studeNts petitioN For AdvANced courses At upA

ARTICLE BY SAMITA GOLLA • ILLUSTRATION BY VIDYA ACHAR • DESIGN BY JORDAN MATHEW

Advanced courses have always been a part of UPA’s graduation requirements. Throughout the years, when students are interested in a new course, the proposed classes are put through the process of entering the UPA course catalog.

AP courses are added through student interest, but in certain cases, when a new AP course is updated or created, a teacher can put in a request for UPA to offer that new class. Then, if sufficient interest is shown, the course idea will be run through the specific subject department, according to Director of Curriculum and Instruction Jean Mastrogiacomo

“There are a lot of factors when discussing a [new] course, like: how many kids are interested?” Mastrogiacomo said. “What graduation requirements would it meet? And who would teach it, and who would get the training?”

If a teacher is willing to teach a class, a course request form is sent out to ensure that there are enough students willing to join that course.

“The teacher then has the option to sign up for AP summer training,” Mastrogiacomo said. “[The training] is quite long and lengthy, but you learn so much.

When

The next step is to register the course on CollegeBoard and submit an application on a portal called UC Doorways which officially approves UPA to offer the course and exam.

AP Physics 1 went through this process in the 2021-2022 school year, and the course eventually went on to be added to the UPA curriculum.

During the 2020-2021 school year, science teacher Matthew Bourbeau was approached by a student about teaching AP Physics 1, and at the time, Bourbeau did not feel ready because that was his first year at UPA. He wanted experience teaching a class in person before moving on to teaching a more complex course. During January and February of 2022, the science department had another discussion about offering AP Physics 1, and Bourbeau agreed because he felt confident in teaching AP Physics 1 after a year of teaching in-person physics classes.

“The staff or the adminis tration was willing to offer [AP Physics 1] to students, provided that I was also willing to teach it,” Bourbeau said.

When it comes to the curriculum, courses follow the standard College Board curricular requirements provided by the AP Course Audit which outlines the curricu- lum of each course and gives teachers the guideline for what their class should cover.

Multimedia Arts teacher Cameron Seibly is currently involved in a similar process with the creation of a new arts class at UPA called Advanced Digital Arts. Advanced Digital Arts is not

Advanced Digital Arts’ hopeful addition is based on student interest.

Seibly was approached by a group of students wanting him to teach a version of a digital arts class.

“I thought maybe I would get a handful of kids interested, but when they came up to

“I don’t know as of yet if I can make it a true AP course, but I could make an advanced program that would give students information on classes they would take in college,” Seibly said.

What makes an art class AP is that students need to meet the demands of a specific curriculum and create a portfolio to be submitted for review. But if Seibly can not make the class AP, he has an advanced program idea for the class where students will make portfolios but not submit them for review and keep them to showcase for college.

Seibly believes that adding Advanced Digital Arts benefits students with an interest in an art career by preparing students for a college high school to prepare me for it so everything I learned in college was new.”

For the Digital Arts curriculum, Seibly plans to mimic a college environment where the projects he assigns would show students’ range of skills.

“[College] is a forever changing field, and having the Advanced Digital Arts class would be great for students so when a student goes into college, they would know what to pursue and be a lot more prepared,” Seibly said.