Changes to AA

Nathasha Dharmasena

AUW’s Access Academy is a unique bridge program designed to help students better prepare for their undergraduate studies. This pre-bachelor program sets AUW apart from other universities by facilitating students coming from diverse educational backgrounds to overcome any prior deficits. This program is continuously modified to cater to any noticeable gaps,and this year, multiple changes were made to the curriculum.

The courses currently taught in Access Academy are Reading Across Disciplines, Pre-Calculus, Language and Composition, World Civilizations, Integrated Science, Martial Arts in the form of Karate, Leadership Seminar, and workshops on basic computer skills. The four core courses and Karate remain the same as last year’s curriculum, while the Integrated Science course and Leadership Seminar have been newly implemented this year. The workshops on Computer Science, however, only provide basic computer literacy for those who need it. The Leadership Seminar, which is alignedwith the mission of AUW to graduate women who will be skilled, innovative professionals and service-oriented leaders in their communities, adds to the overall value of Access Academy. Ms.Sneha Sandez, an alumna of AUW, conducts dynamic discussions on identity, race, different prejudices, mental wellbeing and other aspects of being a good leader here. The new AA director, Mia Sasaki, is content with this addition, as it has been receiving a lot of positive feedback from both students and faculty.

 A pilot was conducted during the spring semester last year to implement Integrated Science as a permanent part of AA, and from this year onwards it has been in effect. Integrated Science is a foundational science course that focuses on the basics of biology, chemistry, physics, public health and environmental science. This is modified to cater to students coming from a non-science background to give them exposure to the subject. However, according to some students from non-science backgrounds, the course material is “a bit difficult to grasp”, which they feel might affect their grades. Meanwhile, some of the students with a science background feel that parts of this course are actually repetitions of their high school science courses. On the other hand, according to Prof. John Remarek, the UG professors believe that the course will provide students with the basics of science that relate to the UG majors. Moreover, this course also serves as a major determinant for students in choosing their majors. In previous years, there have been cases where students have been confused regarding their major; taking this course helps them in selecting what they actually want to do. It is indeed a challenging course, and the new Director of Access Academy, Mia Sasaki, is planning to make some changes. One of these changes is to reduce the class hours so that the workload of students is minimized. She feels that the 8:00am to (at times) 5:45pm time schedule also means that there is a lot of information to process and it can be intense for most students.

This leads back to the idea that Access Academy is actually a stepping-stone towards undergraduate studies and should in many ways reflect what it is like to be in the academic world. This is how the hectic schedule of the students is justified, according to one of the Access faculty members. Through Access, students get a sense of what academic writing and the undergraduate workload is like, and this mentally prepares them to have a smooth transition. Time management is very important both in the undergraduate level and well beyond that. To practice it even on a small scale boosts the students’ confidence tenfold, and at the end of the day, they are better prepared for what is to come in their UG years. The experiences of the direct entry to UG students further clarifies the importance of Access Academy. According to Ashfeen Aribea, an alumna of AUW, it was relatively easy for her and her peers to graduate into UG because they were used to the academic context from Access. She also mentioned how her peers who directly entered UG had difficulties adjusting to this new liberal arts curriculum.

Having joined AUW in 2017, Prof. John Remarek expressed that the content of AA this year has become more well rounded than in previous years. According to him, “The addition of Integrated Science, Leadership Seminar, and the computer skills course for some students has definitely made AA more holistic,” although he does add that these additions have increased the workload for the students. One other concern he brought up was that,Access Academy has more students this year (approx. 240). “We are just about reaching capacity for rooms,” he said. This gives us an insight as to why the class schedules are irregular and jam-packed, which was one of the concerns raised by many AA students.

The changes in Access Academy, however, do not end here.  In the competent hands of Mia Sasaki, Access Academy is still going through some more modifications. Access Academy is looking into hiring an additional teacher for every subject (except science) for the spring semester. Prof. John Remarek is already interviewing potential teachers for the reading course. They are also discussing having a “block schedule” in which different days will have only one section of either Humanities or STEM (including Leadership Seminar and Karate). Prof. John Remarek believes that if this can be implemented it would reduce the workload of the students and their stress levels. These are some of the changes that the AA Director and the rest of the faculty are planning to initiate.