Letters to the Editor

This is a letter emailed to USUSA President Matt Richey and President Richey’s response.

My name is Makenzie Weatherspoon, and I am a junior here at Utah State. I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to share my concerns about a troubling trend I’ve noticed at the testing center over the past couple of weeks.

Every time I pass by our only testing center, I see a line extending out the door. I’ve not only heard stories of long waits but have also experienced them myself.

As you know, our student population on the Logan campus has exceeded 25,000 as of Fall 2023 and continues to grow. Given your position as a fellow student, I’m sure you’re familiar with the process for scheduling and taking exams at the testing center. Students are required to make an appointment, but the available slots are limited and fill up quickly. Despite these reservations, it’s increasingly common for students to wait in lines that stretch well past the front doors and onto the sidewalk, often resulting in waits of 45 minutes to over an hour during peak times.

When it comes time to close down the testing center, students are required to finish their exams, whether they are done or not. A very good friend of mine shared a story where she made a reservation allowing her enough time to complete her exam. However, after waiting in line for 45 minutes, she was given only 15 minutes to finish her entire exam before the center closed and she was asked to leave.

These students are real people with busy lives, and nobody wants to spend valuable time waiting in line to take an exam. I’d like to know what plans you and the university have to address this issue before it escalates further. Are there considerations to extend the testing center hours or potentially open a second location to accommodate the overflow of students? If there are no current solutions in place, I’d be interested to understand why.

Thank you for taking the time to address my concerns. I look forward to hearing back from you.

–Kenzie Weatherspoon

Good afternoon Makenzie, 

Thank you for reaching out! My team and I are definitely aware of this issue. Several of us (me included) have run into the same problems you’re describing. One of the current issues we expect to be resolved is that many students are first time test takers, and require an extended explanation of how the testing center works at check-in. As the amount of first time test takers decreases, the lines ought to move more efficiently.

I’m not totally satisfied with waiting and seeing if the problem will be resolved though, so my team and I have discussed a few courses of action we’d like to pursue. Just as a disclaimer, these are extremely preliminary and may not all be feasible. That’s why we’ve tried to come up with a range of options to pursue. They’re still in the development stage and wouldn’t be able to be implemented for a while, depending on whatever course of action we end up being able to adopt. 

Extended hours: Finding a way to let students who still have time on their exams to stay after to ensure they aren’t cut off. Hopefully this would require less personnel (because check-in wouldn’t be running) so we wouldn’t be keeping the whole front desk for an indeterminate period of time. However, this wouldn’t decrease the amount of time it would take to check in.

Second testing center: There are plenty of computer labs on campus, and to my knowledge none of them are used to capacity. Converting one of them into a testing center could alleviate a lot of pressure from our main testing center, even though it would likely be smaller. This would likely take a good chunk of time and funding, but I think is the most feasible long-term solution. 

Digital check-in: This method would allow students to check-in online and receive a text when they’re ready to be admitted into the testing center. I’m not really looking into this idea too seriously, because the lobby of the testing center isn’t too big, and implementation of this system would potentially have a massive learning curve, and one I’m not convinced it’s worth it to get over. 

Finally, pre-test training: For students who are taking a test for the first time, we would require them to complete a training prior to scheduling their first test. This would include all the info they would otherwise get at the front desk when checking in. Hopefully this will be a cheap and easy fix, but I tend to doubt the efficacy of these kinds of trainings. At the very least, it wouldn’t hurt I don’t think.

Again, we’re still looking into feasibility of these different options, but hopefully will have solutions before finals week of this semester. If you have any feedback on these ideas, please let me know! These were all brainstormed fairly recently and could likely use a lot of work. I really appreciate you reaching out.

–USUSA President Matt Richey