By Hailey Heinz

Transcripts are the most common record students have of their college achievements, but at Northeastern, a transcript may not tell the whole story.

Within the next several weeks, the Provost’s office will put together a task force to discuss the possibility of adding a co-op component to Northeastern’s transcript format.

President Richard Freeland mentioned the plan to the Faculty Senate when he addressed them at their meeting last Wednesday.

“I see this as a profoundly significant expression of who we are as an institution,” President Freeland said.

No decisions have been made at this time, since the task force has not yet been formed. However, Freeland spoke highly of the idea, which he said would make a Northeastern transcript a better reflection of a student’s education by including the co-op element that is such an important part of Northeastern’s reputation.

“Being the gold standard in co-op, that remains our primary claim to the world’s attention,” Freeland said. “Right now, a student who wants to convey what kind of experience they had has to do so outside the transcript.”

There was some discussion at the meeting about the specifics of the transcript format. Freeland’s initial suggestion was a second page of the transcript, which would outline a student’s co-op experiences and possibly contain some sort of evaluation of their performance.

History professor Gerry Herman pointed out co-op isn’t the only experiential education opportunity at Northeastern, and an extra transcript that included only co-op might be unfair to students who gained experience in areas like research and service projects.

“I hope the transcript includes a whole range of experiential education,” he said. “If it includes only co-op, it will be of great service to some students but not others.”

Freeland said the task force’s job is to develop the ideas of the plan more fully.

“We haven’t thought those problems through yet, but we need to,” Freeland said.

Creating a transcript section for co-op and perhaps other practice-oriented experiences raises the issue of where to draw the line. While Herman suggested including experiences like research projects and service learning, some students said this creates a slippery slope.

“In that case, you should add extracurricular activities,” said Whitney Curtiss, a sophomore pharmacy major. “It gets a little convoluted if you add everything.”

Provost Ahmed Abdelal said the task force will iron out the specifics, and he hopes the revised transcripts will be fully in place by the end of the school year.

“We need to define the framework for experiential education,” Abdelal said. “We have all these different components, but we haven’t really written one page on how these relate to learning and to one another.”

Middler nursing major Kimberly Williams, who is required to complete three co-ops for her major, said she supports the idea.

“I’m a nursing major, so that experience is really relevant,” Williams said.

She said the additional transcript should include internships, but should only reflect full-time, career-related experiences.

Details aside, Freeland repeatedly emphasized the importance of combining the various elements of a Northeastern education into a cohesive whole.

“We need to start thinking about how this whole universe of experiential education fits together,” Freeland said.