<p>I was browsing the threads and I keep seeing "ex-college courses"; what does that mean?</p>
<p>The "Experimental College," which offers non-traditional, for-credit courses, generally taught by upperclassmen (or maybe sometimes grad students) under the supervision of a faculty member. It's not so "experimental" anymore, as it started in the '70s. I suspect that you can find a better description of it on the Tufts website.</p>
<p>The business-focused Ex-College courses that my son took were taught by business professionals, not students.</p>
<p>My son goes to Tufts and my impression is that the Ex-College courses are mostly taught by professors or professionals. Some of the courses are extremely interesting and perhaps don't fit neatly into the various academic departments. They seem to have some excellent media courses. The Ex-College started in the 70's when I was at Tufts, and I think it was more student directed at that time.</p>
<p>My dad went to Tufts in late 1970's and he talks about an Ex-College course he took that was clearly taught by fellow students and called "Macrame and Beer" or something like that, where they all sat around drinking and making plan hangers out of rope. I guess the 1980's turned it into a mini-business curriculum. lol. Jacksonmom, you and my Dad were probably there at the same time.</p>
<p>The ExCollege allows anyone with a level of expertise to teach a class on just about anything: Sport Business, Intellectual Property Law, Chinese Medicine, Producing Films for Social Change. The classes are vetted and selected by a board composed equally of students and faculty using both the proposed syllabus and knowledge of student interest. So some courses are taught by current students, some are taught by professionals from outside the community or grad students within the community (though grad student teaching the ExCollege is rare). Some of these courses will have a business focus, but many more do not.</p>
<p>I took several courses in the ExCollege and adored all of them. It's a wildly different perspective to learn from a professor vs. people with much more tangible experience. There's a terrific course taught in the political science department by Kent Portney on the US Judicial System. But it's a social science class with social science goals, material, and pedagogy. When I was a senior at Tufts, and as I was taking Prof Portney's class, the ExCollege offered a course on the US Prison System that was team taught by a former maximum security inmate and a correctional officer. They covered a lot of the same material, but I know from hearing about the field trips they took to interview inmates that we studied the material is completely different (but equally valuable) ways.</p>
<p>The list of courses offered through the ExCollege is absolutely amazing, one of the most impressive examples of educational flexibility at Tufts, and I strongly encourage you to take a look at the list, which also includes a bio on each of the instructors. </p>
<p>The</a> Experimental College Course List</p>
<p>Here's a sampling of the courses listed:
Faith and Social Action: How Faith Inspires Activism
History of Documentary Films
Medical Spanish
Forensic Science and the Investigation of Crime Reconstruction
Eco-Psychology
Marketing for Social Change</p>