Although it’s good for Syracuse University to explore innovative ways to teach students, the Martin J. Whitman School of Management should limit its new Harry Potter-style program to its freshman class.

The program, officially called the Goodman IMPRESS program, aims to motivate students to involve themselves in career-building activities . The Harry Potter angle comes in the form of a point system and sorting students into the “houses” of Adams, Marshall, Waverly and Harrison. Students can receive points for their houses by building skills outside of the classroom, like attending lectures or becoming Microsoft certified. The house with the largest amount of points by the end of the year will win the “Goodman Cup,” named after program supporter alumnus Kenneth Goodman.

IMPRESS could be a good way to encourage freshmen to become involved in the extra-curricular activities Whitman has to offer. It has the potential to be a fun learning tool for new students and could act as a good transition from high school to college activities. However, the concept of placing students in houses to have them compete for points during their entire college career seems childish.

The idea of the program also raises issues of self-motivation versus reward. Though turning outside-of-class learning into a competition can be an effective way to spur students to do work outside of class, students should be motivated to do that work without the incentive of getting more points than their friends or winning a prize of the end of the year.

After freshman year, the concept of self-motivation is especially important. Rewarding students throughout their four years at Whitman could lead to some becoming solely motivated to receive points and beat their classmates.
Finding new methods to increase students’ skills is a good idea. But to make this concept even stronger, Whitman should limit the program to freshmen and expect upperclassmen to self-motivate without a reward.