I trust you are doing well. I am Student Council Representative Nathan McCarthy, and I am reaching out regarding Fall 2024: Business & Economic statistics. There is a growing unrest among the student body taking this course this semester (online and face to face classes) that threatens to "overflow", and I am reaching out to seek possible remedies to ensure students feel heard and prevent this from happening. There are multiple concerns raised, however, the crux of the issue is that the student body believes that a course this heavy shouldn’t be a general course and needs urgent amendment.

Concerns
As it is now, a large part of the student body just simply are not understanding the material, we have for the large part advised we feel completely lost on the majority of topics even now 7 weeks in. Students have stated it feels like the lecturers have been instructed to complete the units at a set time no matter the concern of the students, to their detriment. The majority of the students are not doing a statistics focused degree so everything being taught is new and the speed at which everything is being taught is disheartening and demoralizing. We don’t believe enough time is being given for each topic to breath or “set” in our minds and because some topics are building blocks for others, we’re perpetually on a roller coaster of confusion each week. Continuing on this, things almost came to ahead in the 6:00 pm class recording for Mr. C Walters, Thur. 17 Oct. 24 when he explained the group work they expected us to complete in addition to our MSA and a separate EOSA, the students were vocal in voicing their concerns but we were told that it’s essentially “not that hard.” As a statistician of course it will look manageable because you understand it, but for the student body where this is all new, it is unacceptable.

Students have advised after class they have tried using YouTube to re-teach the topics, as classmates we try to assist each other in our telegram groups, and for at least Ms. Sanchez-Bolton, she has made herself available outside of regular class times to have sessions, however, when the weekly quizzes are posted we realize for the large part we haven’t truly understood the material and would all fail if we weren’t able to retake the quizzes.

Failure Rate
We understand that you read for your degree and passing any course takes personal effort, however, you can see from above we ARE putting in personal effort, it’s just not “clicking.” There are students who are perennially on the honor-roll and top achievers that aren’t getting this course so I also don’t believe it is an issue of just aptitude either. We believe this course itself needs to be reviewed. This course historically has a high failure rate, we were advised on day one that most students failed it last semester, in fact we have current students where this is their third time doing this course and unfortunately, if things stay as they are this trend may continue. Some students have stated that a comparable general course at competing universities are not as intense; other students stated at those universities, you don’t need to pass both the course work and EOSA to pass the course, you can pass on course work alone, giving everyone a better chance. We bring up the failure rate each time we speak with our teachers because it has been an ongoing problem at UCC and really, some significant change to the course structure should have been made after last semester’s results.

Remedies and Suggestions

The students are requesting an urgent Town hall where we can properly voice our concerns to those in charge. We have voiced to our teachers, however, we know they aren’t the ones that can affect the change we seek. Something needs to be done about the remainder of the course for this semester.

We suggest the course be reformatted and this intensive course given to students with statistics focused degrees while for general students, just doing this course for credit, a lite version like “Business Statistics Essentials” be given