Deans to consider starting fall term one day early

The Council of Undergraduate Deans is currently considering a proposal that would lengthen the fall semester by one day, Provost Stanley Chodorow said last night. If the plan is approved, classes would begin on Wednesday, September 6, 1995, rather than the traditional Thursday. The new proposal comes after debate over the University's calendar reached an impasse last semester, when the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education recommended the incorporation of an extra reading day into the fall term. SCUE also asked for an adjustment in the number of teaching days per semester -- a goal that would have been partially accomplished by starting classes before Labor Day. The SCUE plan was rejected because it was "not acceptable to the faculty," Chodorow said last night. "But there was a general recognition that it would be nice if we could work out a longer fall semester," he added. "Most students would appreciate [not having finals on December 23]. We're sympathetic to that, we're not as evil as we look." SCUE Chairperson Satya Patel, a College and Wharton junior, said he is pleased with the calendar plan. "It's really a different animal, but I'm happy with the [proposed] calendar in the sense that we get an extra day of class and we end on the 22nd [of December] and we still have an extra reading day in there," Patel said. Under the proposal now being discussed, the number of orientation and New Student Week activities would remain the same. However, they would be compressed into a shorter time period, Chodorow said. In addition, NSW activities would become "somewhat more academic, more of an introduction to intellectual life," according to Chodorow. The orientation program is an issue that will also be addressed by the Provost's Council on Undergraduate Education. Making changes to the University's calendar is not an easy process, though, due to conflicts with advising programs and opening dates of residences planned many months in advance. But Chodorow said the orientation schedule is "quite extended" as it now stands. Although it worked well in the fall, he said he believes New Student Week is "unnecessarily spread out." By scheduling events more compactly for the upcoming fall, and allowing similar programs to flow into one another -- as the Freshman Convocation and Reading Project did in 1994 -- Chodorow said he hopes to emphasize the academic aspect of freshman orientation. It has not yet been determined how the end-of-semester day gained under the proposal would be used, Chodorow added. Possible uses include another day of teaching or reading, or a "flex day" that would help to alleviate the compression and stress of the week-long exam period. Mathematics Department Undergraduate Chairperson Dennis DeTurck said the proposed plan would not affect his department "all that much," despite the fact that math placement tests are given during New Student Week. "It might be good to lengthen the fall by a day," DeTurck said, adding that "fixed syllabus" courses like Calculus often have difficulty finishing required material in the fall because that semester is shorter than the spring term.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.