S. L. FULLER
News Editor
“Up front, let me say that students should be pleased about the increase in instructional days for the Spring semester,” said Dr. Joseph Straight, chair of the mathematical sciences department and the Academic Affairs Committee. “Why? Because you’re getting more instruction for your tuition dollars.”
Fredonia students are used to starting classes in the Spring semester on the last Monday of January. But this year, winter break is cut short and students are heading back to class nearly a week earlier than usual. And aside from another Professional Development Day on Friday, Feb. 6, students do not get extra days off to make up for the shorter break. Fredonia will just have more days of classes.
So who is responsible for this change?
Every year, Calendar Committee, a subcommittee of the Academic Affairs Committee, which is a standing committee of University Senate, must design the calendar for the upcoming academic year. When Dr. Virginia Horvath was the vice president for academic affairs, a number of faculty members, including Horvath, mentioned how the Fall and Spring semesters did not allow for the same amount of class time.
“Under the old calendars, there were more instruction days in the fall than in the spring,” said Straight. “Thus, if a faculty member taught the same course both semesters, she found that she could not cover as much material in the spring.”
So, a few years ago, when designing the calendar for 2014-2015, the Calendar Committee and the University Senate decided it was time to even things out. The two options were to either extend the Spring semester later into the month of May or to start classes early.
“My recollection is that, via a straw poll, the senate overwhelmingly favored the first option,” said Straight. “In fact, I recall members of the senate, including the student members, expressing the opinion that our break between semesters was too long.”
Even though starting classes on a Wednesday may seem a little strange, there’s logic behind that, too. Since Monday, Jan. 19, is Martin Luther King Day, the campus is closed. That leaves Tuesday, Jan. 20, for new-student orientation and in-person registration and Wednesday, Jan. 21, for the first day of classes.
“The Calendar Committee does pay attention to the number of class days falling on each day of the week,” continued Straight. “The ideal would be to have 14 of each. In Spring 2015, for example, there are 13 Mondays, 14 Tuesdays, 15 Wednesdays, 15 Thursdays, and 14 Fridays, for a total of 70 class days.”