Members of the administration and the Student Government Association are working in conjunction to implement a new fall schedule next year that will include a longer Thanksgiving break and a day-earlier start to the academic year.
Paula Burger, dean of undergraduate admissions, and Susan Boswell, dean of student life, met on Sunday with Prasanna Chandrasekhar, SGA president, and David Roceach, SGA vice president, to discuss this proposal.
According to Burger, the choice to extend Thanksgiving break by one day is a practical decision that should have been implemented in past years.
"The notion is that classes are obviously sparsely attended that Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so why try to deny it? The practical reality is that we have students who come from far-flung places, and it would be a disservice to them to continue holding classes that day," Burger said.
According to Chandrasekhar, the decision was made in light of the stress that many students face when heading home for the break.
"Wednesday [before Thanksgiving] is the busiest travel day of the year and also the most expensive, so if students were able to head home after their Tuesday classes, it would really relieve the time burden and the economic burden," he said.
To make up for the lost academic time, the deans plan to propose a change to the academic calendar that would move the first day of fall classes from Thursday to Wednesday.
This earlier start to the academic year may actually be welcomed by students, according to Burger.
"By the time that Wednesday comes around, many students are excited to get started with their academics and really start being students," Burger said.
"So in this way, we don't think the day-earlier start will be too much of a sacrifice."
Another advantage to this earlier start will be that classes on the Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule will be able to meet twice during the first academic week.
"So often classes [on the Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule] don't actually pick up until the second academic week, because teachers say, 'Why bother holding section that Friday?' Hopefully, this will let virtually all classes to start meeting on Wednesday," Burger said.
As part of the domino effect, the Wednesday start will mean that Orientation activities for freshmen will have to be cut short by one day.
"We don't actually want to cancel any Orientation events," Chandrasekhar said. "It's all about rearranging events, and compressing the activities that can be compressed."
Chandrasekhar mentioned several ideas that would assist in shortening Orientation week, including moving the Day of Service to a Saturday.
Burger said that both the Office of the Registrar and the Orientation Staff seemed to be in agreement with the proposed changes to the schedule.
At Tuesday night's SGA meeting, a nearly unanimous vote showed that members of the student council were in favor of these changes as well.
According to Burger, the footwork behind the idea began during the summer, when she and Dean Boswell began conferring with other colleges that operated on a five-day Thanksgiving break schedule.
Their findings showed that at these schools, Monday and Tuesday class attendance did not suffer, nor were faculty inconvenienced by the schedule.
Since the deans plan to implement the new schedule during the 2009-2010 academic year, they are already going ahead with necessary procedures.
Burger said that her first step was to ask Chandrasekhar to collect a sample student reaction from the SGA, and that their reaction was not surprising.
"I couldn't see what kind of downside would be in it for students, and [Chandrasekhar] couldn't see what the downside would be, either," she said.
Burger said that her next steps will include meeting with faculty on the Academic Council, sending an e-mail to department chairs informing them of the consensus and conferring with the Office of the Registrar and the Orientation staff to make sure the changes occur smoothly.
