Thursday November 1, 2001

Administration must balance available classrooms with instructor and student demand

As students register for next semester's classes, many may not consider all the effort that went into the production of the class schedule - effort that required timeliness and attention to detail.

With overcrowding in certain colleges and strict requirements for entry into others, many students may take the detailed process of schedule making for granted because they do not realize how difficult it is to accommodate each student.

Randy Richardson, interim vice president for undergraduate education, said the process of creating the schedule of classes begins at least six months before each semester.

It starts when Room and Course Scheduling, a division of the administration department, sends out electronic forms to each academic department requesting the classes it can offer in the upcoming semester and the preferred times to teach them.

RCS then takes all the department's requests and matches them up to the sizes and number of classrooms available.

"It is an iterative process that goes back and forth between departments and room and course," Richardson said.

He also said students and instructors request more classes from the peak hours of 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. than can be accommodated.

Often, classes will request large rooms, but when the semester begins, the class ends up with fewer students than expected, he said. When that occurs, the classrooms for these specific classes are switched and tend to cause some confusion for students.

Richardson said that in previous semesters, the schedule was sent to a printer at least four weeks prior to the first registration group. The 2002 spring semester, however, will be the first without a printed schedule offered anywhere on campus.

Rather, students will need to use the online schedule to find out when and where classes are offered.

"We moved to the online schedule because the printed schedule was always out of date," Richardson said. "It is a much better tool."

He said the printed schedule has become obsolete because often, a department notifies the administration that an anticipated instructor has become ill or has taken another job and a class must be canceled, making the printed schedule outdated.

He said the unavailability of the printed schedule was not expected to happen this early, but with the addition of 14 classrooms in the new Integrated Learning Center, an exact date for a final schedule is uncertain.

He said classes must be spread throughout the university's hours of operation, but with availability of classrooms at the ILC, more classes can be offered during the peak hours of each school day.

"The use of the ILC is one of the most exciting things we're doing right now," he said. "We're really proud of the teaching space at ILC, the equipment and facilities within the rooms."

Richardson said the classrooms at the ILC will help relieve the overcrowding the university has dealt with this semester.

"I think we did a fantastic job of meeting the needs of the largest freshman class ever," he said. "They all had full schedules. It was tight, but it was done."

With the statewide budget crisis on the minds of the university community, eliminating some classes to ease the situation has become an option.

Sharon Kha, spokeswoman for the university, said there may be classes cut because of the budget crisis, but the final decision will not be made until at least the end of November.

"Until everyone is registered, and we see what the demand is, it will be hard to tell what is cut," she said. "Then we may make some changes."

Richardson said the university's colleges work with Provost George Davis to talk about the support they need to operate fully.

In some cases, students expecting to graduate within the year are faced with the dilemma of necessary classes not being offered. If a college cannot offer a class because of budget reasons, then the college's dean will offer the college more money or suggest it take the cuts elsewhere in its budget so necessary classes can continue to be available.

"We work with departments to minimize the impacts on students," he said. "We don't really know the implications of the state budget cuts, but we will protect students from the loss of classes they need. Everyone will feel the pain (of the budget cuts), so I can't say no classes will be canceled."

He said electives may be eliminated, but the administration and all the university's departments will try to limit the negative aspects of the cuts.

"We're going to work together to accomplish the school's mission," he said. "We're all negotiating what we have to do and what we will give up to ease the budget strains."