By Sara Johnson
William Peace University is known for being a private university with a goal of providing a welcoming, energizing and personal environment where students can learn and educate themselves with the comfort and assurance that when they need help or individual time with a subject they know they will get it. They know the attention will be undivided with no feeling of disturbing or holding up the professor.
The attitude that Peace professors carry has always seemed to be almost neighborly and very kindhearted. They involve us in their lives in little ways and care about us. They know us by name and major.
Seeing that the professors care for each individual student encourages and welcomes them making them feel at home. This is exactly the family and home environment that has been a part of the special honor of attending Peace for many years.
College is the cornerstone of many people’s lives and creating the right environment is key to making the cornerstone strong. The biggest part of that environment is the right relationships.
The student-professor relationship is the most crucial. WPU was so good for this and many students loved the 11:1 ratio. The small numbers were what carried the appeal of going here. Now, however, the numbers are increasing and it is starting to affect the relationships between professors and students, slowly but surely, and many students are starting to get concerned.
One of Peace’s beautiful smiles on campus, Jessica Becker, a talented BFA Musical Theater Major here at WPU, who has had the honor of experiencing both Peace College and William Peace University life, believes that “As an overall college, the relationship has declined, but within specific majors ,such as theater, have luckily stayed relatively the same”
This means that Peace has done a good job of maintaining their relationships with those under their major, but Jessica also spoke for many students when she stated that “It seems between majors, that if you want to talk to someone it has to be within your major for them to have time for you.”
If you are under a professor’s supervision by way of majoring in the professor’s subject, you often take priority compared to the students who just take one or two classes but their majors are unrelated to the professor.
While majors taking priority, is important it should still be a priority to help all students equally at least to some extent.
Professors, however, are human and not robots (except for Dr. Newhouse, who I’m pretty sure is at least a cyborg) and they cannot handle but so many students and stay personally involved in their lives, make personal time for them, and do their daily jobs of teaching and grading if the number of students keep increasing.
We love the numbers and don’t want them to keep climbing because as Christiane Newell, a Presidential ambassador and valued voice of The William Peace University singers says, “Because the class sizes at Peace are so small it really allows professors to know their students. It’s also really nice to walk into your professors office and get help right away if you have a question”.
This is the environment many Peace students hold dear and don’t want to lose, if numbers increase anymore we could lose this.
This sense of community and the professor’s ability to know and understand each student and make them feel a part of something extraordinary is the very essence of Peace.
This is the place we as students hold dear to us and want to be a place of “Peace that bonds us to our success and to other people who are going to be a part of our journey.” As students, we should want to remain small and not get too large, because with an abundance of quantity can come a decline in quality.
A successful community is all about quality, the Peace I fell in love with is a community of high quality and success.
We need to keep those Relationships with our professors and keep the bond with ALL of them, that helps us reach the mission of success.