President's Report: The Calendar Conundrum

Usually the calendar for any particular academic year is proposed more than a year before it takes effect. For example, in planning the academic year 2013-14, the proposal would be shared in the spring of 2012. With the absence of our Vice President of Instruction, things got a little behind schedule; however, it looked like we were still on schedule to get the calendar’s final draft to the Governing Board meeting in October. The standard process calls for the calendar to go to the September or October board. This year, a small hitch arose in the process: a discussion at Faculty Senate.

CCFT is responsible for the negotiation of the calendar because it’s a working condition, so it falls more under our purview. Because it touches on academic issues, the Senate reviews the proposed calendar before it goes back to CCFT for final sign-off. The issue raised by the Senate was whether it was necessary to leave the four weeks open in January for Winter Session. An alternative calendar was proposed: to eliminate the saved space for Winter Session and instead start the Spring Semester two weeks earlier.

Arguments were made to retain our recent practice of penciling in a four-week Winter Session even if classes are not offered then. There are still a couple of programs that make use of that time. Radiological Technology and Foreign Languages (via Study Abroad) both use those four weeks in their programs. Another argument for retaining the January gap is if our enrollment falls too much, we may be pressed into expanding class scheduling to meet our enrollment cap. A winter session option, if we move spring semester back, will be gone.

A Winter Session is very useful for many students, particularly transfer students. It’s a chance to fulfill a transfer requirement. One student spoke to this point, saying that for science or engineering students who are heavily burdened with advanced math and lab courses during the semester, a Winter

by Paul Harvell

Session was a good time to take care of some of the general education requirements outside of their major field.

No matter how useful Winter Session might be for students, it doesn’t look like the college will be having one in the near future. Yes, the college might need to add courses to reach the enrollment cap, but the first steps will be adding TUs to the fall, spring, and summer semesters. Some of the budget reductions in the last several years have been to reduce by one month the schedules of some staff (and thus their pay) because of the suspension of Winter Session. Rebooting Winter Session will have added costs that TU allocation to the other semesters would not have.

Some students will benefit from a spring semester that begins in January. For example, there are students who must attend classes a certain number of hours each month in order to maintain their financial aid. Another significant benefit is the possibility of an 8-week Summer Session. Five unit classes with laboratory components can’t be offered in a 4-week format and don’t do well in the 6-week format. However, they can be effectively squeezed into 8 weeks. Some of these classes are major bottlenecks for completion of some college programs. If TUs and instructors are available, an 8-week summer session could increase student success.

Stay with the old or try the new? There is no clearly dominating strategy.
The final vote for both the Faculty Senate and the CCFT Council was not unanimous, but both were in favor of an earlier start for Spring 2014. At the next board meeting, the calendar will go forward that has an earlier start for Spring Semester. Spring semester 2014 will start the last week of January with finals and graduation before Memorial Day.

Unfortunately, we won’t have the experience of Spring 2014 to make a decision about the calendar for Spring 2015. We will have to decide by Fall 2013.