The UR academic departments, an integral part of the small UR community, must do a better job in reaching out to the students to gauge support for current academic programs. The way to start is to have forums for students to share opinions at the end of each semester. The students, with their experiences in classes of the respective departments, will undoubtedly give useful suggestions on how to improve UR studies.

There should be a week at the end of each semester in which each department hosts its own discussion, open to the University. It can be as informal as a social hour in Welles-Brown room (coffee and cookies included, of course) or a stricter question and answer dialogue, depending on each individual department’s preferences.

This is needed because, although the University itself does a fair job of responding to students’ needs and complaints, the departments work independently and have thus far been held unaccountable for both responsiveness and unresponsiveness. I suggest this not just because I think students should have another outlet for complaints. I think that this would also provide a useful forum for students to praise what departments have done, in their opinion, correctly.

For instance, if the political science department were to have a forum at the end of this semester, it would undoubtedly feature students praising the alacrity with which the department has pushed through their new International Relations major. A forum for the economics department, however, might bring in students who are sick of graduate students teaching principle economic courses.

I don’t doubt that turnout at these forums will, at first, be relatively low. This is not necessarily bad. Those students most dedicated to the specific department are the ones most worth listening to.

Many departments at this University do a huge amount of work and deserve to hear praise from those benefiting most from their time. Others have failed to put in as much effort and equally deserve to hear the complaints of those hurt most.