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education.
David gringer is a sophomore History major from Brooklyn, N.Y., and vice chairman of SCUE.
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