The average Joe of the UCLA community will get his first chance
to ask about a possible switch to a semester system at a campus
town hall meeting this afternoon.
Chancellor Albert Carnesale and Academic Senate Chairman Duncan
Lindsey will head the meeting and will be joined by members of the
Joint Academic Senate / Administration Committee to Study the UCLA
Academic Calendar. A question-and-answer session will follow the
committee presentations.
The meeting is the first event in a busy schedule for the
committee entrusted with making a recommendation to Carnesale
before the end of spring quarter.
Carnesale himself set the committee’s deadline, and gave
the graduate and undergraduate student governments and
university’s deans until the end of winter quarter to make a
recommendation on the issue.
The staggered deadlines are designed to give the senate a chance
to factor in these parties’ respective ideas before making a
final recommendation.
Several campus bodies have been gathering information about the
issue since the committee’s appointment in January 2002 by
then-Executive Vice Chancellor Rory Hume.
“There are still some questions, such as whether a
conversion would do away with specialty classes and if lecture
halls could handle the larger classes,” said David Dahle,
president of the Undergraduate Students Association Council.
A poll conducted last year by the Graduate Student Association
found graduate students narrowly in favor of a semester calendar,
said Dennis Tyler, GSA vice president of academic affairs.
In November the senate released a non-conclusive report
outlining the pros and cons of switching to a semester system.
According to the report’s findings, a semester switch
would synchronize UCLA with many graduate and professional schools
““ including the UCLA School of Law ““ and make it easier
for students transferring from the state’s mostly
semester-based state and community colleges to adjust to the
university.
The report also pointed out a probable workload reduction for
students during the one to two-year transition period. And should
the University of California Board of Regents approve a switch this
year, the committee anticipates an additional three-year
implementation ““Â making for a complete switch no earlier
than the 2008-2009 year.
Another town hall meeting on the semester debate is scheduled
for April 3 and will include administrators from UC Berkeley and
the University of Minnesota, which switched from a quarter to a
semester system in 1999 and is the basis of many of the senate
report’s projections. Minnesota’s transition period
lasted four years.
Berkeley, which has been on a semester system since 1983, is
looking to reduce its academic year by six days from the
UC-sanctioned 146 days of required instruction.
UCLA has considered a calendar change five times in its history,
with the last proposal dismissed in 1994.