USU changes summer semester
With enrollment of about 2,100 students during Summer semesters, USU has decided to take action and hopes to double this number in the next five years.
Now feeling some pressure from the Legislature, a Summer Enrollment Committee was assembled to identify key issues and barriers preventing full utilization of facilities and resources. Heading this committee is Vice President of Student Services James Morales.
According to a presentation given by Morales, the Logan campus has experienced a 45 percent decline in undergraduate students enrolling for summer semesters since 1999. The committee has identified factors contributing to the decline as increased pressure to work, issues with incentives for faculty, the proliferation of online courses, and a lack of clarity about scheduling as well as not meeting students needs.
The committee has been at work compiling a report of recommendations and presenting them to various organizations across the campus including ASUSU and University President Stan Albrecht.
“So far the response has been really positive,” Morales said. “We realize this is just the framework for discussion and ideas and not the final product.”
The first recommendation made includes better scheduling. Instead of three sets of four week sessions and one eight week session that overlap, sessions will be realigned into two parts. Immediately following Spring commencement will be a four-week workshop session followed by a seven-week main session that will end early enough to give students a month break before Fall semester begins. The scheduling will all include the same standardized bell times and the seven-week session will include no Friday classes.
Recognizing the need for students to work, the committee recommended offering student employment opportunities and internships to students as part of summer enrollment. Tuition incentives may be offered, such as discounts to accompany current offers being made. One incentive already being given is all students only have to pay in-state resident tuition for summer semester regardless where they are from.
A large factor keeping students from campus is online classes. Originally implemented to keep students on track to graduate, for prerequisites, and classes not available, online classes have gained popularity for their flexibility and convenience. While they may keep students off campus, their fees sometimes work in favor of the university.
“I dropped my online summer classes because of the online fees,” said Kylie Jones, a Junior in Family Consumer Human Development. They also didn’t offer the courses I needed on campus.”
To compete with online courses, the committee had the ideas of offering bundled courses to cater to different learning styles, additional training courses for teachers, co-curricular summer activities, and even letting students participate in a short study-abroad for the May session.
To promote these potential changes will be a marketing campaign that will highlight the benefits of a summer semester. The main highlights will be the new schedule, cost, opportunity for college transition and quality of the experience.
“More student activities during the Summer would make it more likely for students to come to campus,” Jones said of enticing students to stay.
“‘Yes, college students are here to get an education, but they also think of college as a social aspect,” Jones said.
Morales said that while education is a priority, student needs are never forgotten and that a summer concert series may be one of many activities that could be started in the future.
While all recommendations are subject to change, no official action is said to take place until summer 2012.
“We want to take the time and do this right; it is an important change,” he said.
“We are confident that the recommendations will make Summer more attractive.”
-jessie.a.sweat@aggiemail.usu.edu