Students craft courses for social change

Penn students have long been creating their own majors but recently they have been designing their own courses as well.

The latest student-run social initiative — the Financial Literacy Community Project — doubles as a Management 353 course. Under the guidance of Management professor Keith Weigelt, founders Katie Long and Mimi Sheng, both College and Wharton sophomores, have been developing the curriculum since June and both are receiving a credit for their work. Next fall, they will serve as Management 353 teaching assistants.

Long said her experience with curriculum development has been fairly easy thus far. In fact, both she and Sheng were surprised at how efficient the process was.

She attributes this to the instrumental support of her faculty adviser.

“I think it’s all about finding someone who will champion you,” Long said. “When you’re trying to start something new at the school, there’s a lot of hoops that you have jump through and you have to find the right people to get behind you.”

A professor does not receive credit for administering courses still in the pilot phase and thus, the “labor-intensive” process of curriculum preparation — assembling materials, preparing PowerPoints, making photocopies and coordinating guest speakers — can be deterring if the professor does not believe strongly in the student’s proposal, Weigelt explained.

The process of approving a course can also be difficult. Not only do students have to demonstrate a substantive demand for the subject, secure a willing faculty sponsor and create a successful pilot course — in that order — the course needs to be approved by the department and then the entire school before being fully approved and integrated into the curriculum.

The purpose is to ensure academic rigor and to prevent any overlap with existent courses.

Many professors recognize the value of student-developed curricula. These courses, Weigelt said, not only tap into the needs of the students, but they also tap into those of the community since most of the courses are socially oriented.

“[Students] know better what they want than professors do,” Weigelt said.

Recently developed courses such as “Disaster Response: Haiti and Beyond” and “Sustainability in Action” are examples of this trend.

According to Charles Fritz, a second-year masters of business administration student currently involved in developing “Disaster Response,” the course arose from students wanting “to do more than just fundraisers” for the disaster in Haiti. Administration, students and nongovernmental organizations responded quickly and within two months of the tragedy, a pilot course was introduced.

Similarly, in light of increasing attention on sustainability, Mark Alan Hughes, School of Design faculty member and founding director of sustainability for the city of Philadelphia, collaborated with students to create “Sustainability in Action.”

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