Finding the course you need at the time you need to take it can be frustrating, but the same problem at its worst can be more than that: it can also affect when you graduate. It’s a familiar issue: most of the courses offered at JSC occur during “prime time,” Monday through Thursday between 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.
Citing concerns ranging from student retention and graduation rates to campus culture, the college administration is committed to changing the way courses are scheduled at the college.
Those changes will begin with minor adjustments for fall, 2008, the first steps towards offering more scheduling options outside of the prime time period.
“We want every aspect of the college to support student persistence and success,” said Academic Dean Daniel Regan. “Nobody believes that the current academic schedule is a positive help to students as they march toward graduation.”
He said by offering more classes before and after the prime time block, there will be less competition between courses, and students will be more likely to get what they need for their graduation requirements.
Regan emphasized that he does not envision a sudden, radical departure from the current scheduling model but rather an incremental change: “Tentatively, over a long-ish time period, let’s say around three semesters, I think we would like to get to the point of about half of our undergraduate courses starting within those prime-time slots and about half starting outside those prime-time slots.”
He said that this would hopefully give students the ability to choose between enrolling in early morning classes, classes scheduled after 2:30, and Friday classes.
Regan noted that one of the concerns he often hears regarding Friday classes is that students need to work. However, he cited a national survey of college freshmen and seniors showing that Johnson freshmen work less than do students in other institutions across the country. “The argument that classes can’t be spread out because students need to work doesn’t necessarily hold a lot of water, at least for freshmen at Johnson,” he said.
Lyndon, Castleton, and Vermont Tech currently are running considerably more Friday classes than does Johnson.
Responding to the administration’s determination to revise the current scheduling model, the Faculty Assembly last fall established a committee to study the issue of class scheduling from a broad-based perspective. That committee is charged with working with administration, staff, and students to gather as much data as possible and is expected to present its findings in May.
For the nearer future, Regan said that he, the president and the dean of students are waiting for that committee’s results. “But we also believe that very modest steps … are in keeping with the overall mandate of that faculty committee.”
Professor of Environmental and Health Sciences Karen Uhlendorf is chair of that ad-hoc seven-member faculty committee, which she said is using a “multi-pronged” approach.
At the moment, faculty surveys are being conducted to find, according to Uhlendorf, “who needs what” in terms of scheduling.
Uhlendorf explained that certain courses have different needs than the average course. For example, she said, studio art classes and outdoor education courses require longer meeting times, sciences need lab time, and dance classes need studio time.
According to Uhlendorf, the committee also plans to work with Professor of Behavioral Sciences Susan Green’s research class, which will be conducting its own “broad issue” survey, dealing with many aspects of student life, including scheduling issues.
In addition, one committee member will be connecting with the head of the student association, she said.
“We want to make sure that we’re getting input from students on these issues, what’s working and what’s not working for them,” she said. “We’re really trying very hard to make sure everyone on this issue is being heard.”
However, Uhlendorf stressed that the committee was not there to decide policy; rather it is attempting to facilitate the process by gathering relevant data with an open mind.
As far as Friday classes are concerned, she recognized the possibility of scheduling conflicts, noting, for example, that within her own department – Outdoor Education – there are often weekend trips. “I have a class in the fall that has field trips on Fridays,” she said. She indicated that other departments also have important Friday activities not scheduled as class time.
“ [I hope] the faculty will have a voice, the students will have a voice, the other staff and administration will have a voice in this process of what needs to be fixed and what are some ideas for fixing it,” she said. “And once those ideas for fixing it are presented, I’m hoping everybody works together… to try to get it to happen, and to get it to happen with the least amount of conflict, the least amount of turmoil and disruption.”
Whatever changes do occur will most certainly go through the office of the college registrar, Douglas Eastman, who sees two immediate reasons for changing the current model: The first reason is decompressing and moving away from having so many classes in the one block of time. The second is to conform to standard starting times.
“One of the things I noticed last fall was we had over 40 sections of undergraduate courses that were not starting at standard start times,” Eastman said. He gave an example of one class beginning at 10:00 and another at 10:30; the 10:00 course would end at 11:15 and the 10:30 at 11:45. This, he pointed out, results in conflict between classes for space as well as student accessibility to the courses.
Eastman said of these 40 courses, about 23 were taking up more blocks of time than what was needed due to the starting times. So far for the Fall 08 semester, there are only seven with this problem.
Eastman indicated that the changes for Fall 08 would be “modest,” and that was appropriate given the complexity of the scheduling issue, which he noted affects faculty and staff, students, and facilities utilization. [A] “revised scheduling model hits home in so many areas; we can’t take it too fast,” he said.
For a bit of perspective, Eastman said in a given fall semester there are between 330 and 350 courses offered for campus based undergraduate courses. This figure does not include graduate or External Degree Program courses. Last fall, there were 346 courses, and about 330 are scheduled for the 2008 fall semester.
“I’m looking forward to the outcome of the faculty assembly subgroup that’s looking at this,” he said.
Laura Turner, a senior, felt that the proposed alterations will be helpful. In her past four years of JSC scheduling, she has encountered some issues and even opted, along with others, to do an independent study for one course, as the enrollment was too low to run the class. Of Friday and non-prime time classes, Turner said, “I think that’s a good idea. If you can fit more classes in the day, there are less overlaps.”
ED NOTE: In Part II, Forand will look at other issues surrounding class scheduling.