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SGA: Faculty Senate rexamines fall semester break, exam schedule

by Joe Adgie

 

How about having both a fall break and a full week for Thanksgiving break?

Faculty Senate vice president and president-elect, Aubrey Fowler, proposed such a schedule change during Monday’s SGA meeting.

The proposal suggested starting fall semester three days earlier, allowing for a return of Fall Break, a full week off at Thanksgiving.

These changes also came with adding an extra day to final exam schedules, keeping dead day in the schedule, and allowing for a winter break during spring semester.

Fowler expressed his and the Faculty Senate’s desire to expand the final exam schedule in an attempt to prevent students from having multiple exams on the same day.

“Last fall, it was brought to our attention that students had problems with the current makeup of finals week being three days, which made it much more likely that you had multiple exams on the same day,” Fowler said.

“By USG statutes, we are required to have 45 hours within a semester of in-class time, not including finals week.”

To allow for this to change, the Faculty Senate proposed that the semester start the Wednesday prior, which would allow for the Monday before finals to become the new Dead Day.

“If we start on that Wednesday, and have a full week of finals, we can actually re-institute a fall break, and have a full week at Thanksgiving,” Fowler said. “That also gives us a winter break during the spring semester as well as a full week’s worth of Spring Break.”

All of which was discussed at the Academic scheduling committee, which also met on Monday.

The elimination of Fall Break this year has received a “mixed” response, according to both students and professors.

“My gut is telling me that about week ten you (students) are going to go, ‘Why did they do that?’” Fowler said. “We’re going to know more about that around the middle of October.”

Fowler suggested that students might wind up taking that Fall Break, whether it’s on the schedule or not.

“I talked to several faculty members over at the College of Business who emailed us as we went into the votes (to eliminate the Fall break) saying that they thought the students needed that fall break,” Fowler said.

“I’ve heard mixed reviews, but for me personally, I haven’t felt anything off of (the removal of Fall Break),” Senator Nick Buford said. “I think it will be good to have the full Thanksgiving week, but at the same time, I can say it would be refreshing to have that break. I’m really hoping that (new break structure) goes into place… I’m 100 percent in support of that.”

Buford believed that students would be willing to come in three days early “for that much break time.”

No target school year has been set for this proposal.

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One comment

  1. I really have to agree with Fowler, dudes a boss.

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