Academic Calendaring Issues

This web site has been created by the Registration and Class Schedules Committee to present to the faculty the options and issues associated with making changes to individual or various dates on the 12-12-6 academic calendar beginning with the 2008-2009 academic year. The site is separated into two parts: how the calendar would look with two options of starting earlier in the fall and an option of starting later in winter term. The second part of the site breaks out a particular issue (e.g. guaranteeing a three-week break between fall and winter terms, holding commencement on the weekend, shortening the exam period, etc.) and how this affects calendar dates. In a sense, the two sections are simply two separate presentations of these various calendaring issues.

Term Start and End Options
Option 1: Starting Earlier in the Fall – Ending after Thanksgiving
Option 2: Starting Earlier in the Fall – Ending prior to Thanksgiving
Option 3: Starting Later in Winter

Specific Issues
Changing Commencement to Friday or Saturday
Changing the length of Spring Term
Guaranteeing a minimum 3-week break between fall term and winter term
Day of the week on which to start Fall Term classes
Changing the length of the Final Examination Period

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Option 1: Starting Earlier in the Fall – Ending after Thanksgiving Sample Calendar : PDF -- MSWord

Option 2: Starting Earlier in the Fall – Ending prior to Thanksgiving Sample Calendar PDF -- MSWord

Comments are welcome and will be posted to this Web site. E-mail your comments to Barbara Rowe, chair of RCSC at registrar@wlu.edu and she will post them (with the intent of getting them up in a timely manner). The RCSC will also be holding an open forum in January to solicit additional comments, thoughts, preferences, concerns, and wishes. The date and time of that forum will be announced as it becomes available. Comments can also be made to any RCSC member listed here.

Note: The comments were reversed from the most recent at the bottom of the web site, to most recent at the top, to help folks read what new comments have come in. There has been no intent to prioritize, just to post the newest comments at the top. BLR 1/8/07

Note: The letter below was received by Barbara Rowe on December 5, 2006, but Barbara did not remember to post it on this web site until January 16th.

A. No one made a big deal about the fall semester (1 week between Thanksgiving and exams), except that faculty are working on Labor Day, which we can’t seem to get around.

Examinations end (5:00 p.m.)                            Mon Jun 1
Senior grades due (9:00 a.m.)                           Wed Jun 3
Faculty meeting (4:00 p.m.?)                             Wed Jun 3
Baccalaureate service (10:00 a.m.)                    Thu Jun 4
Commencement (10:00 a.m.)                            Fri Jun 5
Other grades due (noon)                                   Mon Jun 7

1. Haven’t we been doing baccalaureate and commencement at 10 a.m.? You had 11 a.m in your proposed calendar.

2. This schedule gives faculty all day Tuesday to grade senior exams, instead of pulling a “late-nighter”.

3. This schedule also gives faculty the opportunity to give a final exam, if final exams were avoided in the past because of the tight senior grade submission deadline. I believe that cumulative final exams are one important component in maintaining academic rigor in our courses. Rigor in spring term courses has been a point of contention every year of the twenty years I have taught here.

4. Friday graduation makes it easier for students’ families to miss less work/school in order to attend graduation.

5. We could have the faculty meeting on Wednesday afternoon to vote on candidates for graduation, hear retirement citations, etc., instead of trying to cram it in before baccalaureate. I don’t know if this is enough time for you all to get the senior grades run or not – this may not be realistic.

C. The other issue is the two days in winter term with adjusted schedules. The majority of faculty prefer none of these adjusted days. However, if we have to, then let’s compress these two events into one adjusted day or move Phi Beta Kappa to the evening and not adjust the day for that event. (In fact, I challenge you to find another school that adjusts the academic day for Phi Beta Kappa. Even at William and Mary, the school where Phi Beta Kappa was founded, does not adjust the calendar for this event. It is held every year close to Dec 4th in the evening. http://www.wm.edu/pbk/) If our Founder’s Day were celebrated closer to Washington’s birthday, then it would be possible to do both events on the same day – maybe the Friday after we return from February break. I know that Phi Beta Kappa needs the first half of winter term to look at grades from fall in order to induct juniors, so doing Phi Beta Kappa in January (on Lee’s birthday) is probably not feasible.

