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University Senate delays vote on model for semester calendar

Posted on | June 3, 2009 | 1,599 views |

by Jeff McCallister

A much-anticipated vote on the specific calendar to be used for the university’s switch to semesters was postponed at the May 26 meeting of University Senate to give senators and the OSU community a bit more time to study and perhaps tweak it.

Forums were scheduled June 3 and 4 with a final senate vote scheduled for June 11.

Tim Gerber, Faculty Council vice chair and chairman of the senate’s ad hoc committee on semesters, said the extra two weeks were needed to insure everyone who wanted a chance to study the proposed calendar and give input had time to do so.

At the same time, he said it needed to be done quickly to give departments and individual faculty time to work on the transition.

“I do wish the discussion could be more detailed and more nuanced, but we are already in the process of deconstructing the curricula so they can be reconstructed, and that takes considerable time. If we delay the vote until autumn, the process will have to be even more rushed down the line.”

The senate voted 91-19 March 12 to switch from the quarter-based calendar that had been used for 82 years to a semester model in order to align with the University System of Ohio.

The senate’s Council on Enrollment and Student Progress had brought forward three models for consideration a month later, and after three open forums in the following weeks, presented one final version for the May 26 meeting.

• See the proposed calendar here

But several senators expressed concern that the process had moved too quickly and that several constituencies - including students - had not had adequate time to review it.

Even though the substance of the final model had been one of the three tentative models, it had been presented to Faculty Council as the final model for the first time only in the days leading up to its May 21 meeting, and senators decided it was proper to take a little more time. 

“This process is kind of like, for us, founding a republic,” said Rebecca Haidt from the College of Humanities. “We need to make sure we’re doing it right.”

Others raised concerns about faculty workload that appeared to increase because of the addition of a four-week May term between winter semester and summer term.

Gerber and Faculty Council Chairman Dick Gunther tried to alleviate those concerns by noting that the May term was a concentrated teaching time and that the four weeks could count as an entire term of teaching. They also noted that workload issues were matters for individual departments to decide.

In the end, senate voted 48-44 to delay the vote by two weeks and returned the proposed calendar to CESP “for continued refinement and to seek additional input from the campus community.”

For breaking coverage of the June 11 meeting, click on oncampus.osu.edu.

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