From the Yale Daily News: In a recent push by the French department to make its offerings less daunting to students, the department has attempted to reduce the workload demands of some of its courses. This semester, many French courses designated as L1 through L4 have eliminated final exams and adopted a weekly “4 plus 1 model,” which consists of four days of in-person instruction and one asynchronous class on Friday. “We want to attract students to the study of French as they would to any other language,” Constance Sherak, the department’s language program director, wrote in a statement to the News. “Rigor doesn’t mean an unsurmountable degree of work and shouldn’t discourage students from pursuing a language they want to study for their own personal reasons.” ...
“There was definitely a sense among many students that while French language courses were rigorous and effective, they were too difficult in terms of workload and grading,” [Department Chair Maurice] Samuels wrote...
Full story at https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/10/24/to-woo-students-french-department-makes-courses-easier/.
From the LA Times: The University of Southern California has issued layoff notices to more than 900 employees since July amid a fiscal crisis that has battered morale and strained resources. The cuts, detailed in a Monday letter to the USC community by interim President Beong-Soo Kim, are central to an effort to erase a budget deficit that ballooned to more than $200 million. The layoffs have included employees across the university and its health system, including student academic advisers.
But Kim, who succeeded former President Carol Folt on July 1, wrote that as many 200 of those who received layoff notices could remain with the university in new positions. And he noted that the job cuts are nearly complete...
Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-11-03/layoffs-usc-fiscal-crisis.
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