The Calendar Committee for 2003-04 first met on September
9, 2003, and elected a chair. Our first business was conducted via e-mail
during September. We were asked to advise on a proposal concerning changing
dates for mailing out tuition bills and changing add/drop dates, etc.,
due to the anticipated action of the Board of Regents in November of
raising tuition for the spring. The committee assented but expressed
some regret that actions of the Regents and the University could not
be hastened to allow students and parents more time to prepare for increases.
The new calendar for 2003-04 was then reissued in early October.
As a result of a question to the president by Tom Palaima on November
17, 2003, Marvin Hackert charged the Calendar Committee as follows.
I ask that the Calendar Committee review the proposal for a fall break and
report to the Faculty Council Executive Committee/Faculty Council (FCEC/FC) with
a recommendation to either 1) not pursue it, or 2) a proposal
of how best to implement such a fall break that would then be brought before
the FC for discussion and vote.
The committee gathered together numerous documents that had been generated by
consideration of the same question during the 2000-01 academic year. The committee
found that the substantive problems raised in those documents largely remained
and that the matter should not be pursued at this time. This was reported to
the Faculty Council on February 16, 2004 (D
2943).
At that same meeting, the committee also presented a report to the FC (D
2936-2937) concerning the Summer Freshman Class (SFC) schedule. This issue
was brought to the attention of the committee by Vice Provost Lucia Gilbert.
In brief, calendar changes in Texas high schools have made it impossible for
some freshmen entering in the summer to start at UT when our first summer session
begins. However, some of these students are required to attend classes all summer.
In addition, they must undergo an orientation prior to the beginning of classes.
As a result a special schedule for the SFC has been created for each summer session.
Several options were presented for dealing with this problem. They included
1.
Changing the schedule of the nine week summer classes designated n to
start approximately 10 days later than usual and end at the same time the
s/w classes end.
2.
Introducing a new designation “t” to accommodate the SFC
classes.
Subsequent to that meeting much effort was devoted to seeking out any ill effects
of the various options. Responses left the committee with only the most basic
action. Nursing objected strongly to the changing of the n classes. They use
n classes for their masters students and felt that “pushing back this course
would have a devastating effect on our ability to recruit faculty to teach in
the intensive summer course for our incoming alternate entry (AE) students. It
would also place added stress on a group of students who already are in an intense,
accelerated program.”
The proposal, which was passed at the FC meeting of April 12, 2004, (D
3210) reads as follows.
“
The schedule for the Summer Freshman Class will be published in the calendar
each year. This will include dates for orientation, registration, first and last
day of class and final exams.
It may be that the other options referred to above will be reconsidered by future
calendar committees. Thus I append the following report on the effects of introducing
a new designation “t”. This report was prepared by Laura
Kobler, associate registrar and advisor to the Calendar Committee."
*See Appendix
C-2 for Laura Kobler’s follow-up memo regarding the SFC schedule.
Edward Odell, chair
APPENDIX C-2
CALENDAR COMMITTEE
M E M O R A N D U M
DATE
April 5, 2004
TO
Ted Odell
Chair, Calendar Committee
FROM
Laura Kobler
Associate Registrar
SUBJECT
Possible effects of creation of a ten-week summer term
As you requested, I inquired with several offices about the effects of the
creation of a ten-week summer term beginning in summer 2006. I asked about
two proposals: that a new term be created for Summer Freshman Class courses,
following the informal ten-week SFC schedule; and that the ten-week term be
made available to other classes as well. Responses are summarized below.
1.
Admissions, Housing and Food, Orientation
I talked to Kendra Ishop, assistant director, Office of Admissions; Sarah
Key, assistant director, Division of Housing and Food Service; and
Kyle Clark, student affairs administrator for the Orientation program.
Kendra responded on behalf of her office; Sarah and Kyle discussed
the proposals with other administrators in their programs. None
of these three offices has serious objections to either proposal.
However, Sarah Key said that Housing and Food Service would not offer
a different contract to students who attend only the ten-week term. Those
students would pay the same amount for housing as students in attendance
the whole summer, even though they would move in about ten days later.
Kyle Clark noted that Orientation sessions for SFC students and fall
freshmen will be offered simultaneously for the first time this summer.
Until they have tried running simultaneous sessions, the Orientation
staff doesn’t know whether they could also provide a session for
ten-week–only students in the week before their classes begin.
2.
College of Natural Sciences
I talked with Joy Lock, assistant dean, to learn (a) whether the first
proposal alone would be helpful to the natural sciences departments
involved with SFC, and (b) how many natural sciences classes might
move to the ten-week term if the second proposal were approved.
Joy told me that the only non-SFC classes for which staffing has proven
to be a problem for summer 2004 are nine-week computer sciences classes.
Consequently, the college does not anticipate converting any classes
other than these to the ten-week term. In fact, since the number of faculty
members affected is small, the scheduling of these computer sciences
classes could be handled informally in the future as it has been for
summer 2004. The College of Natural Sciences would be satisfied
if the ten-week term were available for SFC classes only.
