When students began registering for classes Tuesday, they were greeted with a re-worked time schedule and more Friday classes.
Large-scale renovations paired with a significant increase in enrollment have forced University officials to create a new schedule of classes to accommodate students. Undergraduate enrollment has increased 46 percent, or by 3,000 students, in the past five years, according to the Office of Institutional Research.
University Registrar Dennis Geyer said the renovation of Funger Hall forced administrators to come up with a schedule that will accommodate the classes usually held in the building. Two-thirds of Funger Hall will be closed until 2007 while the building undergoes renovations, which will link it to the new School of Business facility.
Geyer said he expects that Friday classes will not end once the business school is completed in 2007 because other buildings will then undergo renovation, creating the same kind of space crunch the University is dealing with now.
“I think it’s going to be the norm,” Geyer said. “We’re not looking at a new pool of rooms to come back to us. We cannot create space; we can only deal with what we have.”
Craig Linebaugh, associate vice president for Academic Planning and Special Projects, told The Hatchet earlier this year that at least 40 percent of classes meeting two days a week for 75 minutes would be held on Fridays.
Several students and faculty members said they are upset with the addition of more Friday sections.
“Thursday night is always the best night for going out … it kills the whole college atmosphere,” sophomore Andrew Joblan said.
“It makes it impossible for me to get a job,” junior Rhaiv Patnam said.
Patnam currently works each Friday for an Information Technology company in Bethesda, Md., but will be unable to work there next fall due to the newly implemented scheduling system.
“I’m afraid I’m not at my best on Friday at 8 a.m.,” said Alison Brooks, chair of the anthropology department.
Brooks said she is also upset because some classes that her department has offered every year have been canceled because of a lack of classroom space.
Brooks said classes such as “Cultures of Africa” and “The Anthropology of Religion” have no classrooms as of yet.
“We’ve always offered these courses … but we’ve been told there isn’t enough space,” she said.
About 40 course offerings have no classroom as of yet, Geyer said. Members of the registration department will negotiate one-on-one with faculty members to try and find classroom space. Geyer said anywhere from 20 to 40 of those classes will not be offered due to lack of space. Geyer said the number of fall 2004 class cancellations is “proportionate” to other semesters.
In addition to more Friday classes, the University will add some Saturday classes, which will mostly be for graduate classes that meet once a week.
“We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t have a faculty willing to teach Saturdays,” Geyer said.
But some faculty members said they did not want to teach on the weekend.
William Griffith, chair of the Faculty Senate’s budget and fiscal planning committee and chair of the philosophy department, said he is worried students and faculty will have trouble “mustering the needed enthusiasm” for classes which are held late in the evening.
The changes will not affect the Law School or the School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Along with the addition of more Friday and Saturday classes, the University is also changing its time schedule to have 20 minutes between classes, instead of this year’s 15 minutes.
Most morning classes are currently held at 8 a.m., 9:30 a.m., 11 a.m., while afternoon classes generally start at 12:30 p.m., 2 p.m., 4:10 p.m. and 6 p.m.
But for the fall semester, classes will generally begin at 8 a.m., 9:35 a.m., 11:10 a.m., 12:45 p.m., 2:20 p.m., 3:55 p.m. and 5:10 p.m.
Geyer said the increase in Mount Vernon Campus classes would necessitate more time in between classes to accommodate the commutes.
