Students can expect more Friday classes, as well as more morning and evening classes, when the university switches to semesters in autumn of 2012.

The change is required because of fundamental differences between quarters and semesters. On quarters, students typically take fewer courses with longer meeting times. On semesters, students generally enroll in more courses that meet fewer time each week.

For example, on quarters, students that want to take 15 credit hours will generally reach that number by scheduling three courses worth five credit hours each. On semesters, a student would typically need to take five courses to reach that same number.

“What we think semesters will look like is, most course will be around three credit hours and will meet Monday, Wednesday and Friday for 55 minutes, or Tuesday and Thursday for 80 minutes,” said Jack Miner, associate registrar. “Introductory math and language courses will likely meet four or five days a week.”

Students will also likely take more Friday classes because of limited classroom space on campus, Miner said. He said that with more courses that meet Monday, Wednesday and Friday for 55 minutes, the university won’t need to add classrooms.

With more classes each day, the result could be earlier start and later end times for many students. The university anticipates more classes being scheduled before 9:30 a.m. and after 3:30 p.m.

“It is absolutely an expectation that students will see more classes that are earlier in the morning and later in the afternoon,” Miner said.

But he noted that they have taken concerns about early days into
account.

“One of the things that we’ve done to compensate for [having to start earlier] based on student and faculty preferences is we’ve tried to move away from the 7:30 a.m. start time, so all of the modeling we’ve done so far moves back to an 8 o’clock start time.”

Miner said the structure should also help class sizes remain similar to they are now, though that decision will continue to be left to the individual departments.