Author: Chloe Jenkins-Sleczkowski
The beginning of the 2009 school year posed new challenges for the Occidental staff and administration as a result of the unusually large number of incoming first-year students. This year’s increase in enrollment at Occidental College has been a cause for many changes on campus, leading some teachers and students to worry about the larger student body’s impact on class sizes.
According to Dean of the College Eric Frank, the unprecedented size of the incoming first-year class is largely a result of the recent economic recession. With the added stress of a lagging economy, Occidental needed to pull in the same, if not more, students than usual in order to remain financially stable. “Since the Occidental College budget is so driven by the student fees, and tuition fees, we knew that if we collected the amount of fees that we normally collect, we would be fine,” Frank said. After last year’s economic downturn, other schools that normally rely on large endowments, like Harvard or Pomona, suffered from the recession’s effect on their endowments. However, Occidental does not heavily rely on the college’s endowment to pay for the various costs of running a small college. “The vast bulk of the budget is based on net tuition revenue collection at Occidental College,” said Frank.
In response to the suffering economy, the Admissions office predicted a lower number of applicants and made a special effort to recruit students and promote Occidental. These efforts resulted in a record number of applicants to the college. Frank pointed out several other sources for this application increase. The “Barack Factor,” President Obama’s nomination and election, greatly raised the school’s popularity. Statewide budget cuts have played a role as well. “The California state system had tremendous volatility in the amount of money that they could offer students,” said Frank. “There was something of a retreat to private schools from the public sector that we didn’t anticipate.” As a result, the incoming class size surged in a way the administration had not predicted. “Instead of the 465 target, we had a class of 578,” he said.
But the administration did have time to prepare for the changes. May 1 is the national commit date for college deposits. “The fact that we knew from early May that there was going to be about 570 students allowed my office and the associate deans and directors that work with the curriculum and work directly with the faculty of the college to add classes to absorb the larger class,” said Frank. They added seven Cultural Studies Program seminar classes in order to keep the student size at 16.
They also examined the 100- and 200-level courses that the 578 incoming first-years would go into. “We’ve added more courses, we’ve added more sections, we’ve added more CSP frosh seminars, so that these numbers will be within the stated policy caps of 100-, 200-, and 300-level courses,” said Frank. These class size caps limit 100-level courses to 35 students, 200-level courses to 25 students and 300-level courses to 15 students. The administration was able to maintain these class size caps because the 100-student increase provided higher net tuition revenue that could pay for the additional courses.
In the fall of 2008, the average 100-level course size was 19.2 students and the average 200-level course size was 16.3 students. This year those numbers have increased to 21.2 and 16.8, respectively, which, Frank said, are minimal increases. “All of our planning over the summer to absorb the incoming students paid off,” said Frank.
Most of the humanities departments have not seen significant changes in average class sizes. “We tried to add more sections of the same course [to] keep the course size the same,” said Professor Anne Schell of the Psychology Department. The department also hired an adjunct professor to teach an extra class.
Many language classes have also not seen any changes in class size. Professor Michael Shelton of the Spanish Department said that his class sizes are the same as usual.”[First-year classes are] a little bigger than usual, but not significantly bigger than usual,” said Professor Frank Lynch about the Mathematics Department.
But not all the departments are unharmed by class size surges. Many science courses that require a lab portion are finding it harder to handle the student body increase.
According to Biology Professor Gary Martin, larger numbers in the lecture classes do not necessarily make a difference, but a size limit is important in the lab. “We try not to raise the limits,” he said. “I’ve always appreciated the fact that we have the labs to sit down and go slower.” But with increased enrollment, more students cram into the lab rooms, which causes a safety issue as well.
Martin also expressed a concern for the dependency on adjunct professors, which is happening in departments all over campus. “We have added courses, and so the number of faculty that are not regular tenure track is up,” said Frank. He is confident that in the Los Angeles area, the strong intellectual base creates a rich pool of adjunct hires. But Martin has other concerns about the short-term nature of the adjunct hires. “They’re not really around to write letters of recommendation or do research with the students,” he said.
In addition, class size increases in Oxy’s student body have spurred discussion and debate about the “right” size of Oxy. Questions over expanding, decreasing or maintaining the student body size will be coming up during the year.
“I think that’s a really important issue for the future of the college,” said Chemistry Professor Michael Hill. “Decisions are going to be made this year that will have an incredible impact.”
Frank pointed out that the size of Occidental has always been a question of debate, even 15 years ago when it was under-enrolled. “I think that’s part of a planning process that needs to go forward, that engages the entire community,” said Frank. “No decisions have been made about the size of the school other than to keep the intimate, residential, small character of the school intact.”
The campus’s growing size could be a platform for more changes to come at Oxy.
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