The debate over next year’s academic calendar may soon be resolved.
In a report to the University Senate last Friday, education committee co-chair James Applegate, professor of astronomy, announced the committee hopes to produce a formal proposal resolving the issue at their meeting on March 12. The education committee’s proposal will be presented at the University Senate’s plenary on April 2 for discussion and possible vote.
“One way or another, there will be something on the floor,” Applegate said in an interview.
Charged with reviewing the academic calendar every 10 years, the University Senate’s education committee–consisting of 19 representatives of students, faculty, staff, and administrators–has a tall order on its plate in the face of ongoing debate over the fall semester calendar.
New York State law requires that all accredited institutions must be in session for 15 weeks each semester, with one week devoted to finals. Columbia’s current academic calendar begins classes the Tuesday after Labor Day and ends classes the Monday 14 weeks subsequent. Ideally, a three-day study period follows, with exams held from that Friday to the Friday next across six weekdays total.
This has been the methodology the University Registrar has used to design the calendar since 1972, when students rallied to move finals period to before winter recess. “That’s the nominal schedule and that’s what we will use if Labor Day is early. The regularities of celestial mechanics and arithmetic being what they are, we ran into problems last December,” Applegate said.
This past fall, a perfect storm arose in the tempo of the academic calendar–as a Sept. 7 Labor Day pushed the end of finals to the 23rd—complicating travel plans and airfares at time close to the holiday season. There were two study days instead of the usual three and finals were compressed to five days instead of six. The Senate’s student affairs committee presented a 1,600 student petition to the Senate on Jan. 29 expressing student concern over the issue. According to the registrar’s website, finals are slated to also end the 23rd in 2010 and 2011 with two and three study days respectively.
According to Applegate, there are five feasible options to amend the current calendar that the education committee will put up to consideration. Columbia can either hold finals in January, start classes the week before Labor Day, hold class on Election Day Monday (now an academic holiday), shorten the study day period, or hold finals on the weekend.
“All the options are actually workable. It’s a matter of what will make people the happiest and what will maximize the working conditions of most people,” Applegate said.
“This type of change hasn’t happened in decades,” said education committee member Alex Frouman, CC ’12. He stated that the University Senate was not working to necessarily change the calendar for the fall 2010 semester, but rather, to tailor a long-term solution.
Frouman has been working closely with the student council leadership to assess student opinion on the issue. Based on an undergraduate student survey that generated 741 responses, they produced a joint proposal that was submitted in the education committee meeting on Feb. 12. The student proposal calls for starting the Monday before Labor Day on only those years when Labor Day fell late, either the 5th, 6th, or 7th of September.
While no formal faculty proposal has been submitted, Applegate stated that he has reached out to faculty circles within the Arts and Sciences, Barnard College, and SEAS for their feedback on the issue. “What I found is that there was fairly strong pushback on the school schedule issue,” he said.
Due to the fact that day care centers, nursery schools, and K-12 schools don’t begin until after Labor Day, many faculty members with young children are opposed to beginning before Labor Day.
Support has aligned largely with holding classes on the Monday before Elections Day and holding finals over the weekend.
“This is a quality of life issue, a cost issue, that affects both students and faculty,” Frouman said. “That’s why it’s a Senate issue.”
Applegate agreed. “This is somewhat unlike most Senate issues, where they are very important to only a small number of people. The academic calendar hits everybody. So you have to frontload the discussion with a lot of input from the people it will affect.”
Once the education committee’s proposal reaches the Senate floor, Applegate urged the importance of compromise. “If this goes through the Senate as someone defeating somebody else, it’s a failure. If this is something people look at and say that’s workable and come to an agreement about, then it’s a success.”
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