With the idea of helping out athletes and other student organizations, the educational policy board is changing how departments organize classes next spring semester.
The changes would place more courses in the "prime time" area, between the hours of 10:30 a.m. and 4 p.m..
Many athletes found that previously there were too many classes late in the afternoon.
The University now offers over 300 courses between 4:30 and 6:30 p.m., the prime time for athletic practices.
James Glaser, the dean of undergraduate education, said that previously department chairs scheduled their courses to keep half of their courses out of prime time, and half in.
"We're reducing the amount of prime time, as well as allowing more courses to be scheduled earlier in the day, to have more classes fill the less-popular mid-afternoon slots, around 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.," Glaser said.
This change should lead to a lightly-used block in the middle of afternoon getting more traffic and less classes during practice time, Glaser said.
As well, students who are constantly five minutes late for their 9:25 a.m. class will be getting a reprieve next spring.
In the new schedule decided by a recent faculty vote, effective spring 2005,
all class blocks -- except the A+ block -- will begin on the half-hour and hour.
Additionally, night laboratory and seminar classes will end at 10 p.m instead of 9:45 p.m..
"Classes starting at 25 minutes after the hour were generally confusing and there didn't seem to be any reason not to make the change," said Robyn Gittleman, the President's Designee on the Educational Policy Committee.
"My understanding is that many faculty and students didn't like starting classes 25 minutes after the hour," said Eric Todd Quinto, mathematics professor and co-chair of the Educational Policy Committee.
Some students disapprove of the shift to slightly later night classes. "I don't want to be in class until ten. I have trouble focusing until 9:45 as it is," said Jessi Roberts, a junior biochemistry major has at least two night labs every week. "It's hard to fit labs into the middle of your day so this will force those students that already are taking late classes to be in class even later without much choice otherwise."
The new block schedule, enacted at the beginning of the 2002-03 academic year, was developed for the University by a hired consultant, who determined that better scheduling could free up classroom space so that new classrooms would not have to be built.
A forum held in the fall of last year addressed the frequently-cited problems of a lack of space for classes at high-demand times and conflicts between classes and extracurricular activities.
