Budget cuts have no impact on summer course availability

Enrollment in summer classes is up since this time last year, officials say, and some students say they need to take advantage of these courses to graduate in four years.

Summer enrollment has increased 27 percent since this time last year, although registration began a week earlier this year, said Joe Gallegos, administrative assistant for the Office of Curriculum and Registration.

Just fewer than 12,500 students took courses during one of the three summer sessions last year, an increase of about 5 percent from the previous year.

Registration has been going on since March 6, a week earlier than it began last year, and continues until just after the beginning of each session.

Summer courses are self-supporting, said Vice President for Undergraduate Education Randy Richardson, and therefore immune to the budget cuts that caused 115 spring courses to be canceled.

Individual departments are responsible for offering summer courses, and, in some cases, course availability depends on demand.

Gallegos said the departments are usually limited to how many courses they can open by the number of available instructors, rather than a strapped budget.

Marie Messina, an administrative associate in the department of Spanish and Portuguese, said that her department simply opens another summer course when the ones being offered for registration fill up.

"We have plenty of openings," she said.

In perpetually full departments like communication, though, getting into summer courses may still prove to be a challenge, said David Williams, an associate professor of communication.

"Availability of instructors is the problem. It's one of those problems where you can keep throwing money at it, but it won't change," Williams said.

But, as of last night, most communication classes during the summer sessions had at least a few spaces available, including some upper-division courses that are already full for the fall.

Many students are taking advantage of opportunities like that to stay on track for graduating in four years.

Lisa Wilensky, an accounting junior, wants to graduate in four years but needs to take general education classes that filled up during the year.

"I needed to keep up on credits," she said.

Galvez Yahya, a geological engineering senior, said he has taken seven classes over past summers so that he could graduate this May.

Yahya said he took mostly GenEd courses over the summer so that he did not have to take them during the standard fall or spring semesters.

The university has also increased its offering of Web-delivered courses this year, from 11 to 34. However, the new number also includes Web-delivered courses offered at UA South in Sierra Vista.

The pre-session runs May 13 through June 1. Session 1 runs from June 3 to July 3, and Session 2 runs from July 8 to August 7.