As the academic year comes to a close, the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) Academic Assembly assessed the progress it has made since the fall.

Academic Assembly President D. Joshua Troxell, said instead of legislation, the assembly works on long-term projects and programs such as Take Your Professor to Lunch, concerns@psu.edu and Teacher Tributes, a new program initiated to show teachers that they are appreciated.

"The amount of legislation we do is important but tends to take a secondary role to what we do," Troxell said.

The assembly likes to spend time in discussion and debate, so when legislation arises it is often passed unanimously because modifications have been made and everyone is satisfied with it, Troxell said.

Janis Jacobs, vice provost for undergraduate education, said the assembly has taken on many large issues this semester, such as first-year seminars and course evaluators and has done a good job addressing them. However, with issues such as the course evaluator, Jacobs said the assembly may have chosen to improve the current evaluator instead of making a new one so they could complete the task during their time in office.

"[The issue of term limits] is probably not compromising the interests of students, but it's just limiting the kinds of things you can focus on," Jacobs said.

Linking students to staff

Academic Assembly has made efforts to bridge the gap between students and staff this year.

Teacher Tributes is an online assembly initiative in conjunction with the Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning, which goes into effect Monday. The program gives students the opportunity to go on the Web to send a thank-you letter to any teacher they wish.

The program is similar to Take Your Professor to Lunch in its aim to find more informal ways of interacting with students, Jacobs said, and she hopes students will participate.

Another program that was intended to give students a better assessment of teaching quality was the idea of "Pick A Professor," a replacement program for the present course evaluator on The Daily Jolt Web site http://psu.dailyjolt.com. However, Bradley Hoagland, assembly vice president-elect, said the assembly voted against it.

"We did a big piece of legislation on [the concept], but it was determined by assembly that it wasn't the best resolution for students for both economical and security reasons," Hoagland said.

He added that the assembly needs to go over the current usage of the course evaluator link on The Daily Jolt and see if enough students are aware and participating in it.

Kelly Federico (freshman-communications) said she has used the course evaluator before and she said she feels it's a good source to have, but because few people participate in it, it's hard to assess its efficiency.

"A lot of people don't know about it," Federico said. "So it's a good added help when you get five or six people who share their experiences, but you have to take [the evaluations] with a grain of salt."

Unfinished business

Concerns@psu.edu was an initiative created to address students individual problems and take care of each one in a "unique fashion," Troxell said.

Troxell said the issue of cell-phone-free zones in libraries was brought to the assembly through this venue.

"The amount of support we got for this piece of legislation was incredible," Troxell said.

"Faculty Senate said it was something they were looking into initially, but hadn't acted because they were afraid of how it would be perceived by students," he added.

Nancy Eaton, dean of university libraries, said she thought the assembly request was handled well and the University Faculty Senate Library Committee and her dean's council has conferred with the assembly throughout the process.

"It was the students' action [of addressing assembly] that actually did spur us to look at it as a formal policy," Eaton said.

Another issue brought to the assembly through concerns@psu.edu was the availability of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) at Penn State.

"One big thing that did not happen this semester was bringing GREs to Penn State," Troxell said.

He added that the assembly will not have time to work on GREs this semester, but will address the issue in fall.

Troxell also said evaluation of first-year seminar surveys, an issue the assembly has been working on since last fall, when the surveys were collected, is still being interpreted and has not yet reached the legislative phase.

"We're still in the data analysis process," Troxell said.