Purpose
The goal of the volunteer Scheduling Task Force was to create a permanent academic scheduling policy that will guide the University in how to best maximize the use of classroom facilities and facilitate students' progress towards graduation.
With the renovation of Butte Hall—including the loss of 25 classrooms—the Associate Deans & Support Unit Administrators Space and Projects Working Group (AD-SUA) realized that space constraints would require changes in how we schedule classes.
The University currently does not have an academic scheduling policy, and it became clear that we needed to codify our existing process. It also quickly became apparent that AD-SUA was not the place to do that, and that we needed input from the department chairs and others who are primarily responsible for making scheduling decisions.
Volunteers were recruited and the Scheduling Task Force was born. The plan was to draft a policy that would be effective fall 2020 when we will start scheduling for the fall 2021 semester. After consultation with the President and cabinet and upon their recommendation, the focus switched to creating a pilot to guide academic scheduling through the renovations of the Academic Multipurpose Building (old Physical Science) and Butte Hall.
The results of the pilot will be used to create a permanent policy, which we aim to have in place by the time we start scheduling fall 2023, when Butte Hall will come back online.