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A Johnston student's education plan -- the graduation contract -- is approved by a Graduation Contract Committee during the sophomore year. Before graduation, a Graduation Review Committee approves that the contract has been fulfilled. The Review Committee, however, is often far more a celebration of a student than a Review Committee.
The contract includes three sections: a large narrative autobiographical statement, a course list by discipline, and a chronological course list. The course list in the original contract should show at least the field of each particular course as well as whether it is upper or lower lever.
``Your class list makes no sense, in our eyes, without [the narrative]. It tells why you've taken the courses you have; class evaluations only tell what you've done and how well you've done it...It tells the Committee what it needs to know to help you develop a good contract. Some people think that requires a complete autobiography; some people think it takes a page. That's up to you. In any case, you can always rewrite if you don't like it, before your file gets sent [out].''[17]
The Graduation Contract Committee is looking for three main things in each contract. First, the contract must show breadth. This is achieved by ``addressing'' the eleven[SEE FOOTNOTE] core requirements of the University. Additionally, the Committees often do not allow a contract to pass that seems to somehow ignore the humanities, social science, natural science, or the fine arts.[SEE FOOTNOTE] Second, a contract must show sufficient depth. This translates into ``a significant number of courses in your area of concentration, and that a majority of those are upper division.'' Additionally, a senior project is ``strongly suggested.'' Third, the cross-cultural experience. ``We define `cross-cultural' as having a considerable exposure (a month or more) to a culture not your own. This means that you would be a `minority' in that culture. As a result you will, hopefully, have a richer appreciation, understanding and acceptance of that culture -- and your own as well.'' Lastly, the University requirement of 132 units is often considered. It is not an official requirement of Johnston graduation, and exceptions are made, but they are not the norm. The graduation contract must be filed at least three semesters before graduation.[11] Most contracts are revised, however, when a student returns from a trem abroad, and most narratives are revised again at the end of the senior year, before the final Graduation Review Committee meeting.
Membership on a person's Graduation Contract Committee is not decided until a few days before the meeting. Each committee always includes at least two faculty and at least two Johnston students who have already filed their contracts, as well as the Johnston Director and a Johnston specialist from the registrar's office. Membership on the graduation committee rotates through the whole Johnston-associated faculty and Johnston student body. Students are encouraged to attend contract meetings before their meeting to learn what to expect. The meetings are all public, and all community members are invited to speak, but the official committee has the burden of accepting, renegotiating, of rejecting the actual contract.
The meeting followed a standard form. First the adviser presented [the student] to the Committee, and spoke briefly about her work and her future plans. Then a resource person spoke. the resource person was a faculty member who had gone over [the student's] file carefully. He reported on [the student's] academic performance to date and asked several questions if necessary...the convener of the Committee [invited the student] to say anything. First, [the Committee] applied certain general standards. At the same time, the Committee had to understand each contract on its own terms and judge it accordingly.[17]
One problem some Johnston students seem to have is sticking too fiercely to their contract. When they initially file their contracts, they are given for examples many finished contracts. On the one hand, of course this allows them to see the range of what they can do, and how much they can accomplish. Yet on the other hand, these sample contracts are absolutely exact in what students did during their Johnston career. They list exactly the courses the student took, exactly when.[6] A sophomore filing a contract, on the other hand, might be better off leaving the contract more flexible, including ``a study of some kind of art'' rather than ``Art History 213 with Bonnie Eldin in Fall Term 1996'', for example. The Director explained in a interview that Contract Committees often suggested to students that they leave their contracts flexible enough, including general guidelines for each course in each of their semesters, but not specifying the exact course name. ``After all,'' he said, ``how can we be sure what courses will even be offered in two years?''[20]
Addendum to a student's contract can be made by the student at any time before the final semester. Small contract revisions can be approved by the Director of the Center; larger changes call for a meeting of an official Graduation Contract Committee, prefererably the one that originally approved the contract. Addenda must be completed before a student's last semester of school, or else the student risks not graduating.
The final verification that a student's contract has been fulfilled is accomplished through a meeting of that student's Graduation Review Committee. A student has some choice in who will be on their committee. Typically, the Committee has one meeting. First, the advisor presents a one-page precis. This precis is ``meant only to summarize evaluations for the convenience of graduate school admissions committees and employers. It's designed to be a more or less neutral account of those documents, not a career summary.''[16] Next, the students and faculty who are so moved say a few words of thanks to the student. Last, the contract is verified as completed. After the meeting is over, the Committee and friends of the graduate complete the celebration, generally with cocktails and reminiscences. To many students, the Graduation Review meeting reveals the fundamental character of Johnston, the value of the individual, by centering the focus of the meeting completely around the approval of the student.[25] When an advisor feels that a student is in danger of not passing their contract because of WIPs, that student either chooses to enroll an extra semester, or else to have their contract approved ``on completion of all outstanding work''.
Historically, the changes in graduation contracts have been a reflection of the college. Obviously there were the differences in fields; when the University dissolved Johnston, most of the transpersonal/humanistic psychology department was fired, and with them went most of the transpersonal/humanistic contracts. Contracts are also more academic now and conventional, less experiential. ``It was sometimes hard to tell from a contract title what the subject of a study was. It's not like that anymore,'' a long-time Johnston faculty member told me.[20]
Through these two media -- the class contract and the graduation contract -- Johnston institutionalized both individualism and the academic community. The contract system was vital because it supported both the centrifugal and the centripetal momenta of the college. Contracts were centrifugal in that they defined individual student programs. Each contract was unique, irreducible to any other. But contracts were also centripetal because the defining of individual plans was done in public meetings which established the identity of the college as a community of learning. Contract committee meetings were the most productive community-building events in the middle and later years of the college. They created a common law tradition of what Johnston education should be, and they gave students both a personal and a public identity.[17]