On November 3, the TCU Senate announced the institutionalization of its Open Syllabi Initiative, allowing instructors to share their course syllabi with the broader student body via Canvas.
With only some professors opting to share their syllabi, the Tribune asked students and faculty to share their views on the project.
Nessren Ourdyl ’25, TCU vice president, says that this has been a long-standing initiative: “I believe there [have] been attempts to encourage open syllabi access at Tufts for some time now….From my tenure on [the] TCU Senate since [the] fall of 2021, it was always a conversation.”
Because the project has spanned many years, Ourdyl thanks many current and previous senators for their contributions. Someone pivotal in the project’s development was Zachary Ferreti ’23, who led conversations with university leadership on the project.
Despite “an initial mix of reactions” ranging from support for the project to hesitation and concern, a working group presented a revised version of the initiative to the Education Policy Student-Faculty Committee for review. Ourdyl also credits Undergraduate Advising Dean Carmen Lowe and Professor Anne Rice for advising the Senate throughout the process and “ultimately… presenting and workshopping a feasible implementation to faculty members until the push for inclusion of the course syllabi function on Canvas, which is what students see now.”
Now that the project has been institutionalized, Ourdyl hopes “more professors feel empowered” to opt in as the “kinks get sorted out.” Eventually, Ourdyl would like to see the Canvas feature “become a more normalized and potentially more accessible tool…to improve overall academic experiences for our Tufts community.”
TCU Sen. Jose Armando ’26 hopes the initiative will “create a more transparent academic system that empowers students to make informed decisions about their education.” Armando continued, “By knowing what to expect from a class, students can better align their course selection with their academic, financial, and personal goals.”
Many students, though uninvolved with the initiative’s development, are staunchly in support. Nazario Campos ’25, a Cognitive Brain Science major, says that having open syllabi would influence how he chooses his classes, since “seeing the topics [that are] going to be covered and the grading scale are important.” According to Campos, enrolling in a course without access to its syllabus is akin to “choosing a job without a proper description of your responsibilities or pay.”
Sigrun Svavarsdottir, an Associate Professor of Philosophy, disagrees that students are left in the dark without open syllabi. She argues that “[m]ost or all departments post detailed descriptions of the courses offered the following semester.” Further, Svavarsdottir maintains that “the course descriptions should give students a good sense of the content.”
David Denby, a Distinguished Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, also expressed reservations regarding open syllabi in an email to the Tribune. He said that “a full syllabus posted in advance is sometimes less useful to students than you might think, and might even be misleading. The readings for a course, and even its overall organization and direction, can sometimes change right up to the beginning of the course, and sometimes during it.”
Svavarsdottir also highlighted how the decision to make syllabi public is more onerous to instructors of some courses than others: “It would be easy to meet the requirement for fairly standardized courses (say, basic math courses).”
Joanne Fan ’25, a Computer Science major, argues that the project may benefit students in some majors more than others. She mentioned that for her “CS core classes, [she has] been able to ask other students who took them before [her], and a few professors leave their syllabi from previous semesters online. This tends to be at least somewhat accurate because some classes’ syllabi don’t significantly vary from semester to semester.”
While the Open Syllabi Initiative does not bind faculty to obey the syllabi they post on Canvas, some fear that the project will confuse students in this regard. Denby believes that publicly posting these syllabi before course registration could lead students to view them as “contracts” with professors, which can lead to strife “should the professor change her mind about anything during the semester.”
Denby’s apprehension echoes that of Svavarsdottir. The latter believes that open syllabi might dissuade faculty from changing their courses altogether. She fears “that a requirement to submit the syllabi in time to be posted on SIS before the registration period will make professors more reluctant to design or radically revise their courses on a regular basis.” She views the move as counterproductive to Tufts as a research university, since “this kind of requirement would get in the way of professors offering new advanced courses closely tied to their ongoing research.”
Regardless of the benefits that students often tout in favor of open syllabi, faculty have deeper concerns about how greater transparency could impinge their academic freedom.
Kevin Dunn, Interim Chairman of the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora, understands some faculty’s uneasiness about the measure, stemming “from one major source.” A core contention, Dunn argues, is that “many faculty would [not] feel that a syllabus represents them or their course fully enough to be the sole basis of a student’s choosing of a class.”
Denby explains how such inspection may come from sources other than students, such as “mischievous people who have no intention of taking the course,” but may seek to “scour [syllabi] for evidence of political bias,” for instance. It is important to note that the open syllabi on Canvas are only available to Tufts students, not the broader public.
Such a fear is not unwarranted. Last academic year, congressional Republicans confronted the presidents of elite universities in response to their handling of campus antisemitism related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, the outgoing chairwoman of the House committee overseeing education, told USA Today that “it’s [the committee’s] job to expose what’s happening” on college campuses.
Fear of oversight regarding syllabi does not emanate only from the Republican-dominated Capitol Hill. Denby also reasons that, with open syllabi, “Administrators [might] be tempted to pressure faculty to bring their syllabi into line with certain non-pedagogical university objectives, e.g., DEIJA objectives.” Because of the desire for intellectual independence, “even if the aims [of the Open Syllabi Initiative] are laudable, faculty are unlikely to welcome administrative intrusion.”
Both Denby and Dunn agree that protection and intellectual independence are at the root of faculty resistance to the initiative, many of whom wonder how intellectual property rights intersect with the issue.
Despite his concerns about uploading his course syllabi to Canvas, Dunn says he will nevertheless do so, since “the overriding value is that of making it easier for students to curate their education, making the best choices in their class selections and making them efficiently.”
Ezequiel Romero ’25, a Biology major, agrees with Dunn and celebrates the initiative, saying it “will help students avoid a heavy course load that doesn’t mesh well together,” and will inform students when a “course does not completely align with their goals and expectations.”
Armando left one final message to his fellow students: “I strongly encourage everyone in the Tufts community…to advocate for [the initiative]. Encouraging your professors to opt in and upload their syllabi can help us expand the reach and impact of this initiative. Together, we can work forward in an academic environment where every student has the tools to make informed decisions and thrive in their chosen courses.”