By Вen Li
Students were recognised for their extra-curricular achievements on Fri., Apr. 4 and they may be again if the winners of the President’s Challenge 2003 Contest get their way. Sarah Wilson and Alyson Kenward will split almost $2,200 for proposing their winning idea, entitled “Co-curricular Transcript And Enhanced Documents: Recognizing Student Excellence At The University Of Calgary.”
“All of the participants deserve the greatest deal of credit for investment of time and coming up with ideas that could effect the quality of education at the U of C,” said Associate Vice-President Student Affairs Dr. Peggy Patterson. “One of the things often overlooked and unacknowledged explicitly is extracurricular involvement.”
Patterson said that in addition to contributing to the community, extra-curricular activities can contribute to students’ education at the U of C.
“Our proposal would really recognize student leaders–like ourselves–who would otherwise not be recognized by the University of Calgary,” said Wilson, who is the current Residence Students Association president. “A lot of graduate schools and a lot of medical schools do recognize that in your academic career.”
The winning proposal would enhance parchments by including minors or areas of concentration, and create an additional transcript to officially document non-academic achievements.
“A co-curricular transcript involves having a parallel document of activities and awards,” said Kenward, who was formerly the Students’ Union faculty representative for Science. “We hope the university will recognise extra-curricular achievement as much as academic achievement.”
Under the proposal, academic transcripts would also be revised to indicate undergraduate research activities. According to Kenward, the practice is common at post-secondary institutions in the United States but rare in Canada. She hopes that having an official record of their achievements will encourage students to become more active outside of their studies.
“Students get involved on campus for an number of reasons including financial incentives or to pad their resumes,” she said. “Students often stay involved, leading a better life.”
Though augmenting the registrar’s office to support the new and revised documents would incur costs for the university, the winners believe costs could be recovered within one year, after which the new service would become profitable.
Second-place winner Sylvia Dauner’s idea would also generate revenue for the cash-strapped university. Dauner’s proposal, “Final Exam Rewrite,” suggests allowing students the opportunity to rewrite failed final exams for an amount equal to half the course fee, if they passed the remainder of the course and received permission from their professor. The idea could generate up to $1.76 million per year if all 8,000 annual failed exams are rewritten.
Third place went to Jeffrey Yuen whose proposal, “An Internet-based Posting and Contingency Board,” could consolidate housing and job postings into a web portal along with current InfoNet services.
An honourable mention went to Murray Birt for his proposal to create an Office of Sustainability.