With the fifth week of classes coming to an end, Miami University students are finally adjusting to the new time block schedule that began at the start of the 2009-10 school year.
Associated Student Government (ASG) along with Matt Hoffman, secretary for academic affairs, and University Registrar David Sauter held an Academic Town Meeting in McGuffey Hall Wednesday night to address Miami faculty and students and hear questions, comments and concerns regarding the Office of the Registrar.
"My responsibility deals a lot with looking at university academic policy and getting students' feedback from a lot of areas so the new course block is something that has been in the works for about three years now," Hoffman said. "And this forum was really to give and receive feedback."
Throughout the meeting, Sauter explained the new time block schedule and how it was designed, the benefits of the additional five minutes for students to transfer between classes, the evening add-on exam schedule and some changes planned for the future to make student scheduling even more manageable.
The new block schedule was intended to give students more time to move from class to class by allowing 15 minutes between class times, to allow for more technology use and discussion in classrooms and to accommodate the large number of double majors on campus.
"We are pushing 12 percent of our student undergrad population that have double majors in the same division, and sometimes across divisions," Sauter said.
The meeting also covered "superblocks," the success of offering larger percentages of classes in 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. time slots, exam-during-class conflicts and the presence of the Farmer School of Business building on campus this year.
According to Sauter, feedback on the new course block schedule has been positive and the transition has been pleasant.
"We have the time blocks flowing and it's been fine from there," Sauter said, "The campus seems to flow more evenly this year."
As for future plans, Sauter revealed his office is looking to rewrite policies and is looking at the summer calendar to make some changes for 2011. There will also be BannerWeb upgrades, which include piloting a new waitlist process for force-adding classes, and new electronic transcript processing techniques.
A problem Hoffman posed for Sauter concerned student organizations. With the new time schedule allowing for more time between classes, it changed the public relations aspects for advertising student organization events.
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"The 15 minutes after every hour Tuesday and Thursday, as students, it is really hurting our advertisements, and affects our student organization programming and getting the word out," Hoffman said.
In response, Sauter said the new Farmer School of Business has almost created a new Hub on campus on High Street and Patterson Avenue and how the new scheduling has led to new traffic patterns for students through the engineering, psychology and business buildings.
Olivia Dolan, ASG secretary for public relations, attended the forum to address her questions about force-adding and the overcrowding in programs that other students had complained to her about recently.
"He answered a lot of my questions and informed me of a lot of great things that they are working on so that is great to hear," Dolan said.
As for any other questions or concerns from other Miami students, Sauter and Hoffman assured that the feedback in ASG meetings and forums are reviewed and taken into account when creating new additions to academic planning within the Registrar.
"Keep the feedback coming, this is a tough time for the university, and hopefully you aren't seeing it as much as we certainly are administratively," Sauter said.
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