In the past few years, North Central College has undergone massive changes that have included the construction of a science center and a residence hall, the renovations of several academic buildings, the acquisition of a college and a reorganized academic affairs structure. Now the College has begun to undertake one more change: moving from trimesters to semesters.
While the change won’t be instituted until the 2019-2020 school year, the process is well underway. The wheels started turning during the fall of 2016 when the College assembled a 17-member committee — the Semesters Transition Committee — representing academic affairs, marketing, athletics and a variety of academic departments.
Dr. Lisa Long, dean of college programs and special assistant to the provost, led that committee which spent last year researching the effects the switch will have on campus as well as working to gain the support of department chairs and faculty across the campus.
The decision was ultimately approved during spring of 2017 after careful consideration. While a whole academic year stands between now and the time of its implementation, the College has taken steps to move forward with the plan. In something of a symbolic move, the Semesters Transition Committee has become the Semesters Implementation Committee.
Dr. Long explained that semesters bring with them a variety of benefits and new opportunities. Taking a class for 15 weeks instead of 10 drastically slows the pace, which opens the door for more in-depth learning as well as enriching activities that simply can’t happen under the current system.
More so, the switch provides more study abroad activities by expanding opportunities beyond just the fall term, as it is now. The switch would also align NCC with most college schedules, which Dr. Long said could assist students in the hunt for internships as students will finish classes considerably earlier.
Dr. Pamela Monaco, dean of the school of graduate studies, also spoke at length about some of the pros and cons associated with the College’s new schedule. Obviously pushing the ends of classes up by a month to mid-May means classes will start sooner, sometime in mid-to-late August, though the trimester schedule — and its late start — provided a benefit for some students.
Dr. Monaco said this was an advantage for the College: “we actually do get some transfer students because kids will start at very large state institutions and discover very quickly it’s not for them, and this gives them a place to come to.”
On the flip side, Dr. Monaco says the new, more traditional schedule should help students, especially first years, better acclimate to NCC.
“After your first term, you’re basically done at Thanksgiving and then you got a doggone long break until January,” said Dr. Monaco. “And if you’re a freshman who’s still trying to figure out who you are and how you fit in, six weeks is a long time. You go back home, you’re back with your friends. The incentive to return may not be as great because you haven’t built a relationship with the institution.”
The Semester Calendar Implementation Task Force created a page on Cardinal Net to provide students a better idea of how they’ll be affected by the switch. In it, the task force provided some new information that is worth detailing.
Boasting a “re-imagined educational experience,” the page explains some of the perks of semesters, lays out the promise to students, a list of frequently asked questions, a timeline between now and the implementation of semesters, and undergraduate and graduate calendars for the next two years.
During the coming school year, each class — excluding seniors, obviously — will take turns meeting with their advisers to sign their Individualized Transition Plan. This essentially promises students that all previous coursework will be honored and, so long as they stay on the path laid out for them, they will graduate on time.
To clarify the academic schedule, D-term will be replaced with May term, a similar three-week term, though coming after the completion of the regular school year. Another new feature of semesters is reading day, which is a day without classes prior to final exams, optimistically intended as a day for students to spend studying.
Lengthening the term from 10 weeks to 16 means students will see significantly more holidays observed by the college such as Labor Day, while some classes will be cancelled for Martin Luther King Day and Good Friday.
Students will have the first week of March off from classes, meaning Spring Break comes a little early under semesters. There also won’t be classes between Oct. 14 and 15, providing students a Fall Break. As for Thanksgiving, students will have Wednesday through Friday off, with classes resuming Dec. 2.
For what it’s worth, though, Dr. Monaco notes that the general concept of an academic calendar doesn’t hold a lot of weight when it comes to prospective students. When the committee talked to the admissions office, Monaco said the calendar was “never a deciding factor for students in choosing this school.”
One of the challenges of making the switch is overhauling the class credit system. Currently, classes typically count as three credits, with a 12-credit max per term. Under semesters, classes will count as four credits, while the max is bumped up to 18 credits.
This certainly wasn’t the first time semesters have been brought up on campus, though obviously other discussions died out before any action was taken. When Dr. Monaco arrived at NCC in 2014, former Dean of Faculty Dr. R. Devadoss Pandian led an examination into the possibility of switching.
This discussion of semesters was covered by the Chronicle in its April 23, 2014, print issue, which mirrors what’s happened during the past couple years. Essentially the same arguments were made for transitioning to semesters, mainly the relief semesters would offer for students bogged down by intense 10-week terms. A similar, though smaller, committee was assembled to explore the switch that never materialized.
Dr. Monaco says the failure in faculty buy-in stemmed from failing to make the switch attractive. “Dean Pandian did not include the option of looking at workload and because of that faculty were not interested.”
Fast forward two years to when Provost Abiodun Goke-Pariola started at NCC, he was not only very interested in looking at the switch but, more importantly, he said faculty could consider everything: “they could look at workload, what their teaching load would be for each semester and so-forth,” said Dr. Monaco.
What followed was a very careful process with a highly engaged faculty thinking about what the repercussions would look like for everything from student retention to questioning whether NCC would become a more or less competitive institution.
In recent years, trimesters and quarters have become an increasingly rare breed in higher education, making NCC just another statistic in a growing trend toward semesters. Dr. Monaco said there was a time when NCC was conscious of schools such as Northwestern and the University of Chicago who shared a similar calendar, but over time, she says, the College has come to realize they’re a different kind of institution.
The one institution that NCC did pay attention to was College of DuPage, but even the community college made the switch to semesters beginning in the 2005-2006 academic year.
Nationwide, the numbers are staggering. In 1994, 12 percent of nation’s 2,340 four-year colleges and universities were on quarters. In this equation, NCC would be considered a quarters school for having four 10-week terms, though the majority of students aren’t here for summer term. Twenty years later, that dropped to just 6 percent, according to EdSource.
Contributing reporting by Peter Medlin
