As they peruse the Course Announcement Bulletins stuffed into university mailboxes this week, students are paying more attention to one detail - prerequisite classes.
For the first time, the University will block students from pre-registering for a course if they have not satisfied the class prerequisites. During the upcoming pre-registration period, beginning on April 22, faculty members will have authority to override the barrier at their discretion.
"It's not meant to say you absolutely cannot get in" to a class, Registrar Michael Pesta said of the change in Banner. "But on the other hand (faculty) are trying to tell students, 'You really should have this previous course in order to do the material.'"
Fulfillment of prerequisites was not checked under the "complicated" paper registration system used at the University prior to fall 2007, Pesta told The Herald, adding there was "almost too much ... flexibility in that system."
Pesta said Banner did not check prerequisites this academic year because all student records had not yet been added to the database. About 17 percent of courses at the University have prerequisites; of those, about 25 percent are language courses.
The latest change to the University's evolving class registration process has brought mixed reactions from students, some of whom said they are concerned the enforcement of prerequisites may bar students from classes for which they are academically prepared to take.
Different ideas of the course
Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron said prerequisites are "built into the structure, the idea of the course" as determined by individual faculty members.
Enforcing prerequisites through Banner essentially "carries out the will of the faculty to the extent that the curriculum is designed by the faculty," Bergeron said. "There are some courses that will be heavily impacted," she added, noting the prevalence of prerequisites in fields such as economics.
Professor of Economics and department chair Andrew Foster said he considered the change "a good thing" for his field.
"Economics very much benefits from a sort of sequential approach to things," Foster said. "In the past, we've never quite known what students have done and haven't done when they come into a course, and it really affects how you teach."
Foster said he expects course enrollments to expand in intermediate micro- and macroeconomics and econometrics courses since it will be "harder" for students to get into higher-level courses without them. While Foster said faculty would override prerequisites for students who "make the right case," he said he expects most overrides will take place during regular registration, not pre-registration.
Lacey Drucker '08 transferred to Brown from the College of William and Mary, which also uses Banner. Though Drucker said checking prerequisites was "one of several things that made Banner suck a lot" at William and Mary, she was more optimistic about the system's future at Brown, where students are "very proactive" about the registration process.
Community health concentrator Julianna Alson '10 said she trusts professors to understand students' level of preparation for a class, even if they haven't taken the prerequisites.
"I'd like to have faith that Brown professors understand what Brown students are all about and can judge their ability," she said. Still, Alson said she is "a little nervous" about getting into upper-level classes with prerequisites next year.
"The beauty of the open curriculum is that you can take classes you're interested in," said Elana Goldstein '10. "This undermines that."
Goldstein said incoming first-year students could potentially be "afraid" to ask professors for prerequisite overrides and that future Brown students might be less likely to "exploit the system" of registration, which she said was "made to be used and manipulated."
Goldstein also said she completed an upper-level class in political science, her concentration field, without taking the prerequisite, POLS 0200: "Introduction to Comparative Politics." She added that the new system does not reflect the distinction between science and mathematics classes that teach "facts" and humanities classes that focus more on "conceptual ideas."
Override or overrun?
Foster said he, too, had some reservations about the implementation of the change in Banner.
"I just know there are going to be problems when the prerequisites are enforced in terms of students wanting to get into courses, and that will be a pain," he said.
Foster said the current computer override process is "very intensive in faculty time" when it comes to large classes. Bergeron also said faculty had to go through "several steps" to clear a student for registration on Banner.
"We need to make the override process as easy as it can be," Bergeron said. "Right now, it's cumbersome ... we've got to fix that. And there's a real will to fix that. It won't be fixed in the next six months, but I hope it's fixed by next year."
Professor of Mathematics Thomas Banchoff said his department has always done "a very serious job of placement," even without access to student records.
"Our aim is to get people into the highest level class for which they have reasonable prerequisites," Banchoff said, adding that the department gives placement tests to potential concentrators.
While Banchoff said enrollment in MATH 0090: "Introductory Calculus" has declined over the years as more students take calculus in high school, he said he expects to hear from a number of economics concentrators looking to avoid the prerequisite during pre-registration.
"I anticipate I'm going to get a bunch of calls," Banchoff said. "No one has ever come to me and said, 'I got kicked out of (ECON 1110: "Intermediate Microeconomics") because I didn't have Math 9. Now, I expect that to happen.'"
Pesta said he has long been aware of concerns about the change in Banner and that the University was "undergoing, in a sense, a quasi-change in culture."
"When you try something for the first time, I think you have to go into it with an open mind," Pesta said.
Pesta said any registration software purchased by the University would have involved a way to check students' prerequisites as part of its "more structured" registration process. Bergeron also said she hoped Banner would improve the process of selecting classes at Brown.
"The Brown curriculum is ultimately about a responsible reflection on your educational goals," Bergeron said. "No tool can make you do that ... but even a tool that says 'no' makes you really reflect on why you want something and, maybe, makes you argue for it."
In the past, Banchoff said students who chose to take classes with unfulfilled prerequisites at the University did so at their own risk.
"Banner will prevent people from taking their chances," he said.
