A process for how to give student and faculty members a voice in proposed academic schedule changes remains in question, almost one month after MSU Provost Kim Wilcox announced his decision not to create more Friday classes next year.
At an Executive Committee of Academic Council, or ECAC, meeting Tuesday, members failed to develop a process to allow students and faculty members to weigh in on scheduling changes to classes currently held Mondays and Wednesdays. The group abandoned discussion of the process after at-large ECAC member Richard Weber raised questions about Wilcox’s reasons for the schedule change.
Officials previously said the proposal, which would shorten class times Mondays and Wednesdays and add an extra meeting day Friday, was meant to reduce scheduling conflicts for students.
Officials adopted the Monday, Wednesday and Friday class schedule as the university’s standard scheduling procedure more than a decade ago, but exceptions to the procedure led to a large number of classes meeting only Mondays and Wednesdays, Wilcox has said.
Weber, an associate professor of accounting and information systems, said ECAC needs to know how Wilcox plans to implement the proposed scheduling change and what Wilcox’s reasons are for returning to MSU’s standard scheduling procedure before the governing body can discuss a process for gathering input from student and faculty stakeholders.
“We’re trying to decide how to deal with the process of giving input to the provost (and) trying to figure out what the provost is trying to do,” Weber said.
“Right now, it’s pretty well unspecified and we’ve got to get it specified before we figure out what we want to do.”
Wilcox said he will provide ECAC with a document that will outline how the plan to create more Friday classes would be carried out and why it is necessary.
“I’m going to do just as was the suggestion,” Wilcox said. “I’m going to organize the material so that (there can be) conversation in the standing committees. That’s the next step.”
The group did not set a deadline for creating a process to accept complaints, but Weber said he expected the discussion to be on the agenda for ECAC’s next meeting, which is scheduled for Dec. 1.
“Since we don’t know what we’re doing, we don’t have a time line,” Weber said. “But obviously we’re in a frame where we basically have to have it done by the end of this academic year,” Weber said.
University Committee on Academic Policy, or UCAP, Chairman Martin Crimp said his committee discussed the plan earlier this year when faculty members first learned of the potential change.
“(Adding Friday classes) is an issue that impacts students, faculty, faculty development in many ways and I think we need a clear rationalization for why we would want to go back to what we evolved away from,” he said.
Support student media!
Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
Discussion
Share and discuss “MSU officials delay discussion of schedule changes” on social media.
