(Archive March 2017) MRT Students Experiencing Course Planning Problems Due to Low Registration Numbers

By Bryon Harris | Observer Contributor

Some students of the MRT program are experiencing troubles with course planning. Students are having to take semesters off before returning to the main subjects of their degree. This can cause financial problems for students who planned to earn their degree within a certain span of time.

This issue is caused because the main content of the MRT degrees consist of lab courses, which are for the most part only offered one semester out of the year. With this design, if a class is not offered, or gets canceled due to having not enough students, these students must then wait until the class is offered again, which might not be until a year later. Having a gap year between these sequential, hands on courses can leave students out of practice and behind when they finally get to take the next course.

MWCC student, Matt Grandich, has experienced some of these issues first hand. Soon earning his degree, Matt has had to dedicate a semester to take the audio class required for his major. Matt said, “It was definitely disappointing to have to have to wait to take the class when I could have fit it into an earlier semester.” However, the school does realize these issues and wishes to act upon them

“I wish it didn’t have to happen,” said Dr. Laurie Occhipinti about students falling behind in the MRT program. She said the MRT program simply does not have enough students to run multiple courses. On top of this, with the smaller class sizes professors do not make enough money to teach these classes (the more students in a class, the more the professor will make). Dr. Occhipinti noted that the school is making an effort to promote the schools MRT program and attract more students to the program which would help to solve these issues some students are facing.

Teachers of the MRT program such as Ben Mertzic, have said that they also make efforts to reach out to their students and ask what they can do to help benefit them in the MRT program.  

Though this is a problem the school is aware of and is effect many students in the MRT program, it does not seem that there are any immediate solutions to this problem.