Students hope to restrict public health class access

As many students in the public health school find their required courses already full before they can register, student leaders are pushing administrators to limit registration so those in the major will have priority placement in those courses.

Tonight, the Student Government Association will vote on whether to support limiting courses offered by the public health school either until the last registration date passes or the last student in the school has registered. According to SGA public health legislator Danielle Miller, a sophomore kinesiology major who proposed the bill, the school's classes — especially the athletics courses — are very popular among all majors, yet only a limited number are offered. Given any student can register for these classes, many public health majors risk being dropped from the program if they are unable to get a spot in those courses on time.

"The biggest complaint I've heard [from SPH students] was, ‘We can't get into our classes,'" Miller said. "It's really frustrating when there are any classes you need for your major and you have to go to the administrators in the school and ask them to override the system to get into that class. A lot of other schools don't have that problem."

Colleen Farmer, the assistant dean for undergraduate education at the school, said administrators are considering limiting registration to majors. Much of the problem, she said, is there are not enough instructors to teach the school's surging number of students. While the number of public health majors has grown from 788 in 2001 to 1,894 in 2011, the number of professors, instructors and advisers has stayed relatively constant. Moreover, she said administrators are reluctant to enlarge the smaller, more intimate classes to larger lectures with hundreds of seats just to open more spaces.

"You are just here for four to five years, you want to get the best education you can get," Farmer said. "Instructors love to teach smaller classes, and students prefer to take smaller classes. The primary issue is one, access to classes, and two, the quality of those classes."

Several university departments — such as business, psychology and theatre — currently limit registration to certain courses to ensure students in that major have priority. Several public health majors said they support applying this policy to their school.

"I register on Dec. 8, but I already checked the classes, and the waitlists are 50 people deep," freshman kinesiology major Matthew Taylor said. "[The policy is] a good idea, because it puts a lot of pressure on me to have to meet these benchmarks and pressure to schedule in, if you did not get it in the last semester, a lot of heavy work."

While most said their advisers at the college had been helpful in exploring other options for them to complete requirements, some were still concerned about how this would affect their track toward graduation.

"They had to freeze my account, and then when it was over, every class was full," junior family science major Joe Moran said. "Most of my prerequisites are done, so now I'm really stressed."

While Farmer said keeping majors on track toward finishing their degrees is the priority, she is concerned it will prevent non-majors from exploring public health interests.

"We are aware of the issue, and it is a resource issue," Farmer said. "We have to reach a compromise between helping our majors progress in the major while still affording some seats to non-majors."

Miller agreed the opportunity for non-majors should not be closed completely.

"If there are seniors wanting to take an easy course their last semester, we don't want them [to] deprive you of taking it," Miller said. "But if we're looking toward our careers and going into that field, than we should be able to sign up for it first."

villanueva@umdbk.com