After nearly two years of planning and more than a semester of campus-wide debate, the campaign to renovate Syracuse University’s course scheduling system has finally bore fruit.

Vice Chancellor Deborah Freund’s final draft of the new course scheduling paradigm was officially adopted Dec. 16. The plan, which will go into effect in Spring 2005, maintains the traditional pairing of classes on Tuesday and Thursday and Monday, Wednesday and Friday, creates more 80-minute class blocks and is designed to prevent the overlap and the ‘bunching’ of classes in the middle of the day, Freund said. The paradigm does not set aside a block of time for campus activities, a concept that had been considered in the plan’s early stages.

Freund said she personally supported the idea of a campus community time, which would set aside one afternoon a week for guest speakers and campus organizations’ meetings, but the idea’s ‘lukewarm reception’ in the University Senate and logistical problems influenced her decision to drop it.

‘It didn’t look possible to do it and preserve the integrity of the schedule,’ Freund said.

The final plan is based on the recommendations of USen and Chancellor Kenneth A. Shaw. Senators voted Nov. 12 to recommend the paradigm proposed by former Student Association President Andrew Thomson and philosophy professor Robert VanGulick rather than a version created by a committee led by Ronald Cavanagh, vice president for undergraduate studies, and biology professor Ernest Hemphill. Cavanagh said that while he is disappointed that the adopted plan did not include the campus community time or a longer class day on Friday, he feels it will address the basic problems with the current paradigm.

‘I think it’s a very creative compromise,’ Cavanagh said. ‘I think it will be better than the paradigm or process we have in place right now.’

After Shaw approved USen’s recommendation, members of the university community were given the opportunity to comment on the preliminary schedule on SU’s website. Freund said only a few general comments were posted on the website.

‘Nothing new really came of that,’ she said.

Now that the plan has been formally adopted, the Registrar’s Office will spend the year testing the schedule using current class sizes and configurations, Freund said. She is confident that the paradigm will be ready for implementation by next spring.

Once the plan is implemented, it will be Freund’s responsibility to determine which classes will receive exemptions to be scheduled outside the paradigm. She said that room for studio classes in the School of Architecture and the College of Visual and Performing Arts and other predicted exceptions will be built into the new schedule. Other exceptions will be given when they are deemed to be in the university’s best interest, she said.

Administrators in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications already know they’ll need to request exceptions to the paradigm. Elizabeth Toth, associate dean of academic affairs, said that several Newhouse classes, such as those in the broadcast journalism department, will require exceptions. She doesn’t believe that the exceptions will cause a problem, since those classes are taught in laboratories that are not available to other university classes. She said that the school’s majority of 80-minute classes will be able to fit into the new paradigm.

‘We find that we can adapt to the policy,’ Toth said.

Published on January 12, 2004 at 12:00 pm