ATEC Dean Anne Balsamo said she is working to respond to the concerns students mentioned in the petition. Photo by Anna Schaeffer | Mercury Staff.
Concerns raised include large class sizes, lack of job market for graduates
A group of ATEC students created a
petition raising concerns and complaints about their school.
The group, called Concerned Students
of ATEC, created a website and circulated the petition, calling attention to
what it calls the “overall instability and irrelevance” of their school,
according to a Feb. 6 press release.
Founded in 2015, ATEC — the School of
Arts, Technology and Emerging Communications — offers an undergraduate Bachelor
of Arts degree through a program designed to teach students “foundational
skills in media studies, cultural theory, computer programming and creative
production,” according to the ATEC website. The circulating petition states
this degree description is false advertising, and the website for Concerned
Students of ATEC lists specific recommendations for its vision of the school.
After her
appointment as the inaugural dean of ATEC in 2016, Anne Balsamo developed a
three-year plan to develop curriculum infrastructure, build culture and market
ATEC to the DFW metroplex and the world. She said she understands where the
students’ concerns come from and hopes to address their suggestions fully.
“I’m excited
about engaging these questions,” Balsamo said. “We’re on it, and it actually
takes a little bit more behind-the-scenes to get where we want to get to, which
is very much in line with what they want.”
Balsamo said the student petition
provides feedback that will help her advocate for their needs to President
Richard Benson and Provost Inga Musselman. She said it also shows her that students
may not know what ATEC already offers.
“There are things
for me to clarify, things for me to explain, things for me to bring people up
to date and maybe even things for me to suggest that they can do next that
would really help the effort,” she said.
Concerned
Students of ATEC did not respond to requests for an interview, but primary
concerns listed in the petition included too-large class sizes and courses
dropped from curricula, restricting individual learning.
“Design is the backbone of ATEC, and
that curriculum has not been as carefully created as it needs to be,” Balsamo
said. “It was like patchwork. So we took a step back — and this is part of the
‘dropping courses’ and larger course size — and putting in place kind of
foundation courses, eliminating redundancy, which is why some courses went
away.”
ATEC revamped all sound design courses last year,
including those teaching audio playback and sound mixing equipment, but that
meant classes could not be offered in sound design during the transition
period. Additionally, a new user experience and user design lab is now up and
running but has not yet been integrated into the curriculum. Balsamo said the
school had to comply with the university’s mandate on course sizes, and ATEC is
still in the process of building up its faculty to teach advanced courses.
“It’s part of
the growth of ATEC that is absolutely top priority,” she said. “That’s the
message that I will want to talk with students at the town hall about.”
The student petition also expressed
concern about job availability for ATEC students following graduation. On a
Reddit post about the petition, one commenter wrote that the inability to
specialize in a topic contributes to the difficulty many ATEC graduates
experience when it comes to finding a job.
Balsamo said the
school is currently performing market research on job availability for ATEC
graduates who have different kinds of design expertise.
“I need to make
sure we’re matching what we’re doing with what jobs are out there,” she said.
Recommendations
from the petition website also included the creation of an Industry Advisory
Council to draw feedback from industry professionals on the relevance of ATEC
course content. ATEC launched an Industry Advisory Board in September of 2018
and continues to invite and confirm members of the board. Concerned Students of
ATEC also requested the development of a Dean’s Advisory Council composed of
students.
“There’s a
structure for an Advisory Council that is not on my plate to start,” Balsamo
said. “It’s on the students to self-organize. No one will resist it, but if I
were to pick the people it would only be those who I know.”
She said ATEC
graduate students recently formed a Graduate Student Council with elected
officers, a group that has already advocated for change in the school.
“I take (the
concerns) seriously and these are very thoughtful suggestions,” Balsamo said.
“What I’m hoping is those who are concerned could come to the town hall and we
can discuss them more broadly.”
The upcoming town hall meeting will take
place March 28 at 11 a.m. in the ATEC lobby. All students and faculty are
welcome to attend and discuss concerns.