To Dean Romanelli, Dean Daly and the Academic Board, We, the signees of this petition, have serious reservations about the requirements for the Leading Change Residency as detailed in your recent email. Given the current state of the job market and the economy, singular focus on our internships is of paramount importance to securing full-time employment and the professional goals of the student body. We believe that the current requirements are more onerous than previous residencies and represent significantly more time and written work than we can give without jeopardizing our performance at our internships. We propose the following solutions in the hopes you will adopt some or all of them: CASE REPORT Extend the deadline. Two weeks after the end of final exams is too short a timeframe to read an entire textbook, a case, and write-up the case. It also does not allow sufficient flexibility for those who are moving for their internships, vacationing with family, have already begun their internship or have otherwise committed time in those two weeks, especially after the significant requirements of the last week of classes and final exams. Eliminate the deliverable. Very few classes require all individuals to submit both a 2-4 page case write-up and a 3-5 final report, and those that do make one or more of them a team assignment. Eliminating the deliverable also allows maximum flexibility for us to complete the textbook reading. Eliminate or reduce the required reading. Requiring the completion of an entire textbook is too demanding, especially for those who (1) are beginning internships immediately after final exams, or (2) have already had work assigned to them during the term and will continue to receive assignments. WEBINARS Record the webinars for later viewing. Internship demands and long working hours mean that we cannot guarantee we will be available during the webinars, nor do we feel it is proper to attend a webinar while in the office. If we must miss a webinar, an opportunity should be afforded to view them later. Remove the seven write-ups. As it stands, the current total pages of write-ups ranges from 12 to 16 pages. We have not yet encountered any other class at MSB that requires this much writing from every individual. Because the seven write-ups are due at intervals during the summer, they are the most restrictive on our time and should be the first to be eliminated. Reduce the attendance requirement. At 7 of 14 set times throughout the summer, the requirement is too inflexible to accommodate internships that will be demanding throughout the time present. We suggesting reducing it to 5 of 14, which we feel would be sufficient given that the final reports requires us to apply principles to our summer internships. FINAL REPORT Reduce the size of the deliverable. Please see the points on write-ups in the other two sections. Extend the deadline until the end of the first or second week of Module 1. This will provide us time to reflect on our experiences over the summer and apply what we have learned without conflicting with time committed in the final two weeks in the summer. We are excited at the innovative approach to residencies being attempted here, however we feel that it places us in a situation where we may have to choose between the requirements of the residency and our performance in our internships. In such a situation, we cannot be faulted for choosing our internships and that would endanger the success of this new endeavor. We hope to find an agreeable solution that is more flexible than currently proposed.