Rochester Institute of Technology - Techmila / Ramikin Yearbook (Rochester, NY)

Page 12 text:

take were predetermined. Since then two things have come along to change that. First we've got a tremendous influx of transfer students; approximately one third of our incoming students, this fall, were transfers. This means that all of these transfer students are going to have differing backgrounds. So they can't fit into a channeled program. Compensating for this throws block scheduling into a cocked hat. The second big thing that is happening is that we are getting a lot of people raising questions about the curriculum itself. How sound is it? What does it mean to be an American Craftsman? What does it mean to be a businessman in this world? Probably procedures that you are learning now won't be in effect ... not because they aren't good procedures but because new ones have come along? What do you teach 8

Page 11 text:

Registration September T171 22 29 Tom stood in front of the large panes of polarized glass. He watched the reflection of himself in the morning dampness. Suddenly he noticed others who, like himself, were standing in line. Tom tried to avoid eye contact by looking at the brown metal letters, Clark Memorial Gymnasium. Clark Memorial Gym,... who was Clark anyway? And why would they erect a big brown brick monster in his memory? Tom had expectations of the worst. Maybe they had lost his cards, or there was no record of him paying his tuition bill. After all, housing had had no record of him coming. At any rate the unknown loomed inside that gym; Tom was a freshman and that day was registration day. Even after the days of SOS, brick city looms as a forbidding unknown in the new student's eyes. One of the first contacts the entering student has with RIT is registration. The process is full of unexpected turns. As George (Jed) E.D. Brady II, Registrar said during an interview, ... registration is a bit of a hassle. The long lines, course mix-ups and the many forms to fill out, wear the patience of both student and staff thin. To understand registration one t« must understand the overall function of which it is a part. Brady sums up his job this way: we have got to get the students' requests and needs for courses together with the faculties' ability and availability to teach the courses all together in facilities that are appropriate for these courses to be taught. It's becoming more and more complex as the nature of the Institute changes. Brady says that there was a time when RIT was a lock-step institution. That is, the courses a third year business student would 7

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Mwyer people?... the thing that happens, more and more, is that you get people wanting to have more electives, more variation in their program than ever before. Basically, pedagogically, it is sound, Doctor Miller is all for this. ... I think the phrase he uses is, avoid narrow professionalism. Whether this is good or bad seems to remain a question in the minds of many. In Brady's mind, ,.. the real answer is going to be, for both my registration and scheduling problems, and for the Institute at large, is to give the student much more responsibility and, of course, if you have more responsibility you have to have more authority-----it is going to be interesting. 9