Whichever way this point is worked out, please keep in mind that laboratory courses run on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and very rarely on Friday. In order to be equitable to students in courses with multiple lab sections, Friday is the best day for an adjusted schedule.

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I just wanted to reiterate my concerns for the calendar in writing.

Please let's not end the year any later in the summer!

(It's difficult as it is for those of us who do research abroad. If I can fly out May 31, I can usually find airfare for around $800; after June 1 it shoots up to $1400.) If we lengthen the winter holidays between terms, and that does seem to be a good idea, let's please begin the year at the end of August.

Thanks for collecting all our opinions,

Rebecca Benefiel
Assistant Professor, Department of Classics

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This posting is intended to serve as inclusive thoughts from the Student Affairs Division representing: Office of the Dean of Students, Campus Activities and Elrod Commons, Student Health and Counseling Services and Public Safety. We appreciate the difficulty of securing a common calendar that best meets everyone's professional and personal interests. We share these thoughts based on our current work with students and practices that we believe work and do not work well. We hope these observations offer substance for the committee when reviewing calendar options.

- Because both Public Safety and Student Health Services are 24/7 operations (24 hours a day/7 days a week), aligning the undergraduate calendar as closely as is possible with the law school calendar is important when staffing these operations. This is not only a budget (salary) issue for the University; it's also a human resource issue when we work to not "burn out" staff who work unusual (and often unusually long) hours. (Public Safety is 24/7, 365 days a year but is able to scale back staffing when students are not in session. Student Health Services is 24/7 when students are in session and closed when students are not in session so there are significant staffing issues at hand if calendars between law and undergraduate are out of sync. Between the two operations, this affects approximately 25 employees of the University.)

- Moving New Student Orientation to a start date of mid-week would prove to be a tremendous burden for families dropping off their students for the first time. Most families travel long distances -- not to mention the packing and loading that occurs before the drive to Lexington. Asking them to take off from work during the middle of the work week seems a burden we would not want to place on the families of new students. This does not appear to be a student-centered approach when considering the calendar.

- Moving Orientation activities too much earlier in August has some interesting implications as well. Roughly 150+ upperclass students work to support an incoming freshman class upon their arrival to campus (residence life staff, pre-orientation trip leader staff, Freshman Orientation Committee staff). These groups play a significant role in assuring a strong orientation program. Moving the calendar too far back into August could impede summer employment, internships and the need for some students to accrue their much needed money for school.

- If we start early and end by Thanksgiving, we believe this will not achieve a goal of many students actually being able to return home for the holidays. This is out of sync with the ODAC calendar and students with athletics will be required to remain, living in residence halls, etc., which requires that we leave these residence halls open during the one time of year that they actually close (during the shortened Winter Break). We think a calendar more in sync with other ODAC schools should be something that we strive to achieve if possible to take into account that there are many active student athletes who would not be able to leave until mid-December regardless. If winter student athletes are required to stay through the middle of December for their sports, then we need to not only look at housing them but also feeding them and providing for their safety through requiring live-in student residential staff to remain.

- We are unsure why Greek life and recruitment is even a part of this discussion. Recruitment is a part-time activity that occurs the first week of winter term to get it over with as quickly as possible in the winter term and during the week when there are least likely to be class assignments that are due. It is NOT a full-time activity and should not be allocated time as such by having it occur before classes begin. This would require that roughly 80% of the student population return to campus a week ahead of time in the winter, without any classes, to participate in a part-time social activity. As a Student Affairs staff, we do not consider this advisable (not to mention that residence halls need to open, students need to be fed -- budgetary implications, etc.).

Submitted by: Dawn Watkins, Dean of Student Affairs

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Thank you for these clear alternatives, and the easy forum format. It helps the discussion.

1. Keeping the 60-60-30 instructional day seems a must to me. Any alteration of the length of Spring break (except doing away with it!) contradicts our resolve to maintain its academic integrity, and the current accreditation standards. In that line of thought, there is no real call for the disruptive shortened day schedules. Celebrations could very well be scheduled for the evenings.

