Doyle

Walsh

An ad hoc committee commissioned by the dean of the university faculty has continued to revise its proposed academic calendar to address faculty and student concerns. The Faculty Senate will vote on the proposal May 9.

The revision lengthens the study/exam period by one day in both the fall and spring semesters by including a break near the midpoint of the exam schedule, while retaining the four-day study period before exams. "What we heard very strongly, particularly from College of Engineering faculty and students, is that they wanted study days before exams started," said Jeff Doyle, professor of plant biology, who chairs the Academic Calendar Committee; Kate Walsh, the Fred G. Peelen Professor of Global Hospitality Strategy, is vice chair. Study days before exams would be reduced to four days from the current 4.66 days.

The latest revision responds to an April 26 Student Assembly (SA) resolution opposing a previous proposal. The SA called on the Faculty Senate to incorporate options to relieve students' mental stress, by either starting instruction earlier in the spring semester to allow for a longer study period, lengthening the study and exam period (similar to the current length) or creating an exam period with a built-in break. The revised proposal meets the latter two options, Walsh and Doyle said.

The two undergraduate representatives on the committee, SA member-at-large Geoffrey Block '14 and SA President Natalie Raps '12, voted against adopting the modified recommendations, saying that the study day and the resulting decrease in Senior Week would cause undue student stress. Of the 11 committee members, eight voted yes; one did not vote. Block and Raps had also voted against the earlier recommendations and were sponsors of the April 26 SA resolution.

If the senate approves the proposed calendar, Provost Kent Fuchs and President David Skorton would decide whether to accept it. If approved, the new calendar would not likely be in place for four years, Walsh said.

The revised proposal is available online.

The proposed calendar would also reorganize the exam period to minimize student stress. Registrar Cassie Dembosky has said that a new method of creating the exam schedule will reduce the chances that a student would have back-to-back finals or three exams in one day. And it would optimize the number of exam periods, which, in addition to the study day, is likely to provide students with breaks throughout the exam week.

Senior Week programming would be reduced to three days, down from the current 6.3 days. "The changes to Senior Week are based on wanting to deploy days for mental health breaks," Doyle said. Block and Raps have been strong advocates for the benefits of Senior Week, Walsh added. "The final exam schedule can be created so that the vast majority of seniors would end their exams before the Tuesday of Senior Week, leaving much of the week for celebration," she said.

A new two-day break for students would take place in February, splitting the semester into thirds. Spring break now divides the semester in two. And there would be no instruction on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

These changes would also create partial weeks of instruction in the spring, similar to the fall calendar, causing problems for classes with many discussion or lab sections, Doyle said. "Pedagogically, it's not something we like doing," he said. But partial weeks do allow for breaks that could alleviate student stress, he added.

Dean of the University Faculty William Fry convened the committee, composed of faculty, students, staff and administrators, in fall 2010 as part of the university's response to a cluster of six student suicides that took place 2009-10. Fry asked the committee to consider whether changes to the calendar could help alleviate student stress, and to recommend changes, were any warranted. Since then the committee has been exploring options and soliciting feedback from the campus community.