Syracuse University faculty members are currently pushing a proposal to straighten out the school’s discombobulated class-scheduling policy, and while debate over the new plan rages on, there is little disagreement among university officials as to how it became so tangled.

The paradigm currently in use allows individual departments and colleges to schedule their classes without input from the registrar’s office, said Ronald Cavanagh, vice president for undergraduate studies and one of the creators of the new scheduling proposal. This lack of supervision leads to classes that overlap or begin at irregular times, the bunching of classes in the middle of the day and the scarcity of Friday classes.

Between 25 and 30 percent of classes are currently scheduled outside the existing paradigm, said Ernest Hemphill, an associate professor of biology and another of the new plan’s sponsors. While most of the irregularities came about as exceptions to the paradigm on a case-by-case basis, those exceptions have mounted to significant numbers.

‘At 1 percent a year, it could creep in until you hit the seesaw effect and everything collapses,’ Hemphill said.

The oldest version of the schedule featured 55-minute classes in two different groups: Monday, Wednesday and Friday and Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The current scheduling paradigm came about in the 1970s as a way of eliminating Saturday classes, Hemphill said.

The creation of 80-minute classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays was a new development in the 1970s, Hemphill said. The twice-weekly time slots eventually became a faculty favorite. When all the Tuesday and Thursday slots filled up, professors began scheduling classes Monday and Wednesday, creating many of the problems experienced today, Cavanagh said.

The trend toward 80-minute classes may signal a change in the way college courses are taught. Schools such as the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, which require the use of technical equipment or interactive exercises during lecture classes, have the highest number of irregularly scheduled classes, Hemphill said.

‘What we call a lecture today isn’t what it was in the old days, with the professor standing at the blackboard with a piece of chalk,’ Hemphill said.

Some professors also favor twice-weekly classes because they offer a four-day block of time for research, Hemphill said. Faculty in disciplines such as physics need the extra time to travel to other facilities to use specialized equipment, said Carl Rosenzweig, a physics professor who teaches his introductory astronomy course on Tuesday and Thursday.

‘There just aren’t that many places you can go to smash atoms,’ Rosenzweig said.

Another side effect of the proliferation of 80-minute classes is the reduced number of Friday classes. This phenomenon was not created by student demand, Cavanagh said, but by demand from professors.

In addition to allowing for Thursday-night partying, light Friday class loads also enable schools to plan activities such as internships and laboratories that do not fit within the regular paradigm. Management sets Fridays aside so that its students can participate in mandatory internships and community service, said Clint Tankersley, associate dean for undergraduate programs in Management.

Tankersley said that while the majority of schools have been in violation of the current paradigm, Management was one of the few that was open about it.

‘We got eat up a fair bit for being the odd one on campus,’ Tankersley said.

The new scheduling paradigm would include both an oversight process to eliminate current scheduling conflicts and an exemption process to meet each school’s needs. Each school will submit a course package for review by the deans’ cabinet and the vice chancellor, who will make judgments regarding any deviations from the paradigm.

Published on September 16, 2003 at 12:00 pm