Academic
Services lightens the load of paperwork with a personal touch.
Perhaps the most telling measure of the importance of the Academic Services
Office to student life at BC Law is how quickly the Tootsie Rolls disappear.
At certain times of the year, particularly during registration and exam periods,
the office is Command Central, fielding dozens of inquiries a day from students
(and sometimes faculty) needing everything from schedule changes, to transcripts,
to transfer records, to bar certification verification. The Tootsie Rolls don't
stand a chance-but they do add a touch of sweetness to the chaos that is a way
of life in Stuart House Room M301.
"We do everything," Academic Services Director Tracey West says with
a shrug of futility at trying to describe just what goes on inside her small
warren of offices. Most of it comprises the day-to-day, drudging details that
keep the academic side of the Law School humming: administering tests, keeping
track of grades, orienting new students, scheduling classes, juggling faculty
timetables, administering clinical programs, training proctors, collecting course
evaluations, clearing graduates for commencement, and, with increasing frequency,
computerizing exams and other traditionally paper-bound services.
Indeed, technology is the trend-setter in an office that alumni may remember
more for mimeograph machines and rows of file cabinets. It seems the ubiquitous
blue book, and other hold-outs of yesteryear like the paperback course catalog,
are, or soon will be, history. Increasingly, says academic dean Fred Yen, "students
want to register, take exams, and get scheduling advice by computer. Anything
we do on paper we can imagine doing in the future on computer."
Recent trials using ExamSoft, a software that allows students to download tests
on their laptops as it temporarily blocks their access to the internet or email,
were so successful that West is already offering 71 in-class mid-term and final
cyberexams. Similarly, the course catalog is no longer printed. Instead, it's
made available online.
Technology may be a hot tool, but it is no substitute for human ingenuity, and
that's what it takes to arrange the 70 to 100 classes offered each semester
into a coherent framework that accommodates some 50 full-time and 11 visiting
faculty, 55 adjuncts, and more than 800 students, a chore West compares to arranging
the pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. "I like the ability to create a schedule
that works best for the students," West says. With course offerings growing
each year, the task is increasingly complicated.
"The challenge is to offer a curriculum on which more demands are being
placed than in the past," Yen explains. Today's students have broad interests,
a fact born out by the sheer number of areas of law they want to study. Demand
is burgeoning for classes in intellectual property, immigration, juvenile justice,
elder law, and corporate transactions, among others. "Even if we get these
courses, within these areas students' interest is varied," Yen adds.
It falls to West and her staff, Assistant Director Dona Agar, Administrative
Secretary Linda Raute, and an incoming Student Records Coordinator (Kenneth
Krzewick retired in April after twenty years) to build and manage the course
schedule for the expanding curriculum designed by the academic dean, and that
means juggling a dizzying number of student and faculty needs and requirements-not
just once, but twice a year. The constant turnover at least ensures that problems
don't linger for long. When, for instance, West discovered that class times
for first-year students meant they rarely had free periods to mingle with older
students or participate in the wider campus community, she rearranged things
so that the following year 1L's, 2L's, and 3L's had some common down-time. "It
helps with students' well-roundedness," she says.
Noticing that the mid-week course load was heavy but Friday's was light, West
labored to better balance the week, putting some of the most popular classes
on Fridays to increase attendance. A primary motive, she says, was to encourage
community spirit and greater socialization and participation in student organizations
and activities by having students on campus fulltime. During exams in May, West
confronted a different sort of dilemma. A group of students complained that
the seats in one of the final-exam classrooms were too uncomfortable to sit
in for a long period. West put the seats to a "tush test" and concluded
the students were right. She arranged for another room.
Recently, Academic Services and the Dean for Students Office merged into a
suite of offices, providing a kind of one-stop-shopping locale for student concerns.
For personal questions and counseling, they usually turn right to Dean for Students
Norah Wylie; for advice and assistance with administrative issues and records,
they head straight for West and her staff. But by design, the lines between
the two departments are easily blurred. This spring, a student West had gotten
to know through academic counseling came to her in a personal quandary. The
student had been invited to a job interview but didn't have the proper attire.
At seven o'clock that evening, West was delivering to the young woman's apartment
a selection of suits and shoes from her own and Wylie's closets for use at the
next day's appointment. "Many times we go beyond the call of duty,"
West says, smiling and adding that the close contact with students is the job's
greatest reward. "She sent me a thank-you email afterward and said she
felt like a million bucks at the interview and that it went very well."
The decision to put the two departments in proximity was one outcome of a curriculum-improvement
plan outlined in the Law School's Educational Policy Committee Report issued
in 2000. Other priorities were computerizing exams; redesigning the academic
services website (launched this spring as an interactive, multi-purpose resource
at www.bc.edu/schools/law/services/academic/); increasing support for faculty
research stipends; recommitting to Introduction to Lawyering and Professional
Responsibility; hiring faculty specializing in business, tax, intellectual property,
and property law and clinical work; and supporting outreach programs like the
Juvenile Justice Advocacy Project. "It turns out we've made improvements
in every area we identified," Yen says.
As these and other initiatives-such as expanding the Law School's dual-degree
and international studies programs-are realized, so grows Academic Services's
workload. For example, to administer the dual-degree relationships that BC Law
is cultivating with Boston College's graduate schools of business, education,
and social work and, ad hoc, with the Fletcher School of International Policy
at Tufts University, Academic Services must ensure that credits are properly
allocated, students' schedules don't conflict, and grading standards and methods
are met. "Tracey is the front line for routine academic questions such
as 'Can I graduate if I do Y,'" says Yen. "She's the expert on credit
for the JD-MBA."
Over the past several years, interest in international law at BC Law has been
on the rise. This has meant adding international law experts to the faculty,
accommodating foreign student visitors (who take courses but are not on a degree
track), and screening degree candidates from abroad to ensure their credentials
are up to the Law School's standards. West is also working with the main campus's
international studies center to expand the pool of foreign schools at which
BC Law students can get credit for study abroad during the academic year. Academic
Services, as always, is where the paper trail begins and ends for such projects.
Given the nature of their jobs, it's not surprising that when the Academic Services
staff attends commencement, they see not just the familiar faces of 230 smiling
graduates, but also three years' worth of grades properly recorded, credits
accurately counted, accreditation's carefully verified, and diplomas correctly
counted.
And once they've sent the latest class on its way, they do as they've always
done-return to the office and refill the Tootsie Roll basket.
Photography by Webb Chappell