University restructures summer school
Summer classes for 2012 will accommodate a larger number of students than years past, due to changes discussed in a Faculty Senate meeting Monday, Oct. 3.
University Provost Raymond Coward said he wants to implement a new summer school model for this upcoming year that makes classes available, regardless of how few students enroll.
“We’re going to stop the notion of putting out a course and seeing if it works, and if it doesn’t enroll enough then we cancel that course,” Coward said. “If we put a course on the schedule, then we’re going to offer that course.”
This new model, which has been approved and taken to the Board of Trustees for review, reflects that the university has the capacity to have more students on campus in the summer and administrators want to see this happen.
According to James Morales, vice president of Student Services, roughly 2,300 students enrolled in 2011 summer school, compared to a high of nearly 5,000 students 10 years ago.
According to the Summer Enrollment Committee Report 2010, “the Logan campus has experienced a 45 percent decline in summer enrollments since 1999.”
The committee attributed this decline to several factors, which include a summer schedule that no longer meets the needs and expectations of students, increased pressure to work during the summer, the proliferation of online courses, a lack of clarity regarding good course offerings and the proper funding model. There also seems to be a lack of incentive from faculty to teach summer courses.
“I always work during the summer,” said Ryan Warren, a senior majoring in civil engineering. “In my opinion summer’s sacred. You don’t go to school during the summer. It’s always been my time for working and getting as much money as I can to survive the next school year.”
Coward said summer of 2012 will be an experiment to see if the changes will draw higher enrollment numbers. Sixteen of the 41 university departments submitted a tentative proposal of which classes would be offered for summer sessions. Five of these departments were then chosen for the first round of funding for the 2012 pilot program.
Coward said he couldn’t yet disclose which departments were selected, because they haven’t been notified yet, and they “deserve the courtesy of hearing it first.”
He said, however, “Two of the departments are in science, two in education and human services (and the last) in humanities and social sciences.”
According to Jessica Hansen, coordinator senior for the Registrar’s Office, student feedback regarding summer semester classes shows that it is enormously difficult to stay on campus in the summer.
Referring to the current summer program, Juel Odulio, a freshman majoring in pre-nursing, said changes could certainly be made to make summer school “more attractive.”
Hansen said several steps are being taken to ensure this happens.
“There will be two sessions in the program. A four-week session that starts on May 7 and ends on June 1, and a seven-week session that begins June 4 and ends July 18,” Hansen said. “It will also be standard bell time, so students can take back-to-back courses throughout the day.”
The new summer school schedule will make more classes available to more students by introducing what Hansen called a standard bell time. This means each class will meet at a set time for a set period to prevent course overlap. Hansen said this should allow students to coordinate better.
She also said that in the past courses would meet once a week for four hours and it would monopolize a student’s entire day, which would keep them from being able to schedule other courses. With the new model, a student should hypothetically be able to take a full 12- or 15-credit regular semester course load.
“The aim of changing to these two sessions is for students to be able to take courses that are more relevant to their majors. That’s what the colleges and departments are being (asked to do),” Hansen said.
Morales also said the new funding model focuses on encouraging departments to teach more according to what the students need.
“The basic idea of this funding model allows the departments to keep virtually all the revenue they generate during the summer, which in turn lets them put classes out there that the students want and need,” Morales said.
Erica Jensen, a freshman majoring in mathematics, said this new model is a much smarter idea when compared to the current summer school program. “I think I’d be more inclined to take a summer semester class, and I might consider summer school later on,” she said. “I think it’s a great idea.”
Through the new model once a class is listed online it must be taught, and it is up to the individual departments to coordinate funding, staffing and selection of classes.
“This means the departments are going to have to carefully choose which courses they offer,” Coward said. “There is a fail-safe where the university is going to make up the difference if the experiment falls through.”
If the model is a success this summer, then the Administration will continue to add departments until all 41 are implemented into the program by 2015. This will mean the income and resources of each department are directly tied to the number of student hours they offer.
The five departments selected for the first trial run averaged 2,332 student credit hours over the past three years. According to estimates from the submitted proposals, it should increase student credit hours to 5,829 for those five departments, which would be an increase of 150 percent.
“(This is), of course, exactly what we want to see if we can bring about that kind of increase,” Coward said. “Instructional costs are about $275,000. The funding module we are trying to put in place would return $461,000 to the departments. We’re trying to set (this) up as a win-win.”
– amber.murdoch@usu.edu