The Spring 2006 block schedule could bring some significant changes to Tufts students' academic lives.
The new schedule will introduce overlapping letter blocks, thrice-weekly evening classes, and earlier evening seminar blocks.
Concerning the current block schedule, Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser said that "there is a great time in the middle when we are not using classrooms effectively - there are six to eight times as many classes offered at four in the afternoon than at three."
According to Glaser, a vast majority of the classes taught at Tufts are offered biweekly. The new schedule has been designed so that more of these would begin at 3 p.m. instead of 4 p.m.
This semester, only 12 courses are taught during the I block, which begins at 3 p.m., while 65 courses are taught during the J+ block, which starts at 4 p.m.
Glaser said that the change will allow many students to get out of class by 4 p.m., as well as free up schedules as "athletic teams and student activities will find that fewer students have course conflicts late in the afternoon."
The new schedule should additionally allow the Experimental College (Ex College) to gain classroom space in the late afternoon.
"[The changes] will be good for people in sports, because they'll be able to get out earlier," said freshman Alex Bedig, a soccer player.
But for freshman Ren?©e Nicholas, who has swimming practice in the afternoons during the spring semester, the hour change would not make much of a difference. "I either have practice from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., or 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., so ... actually that doesn't really change anything," she said.
Under the new schedule, the tri-weekly J block and the biweekly K block will run at the same time on Mondays - from 4:30 p.m. to 5:20 p.m. - but will run at different times the rest of the week. As a result, students may not enroll in classes during both blocks, unless the J block class does not meet Mondays.
A similar conflict occurs between two other sets of evening blocks running on Mondays: blocks N and M, and blocks Q and P. The N block (6:00 p.m. to 6:50 p.m.) and Q block (7:30 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.) is now set to run three times per week under the new block schedule.
Evening seminar blocks will start a full hour earlier, running from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. instead of 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. This evening change came about due to requests from students and faculty in graduate programs.
Not every department finds the schedule flawless, however. Chair of the Chemistry Department Mary Jane Shultz said that "students [will] have to skip lunch if they're in organic chemistry, because the lecture lets out 15 minutes before the lab starts."
Shultz also said that the new schedule also "squeezes our seminar time," as only 10 minutes separates the end of class and the beginning of seminar.
Geology Department Chair Anne Gardulski said that she thinks fewer course conflicts will arise overall with the new schedule, even though the new schedule makes things a little tight for introductory courses in her department.
"Some of our field trips take 45 minutes or even an hour to get to ... we try to get back by 4:30 p.m., but sometimes it's 5:00 p.m. or later," she said.
With the current block schedule, no classes are scheduled directly after geology labs. "With the new schedule, the block goes until 4:20 p.m., and there are potentially classes offered at 4:30 p.m.," Gardulski said.
The Geology Department plans on dealing with the problem by adding a note about scheduling issues to the relevant course descriptions.
"No schedule is perfect," Glaser said. "We'll analyze the situation after a year and see if anything needs to be adjusted further."
