Students and professors swap classroom expectations
By Erin Meyers, posted 5/1/06

In an effort to improve classroom communication, students and professors met to discuss expectations of each other in a student and faculty dialogue, held on Thursday, March 23, at the Benton-Bingham Ballroom in Memorial Union. 

“What we often hear is that sometimes students forget faculty members have another life,” former Rep. Vicki Wilson (D-Columbia) said.

Wilson, along with Professor Emeritus, Mel George, and Jennifer Powell, a sophomore journalism student, led the Dialogue. Participants sat at round tables with a mixture of both students and professors where expectations for the classroom were discussed, as well as solutions to mentioned problems.

In response to a student’s concern of amount of class work per week, agricultural economics professor Peter Klein said that students should consider school as a full-time job.

“You should at least be pulling in 40 hours of time into school … you have to work nine to five and then at home,” Klein said. 

Along with time management, students also showed concern regarding the usage of e-learning systems, such as WebCT and Blackboard, as well as real-world application for subject matter and clear expectations.

“It helps if you know what they want in an assignment,” MU student Sara Muri, said. 

While the faculty was surprised by some of the responses they received from students, they discussed some expectations of their own. Most frequently mentioned were the expectations of students to desire to learn, time awareness for assignments, asking for help when necessary and pushing themselves past comfort levels. 

Paul Vaugh, associate dean of academic programs, said he noted the importance of events that increased the amount of communication between students and faculty.

“I found that a lot of things the faculty wanted, the students wanted, and I think that’s great,” Vaughn said.   

Based on the Wakonese Conference held annually in Michigan, Powell said that dialogues have been held a few times before in other colleges at the university. Future discussions are planned for the College of Education and the English department.

According to Powell, feedback from past dialogues has been positive, so much so that professors are attempting to incorporate suggested ideas into their classrooms.     

Senior agribusiness management major, Laura Bolte, organized the CAFNR dialogue, which was sponsored by the Agricultural Economics Club, ACT and CFB.      

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