Brayonda Powell’s senior core group wanted to have the main event for their project on alumni night, January 22.
Unfortunately, they were enrolled in senior core for the fall 2010 semester.
Powell’s group did their senior core project on human sex trafficking because everyone in the group has family and friends who have been involved with it in some way.
Powell finished her requirements to graduate in December and said they wanted to do their event on alumni night so that graduates of OU could see what current students are doing to make a difference. For this reason, their project was extended into spring semester.
“We had so many ideas planned, doing the basketball games,” she said. “We were going along with the women and men’s basketball.”
Professor Corkie Hedlund, who teaches senior core in fall and spring semesters, said carrying work into the next semester should be a matter of last resort.
“For example, a group had a top notch guest speaker who wanted to come but couldn’t get here before the end of the the semester,” she said.
Hedlund said that in those cases, these situations are positive.
“Sometimes it seems that it happens because of poor planning or procrastination and then I get nervous,” she said.
Another group with a similar topic, sex tourism, had great difficulties with their entire semester last fall. Senior Crystal Snyder said that there was a lot of problems with scheduling and communication in the group.
“We had originally had five members, and we split into 3 separate groups, 1 individual and 2 pairs,” she said.
Snyder and her partner, Grigority Klenyaev, who also finished his requirements to graduate in December, ultimately did not have time to put on an event.
“It was really hard with two people,” Snyder said. “We ended up doing a Facebook site in the end. We found that awareness was the best way. It’s too large of a problem to solve and completely encompass.”
Snyder said she learned some things about her personality from her experience in senior core and made a decision to improve herself this semester.
“I’m taking the leadership and creativity class,” she said. “So that way, I can learn to be a better leader and be a better follower when I go out into the work world. I was better with the work than the group dynamics.”
Hedlund said that groups grades from the previous semester can be lowered if their finished project doesn’t meet the standards of senior core.
“Sometimes, the grades are assigned based on work completed and then if and when the project is completed the grade is changed to reflect the overall quality of the project, project paper, and orals,” she said.
Hedlund reiterated that extending work into the next term is to be avoided if possible.
“Some group members graduate at the end of the course and all are ready to move on and put their energies into the next term’s work,” she said “I resist allowing extensions into the next term as much as I can.”
Despite the stress that is associated with senior core, both Powell and Snyder considered extending their projects an opportunity rather than a burden.