2. The idea of having as many full instructional weeks as possible is sound, but the format does not have to be M-F, it could be R-W, or any other septet, the FMW or RT sequences as sound, pedagogically, as the current ones.

3. Exam periods are overlong as it is. They could be shortened to 4 days. Most students are eager to leave anyway, and the last sessions are really sparsely populated.

1. A 3-week break between Fall and Winter would be a welcome change, allowing us to wrap up, relax and prepare. Unless the start of the Winter semester is well after Jan 4th, or the end of the Fall before Dec 15, the benefit to international students, though, will only be to those affluent enough to afford flights during the common holiday period.

2. The December programs for performing arts are an important celebration of the work done by faculty and students, and a "treat" the community has been taking for granted. Before we eliminate these, or reschedule them at an earlier--maybe unrealistic --date, could we hear from the Arts departments as to how it would impact them? So far, I would be very reluctant to endorse the option 2 in that regard.

3. The Thanksgiving week break, although thoroughly enjoyable, does not have to be a constraint. If I remember right, it was instituted to make traveling easier for students and to cut down on absences at the beginning of the week. These absences now occur on the Thursday or Friday before break. If needed, we could start the break on Monday or Tuesday to give more flexibility to the determination of starting day for the Fall.

4. While not ideal, the one week of academic work after Thanksgiving is not a problem for most of us. It allows us to make sure students are over the flu, well prepared and that they regain their concentration in time for their exams! In advanced classes it gives students more time to prepare their individual and collective projects.

1. The much touted teacher-scholar model rests on the premise that there will be some time during the year that we can devote to extensive research. That time can only be found in summer. Our late finishing date in June already prohibits us from fruitful collaborations with other American or European professors finishing their semester well ahead of us. As it is, those of us working with French academic institutions, for instance, only have one week in which to make professional and administrative contacts in June before departments close.

2. Many of us devote 8 weeks + to research during the summer. If we finish later in June, or start earlier in the Fall (most of us already find it necessary to be back at work a week before start of classes), what time is left for family, clearing our minds and recharging our batteries, or just remaining sane?

3. The childcare constraint raised by several faculty members should be given due weight as well.

In all:
All this to keep our distinctive but problematic Spring semester. If the faculty were to vote today, now that all the ensuing shortcuts, contradictions, headaches are coming to light, would the result be the same?

I would suggest a guiding philosophy of making the summer and winter breaks as long as possible, by trimming the excess padding from exam periods and treating Feb break under a reading days model. By this, Options #1 and #3 look most workable. The nine-week summer that results from Option #2 as proposed would do significant harm to collaborative summer research for students and faculty. Incidentally, why does #2 propose lengthening fall break? That seems to be the wrong way to get done sooner.

Changing commencement: Grading senior exams in a hurry is a pain, but hardly such a problem that we need to create new conflicts in Lexington and keep everyone in the university tied up for two more summer days to deal with it.

Spring term length: What a fine can of worms! But anything beyond a day or two tweak is probably beyond RCSC's authority, isn't it?

Three-week minimum winter break: Yes, absolutely, though with sincere apologies to the performing arts. A three-week break helps only a little with research given the grading, prep, and holiday activities that also have to fit in. But it does lead to better classroom performances in the winter by both the faculty and the students. Especially as long as we have a de facto required Greek rush in winter, it's a mental health issue for the students.

Final exams: We have very capable students at W&L, and they certainly don't need seven days to take at most four exams. Most other schools do just fine with far less indulgent policies (e.g. no more than two Finals allowed per day). Eliminating one exam day would be good, and two fewer would be even better. It saves days, wouldn't be an undue burden, and mitigates some of the inefficiency since few students actually have four exams and many finish what they do have days early.

