2008 Woodie Awards
Video related to this article is available below.Issue date: 3/25/08 Section: News
Commuting to class with the Quaker Consortium
Program linking Main Line and Penn remains popular in the 'burbs
Jeremy Baron
For most Penn students, spending 15 minutes to get to and from class is pushing it.
But last semester, Swarthmore junior Sven David Udekwu measured his commute in hours, not minutes.
Waking up at about 9 a.m., catching a 9:10 bus to Penn and arriving almost half an hour before his 10 a.m. Swedish language class every Monday and Wednesday, Udekwu made a journey into town normally reserved for Saturday nights.
He's just one of the hundreds of students who each semester take part in the Quaker Consortium, a reciprocal agreement between Penn, Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore colleges that allows students from one institution to take classes at any of the others.
And even though the arrangement remains relatively informal - although, one could argue that Penn, with only five students participating each semester, gets a lot less out of it than its sister schools - it's one with which administrators seem mostly happy and one that is unlikely to change in the near future.
Unbalanced agreement
Relatively little is known about the origins of the Consortium. Associate Dean of the College Kent Peterman said the arrangement was approved by the trustees in the 1930s, adding that in his 20 years at Penn, few, if any, changes have been made to its structure.
Guidelines for the agreement differ from institution to institution but for most schools, students need only the agreement of various professors and deans prior to registering for a class at another college.
From then on, the student registers for the class and proceeds like any other enrolled student.
At Penn, for example, interested students approach Assistant Dean for Advising Wally Pansing, who directs them to get approval from the relevant Penn department. A letter from the dean is then written, which the student gives to the registrar at the other school.
Some restrictions apply; the course shouldn't be one that's already being offered at Penn, for example. Still, Pansing called the process a relatively easy one. "This is not a barbed-wire situation," he said. Student requests aren't "vetted too closely."
But last semester, Swarthmore junior Sven David Udekwu measured his commute in hours, not minutes.
Waking up at about 9 a.m., catching a 9:10 bus to Penn and arriving almost half an hour before his 10 a.m. Swedish language class every Monday and Wednesday, Udekwu made a journey into town normally reserved for Saturday nights.
He's just one of the hundreds of students who each semester take part in the Quaker Consortium, a reciprocal agreement between Penn, Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore colleges that allows students from one institution to take classes at any of the others.
And even though the arrangement remains relatively informal - although, one could argue that Penn, with only five students participating each semester, gets a lot less out of it than its sister schools - it's one with which administrators seem mostly happy and one that is unlikely to change in the near future.
Unbalanced agreement
Relatively little is known about the origins of the Consortium. Associate Dean of the College Kent Peterman said the arrangement was approved by the trustees in the 1930s, adding that in his 20 years at Penn, few, if any, changes have been made to its structure.
Guidelines for the agreement differ from institution to institution but for most schools, students need only the agreement of various professors and deans prior to registering for a class at another college.
From then on, the student registers for the class and proceeds like any other enrolled student.
At Penn, for example, interested students approach Assistant Dean for Advising Wally Pansing, who directs them to get approval from the relevant Penn department. A letter from the dean is then written, which the student gives to the registrar at the other school.
Some restrictions apply; the course shouldn't be one that's already being offered at Penn, for example. Still, Pansing called the process a relatively easy one. "This is not a barbed-wire situation," he said. Student requests aren't "vetted too closely."
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