The Center for Student Involvement has developed a method of simplifying the Course Enrichment Component required by almost every course with the creation of a new online calendar that features events which will help satisfy the five hour CEC requirement for many classes.
Eddie Seavers, the Associate Director of the Center for Student Involvement and Coordinator of the Student Center, has created a variety of calendars for various operations and is behind the creation for the new CEC calendar.
"The calendar provides a singular place to go to get ideas for events that may fulfill the requirement," he said. "The calendar is populated with events that the Center for Student Involvement knows about." He also added that faculty, staff and students can fill out a form to have an event added to the calendar.
The calendar is meant to be a resource for students to learn about events, but not all events on the calendar will satisfy CEC requirements for every course. Professors will have the final word about which events satisfy their requirements.
"[The CEC calendar will] hopefully make it easier for students to find opportunities to discuss with faculty as to whether they would fulfill the requirement in a class," Seavers said. '[But] students must check with their professor to confirm."
Although most students are not yet too familiar with the plan for the calendar, most seemed to think it would be helpful.
"I think that's a very good initiative," junior Colin English said. "It would save people from the inevitable end of the year crisis that everyone goes through in April. And it would help with scheduling availability because that's a difficult part of CEC, to find which activities can apply within your time schedule."
Faculty can use the calendar to find more potential opportunities for their students to get CEC credit and students can also use it to find interesting events to attend in their free time.
"I think it'd be really helpful," freshman Melissa Mayberry said. "If the events were all in one place it'd make it a lot easier for people to actually find and go to them."
Other students, however, are not so certain it will be helpful.
"I did not know about it," confessed junior Jennifer Alfonso when asked what she thought about the calendar. She further added that she probably wouldn't use it because CEC events are very specific for nursing majors and she feels the calendar would not help her.
The new CEC calendar and the CEC Program Request Form can be found by going to the CSI website and then clicking on the links found on the right side of the page.
As Mayberry pointed out, "The first step to any event is awareness of it."
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