3.
Office of the Registrar
The registrar’s office would be heavily affected by both proposals.
The main impact would be the time required for analysis and programming
to incorporate the ten-week term into systems that support registration,
the scheduling of classes and classrooms, and the maintenance of student
records.
Specifically, changes would be needed in the systems that support course scheduling,
registration, room scheduling for both class-related and nonclass events, final
exam scheduling, headcount reporting, transcript production, and degree audit.
These programming changes would take about 680 hours of staff time.
While there is time to do this work before summer 2006, other analysis and programming
work would have to be postponed. Among current and anticipated projects that
might be affected are development of on-line systems for submission of changes
to the course inventory and course schedule and improvements to the on-line course
schedule and the prerequisite checking, waitlist, room scheduling, and degree
audit systems.
Analysis and programming would also have to be done by or on behalf of the Office
of Institutional Research, Student Accounts Receivable, and the Office of Student
Financial Services.
The preceding work would be needed if either the first proposal alone or both
proposals were adopted. The following problems would occur only if the ten-week
term were open to non-SFC classes. How significant they would be depends on the
number of classes converted to the ten-week schedule; we cannot predict this
number.
Classroom space would be less efficiently used. The preferred scheduling for
three-semester-hour courses in the current summer terms is
term
meeting days
hours per day
total hours (2006)
first, second
MTWThF
1.5
37.5 class hours
nine-week
MTWThF
1
37 class hours
whole-session
MWF
1.5
45 class hours
The most efficient schedule for ten-week classes would be MWF, 1.5 hours per
day; this schedule would yield 39 class hours in summer 2006, when Independence
Day will fall on Tuesday. There would be no effect on room utilization if a whole-session
class adopted the ten-week term. However, the class would meet for substantially
fewer hours. Therefore, it seems likely that the ten-week term would be populated
with classes that now follow the f, s, or n schedule. The result would be fewer
classes meeting every weekday and more meeting three days a week. (A Tuesday/Thursday
ten-week class would have to meet for 2.5 hours a day, which seems unlikely to
be a popular schedule.) The result of classes moving to the ten-week term, then,
would be that classrooms now being used every weekday would be empty on Tuesdays
and Thursdays.
A number of nonclass activities occur in the summer. In addition to Orientation
and the Honors Colloquium, summer activities include programs for traditionally
underserved students sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Students and such
organizations as the National Science Foundation and the Breakthrough Collaborative.
In general, summer programs prefer or require the same meeting places throughout
the week. The concentration of classes into an MWF schedule would require more
rooms to be used for classes on those days, leaving less space for other events
that occur daily. Providing space for these University-sponsored nonclass events
is already difficult; if only a few classes (other than SFC) moved to the ten-week
term, it might be impossible to accommodate all the nonclass activities that
now occur.
4.
Other possible effects
The addition of another term might make the construction of a summer
schedule more difficult for students. Ten-week classes would probably
not be offered in the same proportion by all departments and colleges:
some departments might convert many of their classes to this schedule,
while others would convert none. Lower-division students, who are most
likely to enroll in classes in multiple departments and colleges, might
have trouble finding classes without overlapping meeting times if they
had to take ten-week classes as well as f, s, n, and/or w classes.
If a student enrolled in both an f, n, or w class and a t class, he or
she would be able to drop the first class without penalty through June
14 (in 2006) but would have through June 23 to drop the second class.
Late registration, add/drop, and withdrawal schedules would also be different. These deadlines might be difficult to communicate to students and difficult
for Registration Supervision, the departments, and the colleges to administer.
For some time, the scheduling of SFC classes has varied from one summer
to the next. It is unclear whether the ten-week schedule will continue
to meet the program’s needs. If a term is created that
corresponds to the program’s current schedule, it is possible that the committee
will frequently be asked to redefine that term. Any future change in
the length of the term would require more systems analysis and programming
time.
Summary: The creation of an official ten-week term for the Summer Freshman
Class would simplify and streamline the administration of the SFC program.
It would make the handling of SFC classes and students easier for the Office
of Admissions, the Office of the Registrar, and the Colleges of Liberal Arts
and Natural Sciences. It would create no serious problems for Admissions, the
Division of Housing and Food Service, or New Student Services. However, the
amount of systems analysis and programming time needed to create the term is
substantial. It is not certain that the resulting term would continue to meet
the needs of the SFC program.
Allowing non-SFC classes to follow the ten-week schedule has substantial potential
disadvantages. Classroom space would be used less efficiently, which might
preclude important nonclass activities from occurring on campus. Students might
have more difficulty enrolling in the classes they need. The complexity of
overlapping registration, add/drop, and withdrawal timetables would be difficult
to communicate to students and the University community, and confusion about
these deadlines might have substantial academic or financial consequences for
students.
