March 18, 2003
EDITORIAL
Exploring an Alternate Academic Calendar
By Charles
Karelis and Walter Brown
We have the privilege of chairing President Trachtenberg’s Study
Group on an Alternative Calendar, which is composed of faculty, students,
and administrators from around the campus. The study group has been
gratified by the community’s interest in the progress of our work.
We would like to report briefly on that progress here.
Just to reiterate what many people understand already, our charge is
not to recommend but to identify the pros and cons of various options,
using as twin criteria the improvement of the educational experience
of students and the more efficient utilization of scarce resources.
Nevertheless, some prioritizing of options is essential. Given the limited
time and resources available, we simply have to focus our attention
more closely on certain possibilities as holding the most promise. At
this point, we would like to share publicly our shorter list of options.
This is appropriate now because we are preparing to hold a series of
conversations with faculty, students, staff, parents, and the general
community.
We hasten to add that these options can be described only schematically
at this point. So we hope individuals will see the wisdom of suspending
judgment until more of the educational possibilities and resource implications
have emerged. In the end, of course, even the best of all the options
may not be good enough to warrant adoption. But that decision will be
made by the Board of Trustees.
The study group believes that the most promising alternative calendar
for The George Washington University is neither the quarter system nor
a system in which the whole calendar year is divided into three equal
terms. It is rather a calendar that leaves in place the current semesters,
consisting of approximately 14 weeks of instruction, and adds a major
summer term, consisting of approximately 10 weeks of instruction, which
would be designed to serve large numbers of students. The virtues of
this framework are that it would bring us closer to fully utilizing
our facilities and provide a new summer “space” for educational
innovation — while preserving a lot of down-time, both within and
between the three semesters. This down-time is important for both psychological
and logistical reasons.
This framework could accommodate numerous options. We have chosen to
focus on four. First, our charge from the president and the executive
vice-president for academic affairs asked us to look at the possibility
of a shift in the “normal” undergraduate course load from
five three-credit courses to four four-credit courses. “Four-by-four,”
as it is often called, is currently the norm at seven of the 15 universities
with which George Washington traditionally compares itself, and it is
also the norm at almost all of the so-called “elite” liberal
arts colleges. Whether to go to 4x4 or stay with 5x3 is a complex question
that has been studied before at GW, and we hope to build on the fruits
of earlier investigations. In educational terms it appears that a certain
trade-off of breadth for depth is at the heart of this choice.
With or without a change to 4x4, the summer semester might be designed
to allow students to earn about 12 credits. That would preserve approximately
the same proportion of weeks of study to credit hours as prevails in
fall and winter. The study group has discussed a number of exciting
programs that might be offered during such a summer. Departments might
offer all their incoming majors a special induction into their discipline.
There might be a kind of “rising junior capstone” program
in which students who had completed their sophomore year worked on integrating
the diverse elements of their core studies. The laboratories might be
freer than in the fall and spring, allowing for more student-faculty
research projects in the sciences. Assuming many students enrolled in
such a summer session, the “normal” undergraduate pattern
might come to consist of seven falls and springs plus one summer. This
would allow for either early graduation or a fall or spring away from
campus. Students who chose to take a fall or spring semester off might
study abroad or might undertake special internships or other educational
activities that would be difficult or impossible to arrange during a
summer.
Another question is whether to make summer of enrollment a regular,
expected part of the GW undergraduate experience, or to make all summer
study wholly voluntary. Dartmouth College has taken the first of these
approaches since 1972, requiring summer attendance of all rising juniors.
(We stress, however, that Dartmouth has a quarter system, not the calendar
framework we are studying. The expected summer session under consideration
here would be only two-thirds the length of the fall and spring semesters.)
The study group is naturally looking closely at the Dartmouth plan,
including the way Dartmouth has handled student financial aid and its
impact on co-curricular activities, and implementation issues.
One clear attraction of such a plan is that it allows for significant
and predictable efficiencies in the use of facilities. Under some assumptions,
for instance, both the student body and expenditures on faculty might
grow by more than 10 percent, without the construction of new classrooms,
labs, or dorms. Ultimately this efficiency could limit tuition increases
at GW, improve financial aid, increase the proportion of faculty who
are regular and full-time, and so forth.
Advantages for faculty could include greater flexibility in scheduling
of teaching and research, more opportunities for collaborative research
with undergraduates, and growth in the number of colleagues with closely
related interests.
As Dartmouth’s experience suggests, making one summer of attendance
an expected part of the undergraduate program does not prevent an institution
from having a wide appeal to prospective students. If filled with exciting
educational content, and combined with early graduation or unique experiences
in a midstream fall or spring away from campus, such a plan might indeed
be a plus.
In short, within the stated calendar framework, the options under most
active consideration are changing to 4x4 or staying with 5x3, each of
these being combined with a major summer session that is either expected
or discretionary.
The study group is working hard to investigate the logistical, resource,
and above all the educational implications of these options. As was
mentioned, we will also be arranging in-depth conversations with small
groups of faculty, students, and others. The intent here is not so much
to conduct a straw poll, much less a formal referendum, but to gather
insights and concerns we may otherwise overlook. We are also eager to
get the same things from the GW community generally. These may be sent
to either co-chair of the study group at ckarelis@gwu.edu
or wbrown@gwu.edu.
Charles Karelis, research professor of philosophy, and Walter Brown,
assistant professor of higher education
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
