The Justice

New developments on recent academic restructuring proposals include a discussion of the financial aspects of pursuing a Justice Brandeis Semester over the summer and the University Curriculum Committee's motion for the creation of a voluntary Justice Brandeis Semester in the summer of 2010.

The UCC also motioned to create a new Business Major, a new Media, Communications and Society major and change the residency requirement from seven to eight semesters in the beginning of fall 2010. These motions will be voted on at the faculty meeting this Thursday.

Concerns about the new Business major, the new Communications, Media and Society major and the change of the residency requirement to eight semesters were discussed at a town hall meeting last Wednesday.

Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said that "significant money" will be necessary to implement the proposals but "the money to pay the cost of doing this, we see, is a reasonable investment to get the $6 million in additional revenue [predicted to generate from increased enrollment]."

While Jaffe said at the town hall meeting that the Justice Brandeis Semester "would be required of all students," the UCC's motion to the faculty states that the semester will be voluntary.

"I think that the faculty feels that we haven't spelled out exactly what is going to qualify [as academic criteria for the Justice Brandeis Semester and] we haven't specified how we're going to come up with enough of these options for thousands of students to do it per year," said Jaffe in an interview with the Justice. Based on these concerns, Jaffe, who is the chair of the UCC, said that the UCC "felt that the risks associated with making [the Justice Brandeis Semester] required before we have all these details worked out is too great."

Jaffe told the Justice that the University is contemplating reducing the tuition for the Justice Brandeis Semester to three-fourths of the normal tuition rate, which stands at $37,566 for the 2009 to 2010 academic year. He explained that the rate would be reduced as "[the Justice Brandeis Semester] is three-fourths of the normal course load." According to the UCC motion, the Justice Brandeis Semester will encompass 12 credit hours.

Continued...

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