I will reiterate my futile annual plea to stop authorizing shortened day schedules (for PBK, ODK) that really hit those of us who teach MWF schedules in the one hour blocks. I am already straining to deliver a legitimate 3 credit experience in 12 weeks, and I deeply resent the robbery of class time from an already ludicrously short semester. (I am also very skeptical about the gift of the day to SSA. I intend to poll my students on their participation, after encouraging them to do so. I suspect many will simply take off. )

That said, go ahead and take some instructional days out of spring term if it makes the grading easier. Or make it 5 weeks, or 4 weeks, long. Who cares? Since I am part of the caretaker-stay-at-home population for whom spring term teaching is simply duty done so others can go off on their trips or do their special things, I really don't think it matters much. I teach real 6 week 3 credit graduate courses in the summer for another institition, so I am not prejudiced against the format, just the way it exists here, as an adjunct to students' social lives. And now we are officially encouraging students to opt out of it voluntarily so that the term can be saved for the small population that values it. . . . the much vaunted Spring Term Renewal is accruing overdue fines.

The start early options look good to me, though please do keep an eye on the childcare constraints for faculty with infants and toddlers. A shorter Thanksgiving break would be fine. An alternative to the Sunday afternoon exam period would be adding evening exams, from 7-10 pm. Yale used those and got three exam periods in per day, starting at 9 am, 2 pm, 7 pm. Yes, that would mean actual faculty members would have to hand out and collect exams, as I do almost every semester on Saturday afternoon. You could get several days for grading that way in all the terms.

In my department, we work on both Sunday and Monday of Labor Day weekend, every year. Shifting the freshman orientation/placement test days so that they do not occur during a national holiday would be a humane acknowledgement of faculty's roles as citizens and family members. The issues about negotiations with other institutions about dates should not impinge on this discussion or decision. Similiarly, cost factors (e.g., $$ for facilities maintenance staff) should not be given the dignity of discussion unless we are willing to address the real (outlandishly high) cost of running the world's most inefficient academic calendar.

Is getting you to reconsider the daily schedule (A, B, C, etc.) also part of the mix? I REALLY want the committee to look at this again and have some faculty input on it. I find not having the lunch hour free for meetings and the lack of a FG link on T-Thur so be very problematic for our dept. Thanks.

Thanks to the committee for all this hard work. The only calendar here that I have major reservations about is Option 2 (fall term ending prior to Thanksgiving)-starting in mid-August would represent a hardship for families with young children, because there is little or no childcare available in Lexington during that time. I feel neutrally about changing the day of graduation. Here are the key factors from the perspective of one English professor:

• A substantial winter break and a long summer are very helpful to anyone conducting research, scholarship, or creative projects. Our high course load and dedication to great teaching and advising makes this work very hard to accomplish during the terms.

• I do not find our current short grading times to be a hardship, other than in the very brief break between winter and spring-we don’t have enough time then to grade, recharge, and gear up again.

• If orientation changes, and especially if we lose part of the Thanksgiving break, I hope we will retain something like the midterm reading days so that faculty can catch up on grading and other professional obligations.

• A shorter spring term is fine with me, so long as that does not jeopardize accreditation. In fact, we have a lot of work to do in re-imagining that term in any case. I am intensely skeptical of the new version of the May-Away plan presented at the December faculty meeting. In particular, the idea of creating experiences for students that are not 3-credit courses but somehow equivalent to them sounds bogus to me; there is no accountability without faculty supervision. I think we need to reconsider the 4-week-spring-term compromise floated in those horrendous discussions a few years ago (students take only one course, and faculty teach only one, for 9 hours per week instead of 6; originally it was pinned to 2 13-week terms instead of 2 12-week terms). It’s not a very good choice, especially for the reading- and writing-based courses I teach, but it’s the best in a bad lot, considering our present staffing problems and the need to keep students fully engaged academically during that term. If we had a 12-12-4 calendar, too, many the considerations you raise would be more easily handled.

I hate to say it, but I wish that we could reconsider the issue of spring term. I voted for it in the last election but the number of new curricular issues that have come up since then have made me regret my vote.

That being said, I'd prefer to start earlier in the fall and have a longer December break. I would also support a decision to reduce spring term to 5 weeks rather than 6 to help with scheduling issues for the winter term and to avoid starting the semester as early as January 2nd. I am on leave this term teaching at Tulane in a semester system and I have been very impressed by the amount of outside-of-the-classroom work that the students do here. I believe their experiences are equally valuable to them as those gained by our students during the W&L spring term.


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Academic Calendaring Issues  2008-2009 Academic Calendar Issues

Academic Calendaring Issues 2008-2009 Academic Calendar Issues