“Is Adding New Courses to Access Academy Program a Practical Idea?”

Aziza Roshani

With the beginning of fall semester 2018, an open forum was held on August 30, where the Vice-Chancellor along with the departmental heads came to hear the students’ concerns.  A student from UG2 asked for an explanation on the recent expulsion of the Access Academy (AA) students. Before this, rumors were flying around campus about the expulsion being sudden, causing confusion about the protocols. Therefore, the Echo went around campus interviewing students and faculty to understand more about this story.

Upon interviewing two former pre-access students currently in AA, they confided the growing tension among their peers and the intensity of specific subjects like the Integrated Science courses. They also said that the majority of their friends are struggling with the same problems despite their proficiency in English.

Although both are grateful for the pre-access program, which helped them in improving their reading and writing skills, they mentioned their lack of background in science is adding to their academic pressure. The expulsion of the 12 students has caused a ripple effect of tension and fear among their peers. One of them said, “When I first heard about the suspension, I was scared as the AA program, in the beginning, was intense and I was thinking that I might face the same consequences.” The students also expressed that they have addressed the challenges by visiting AA faculties. This helped to some extent, but sometimes they felt a lack of responsiveness from them with the assumption that the students are not putting effort into the particular subject.

The Echo went forward and interviewed Mia Sasaki, the new Access Academy Director, to learn her perspective on this matter and her plans on helping address the issue. According to Sasaki, in the pre-access program, the focus is more on language acquisition and content, with interactive teaching methods like project-based learning, which Access Academy could focus more on. When questioned on how she plans to support the struggling students, she mentioned that students’ advisors are mandated to let students know when they are struggling, and students are equally responsible as they are notified to keep at least 2.0 CGPA throughout the year.

Sasaki emphasized that the recently expelled students had significantly low marks, and according to the records were notified. They were given a recovery summer class to raise their grades as another option to raise their marks so that they could progress, but they failed to do so. She expressed that responsibility was to be taken by both teachers and students and that teachers should prioritize the students more than the subject, and help struggling students instead of the other way around. She thinks it is important to build teachers, rather than experts. To make sure that students don’t fall behind in Access Academy, she plans to have a central tracking system to manage data and set track records for each student, in order to build a better communication system.

(Correction: A previous version of this article erroneously stated that Sasaki herself would oversee the entrance exam next year. In fact, she hopes that those in charge of the exam will do so. The article has been updated to reflect this.)