Final decision on add/drop deadline reached

By Jaclyn Youngblood     2/5/09 6:00pm

After much debate and discussion, the Faculty Senate voted Jan. 14 to make the final amendments to the add/drop deadlines for the 2009-'10 academic calendar. Faculty Senate Speaker Deborah Harter said the final vote sets the add deadline at two weeks and the drop deadline at seven weeks. Students may add or drop courses during this time period via ESTHER without any fees. Previously, students had four weeks to add a course, two weeks to add it without a fee, four weeks to drop a course without a fee and 10 weeks to drop a course with a fee of $25 per class.

Harter said the Senate spoke with President David Leebron to request the removal of registration fee penalties.

"All faculty were very happy to get rid of the fees," she said.

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Registrar David Tenney said since fees are collected by the Cashier's Office, the revenue went directly to the university and not a specific department, so the Office of the Registrar never received any revenue from fees it charged previously.

The final outcome differs from the plan proposed last semester by the Faculty Senate's working group on the academic calendar. The proposal that came from that group set the add deadline at two weeks, the first week carrying no fee, and the drop deadline at five weeks. This previous proposal had cut the current registration deadlines in half.

Tenney said the changes in the add deadline should not affect a huge portion of students, since 94 percent of students last fall added a course within the first two weeks. In Fall 2007, 76 percent of students added a course within the first two weeks.

Harter met with Student Association President Matt Youn and SA Co-Chairs of the Academics Committee Jasdeep Mangat and Varun Rajan, and spoke with a group of students at an SA meeting to discern students' opinions.

"The SA felt relatively comfortable with the seven week drop deadline, but they would have liked three weeks to add classes," Harter said.

Harter received a proposal from the SA arguing for a three-week add deadline and a seven-week drop deadline. The Faculty Senate then assembled an ad hoc committee to further discuss the final proposal, taking into consideration student preferences.

The proposal submitted to the Faculty Senate by the ad hoc committee suggested two weeks to add a course and seven weeks to drop it. The vote on the proposal was overwhelmingly in favor, Harter said, with one abstention and one vote against.

Harter said if students have a personal problem that prohibits them from meeting the two week add deadline, they can petition the Committee on Examinations and Standing to register for the course. Tenney said students can also petition X&S if they need to drop a course after the seventh week. A $75 fee will be charged in both cases. First-semester freshmen may still drop a class until the last day of classes, but they will be charged $75 if they do so after the seventh week.

Harter said some faculty would have liked to preserve the five week drop deadline of the original proposal. A longer deadline makes it hard to solidify classes, especially those with group projects, when students are leaving eight weeks in, as they could with the previous 10-week drop deadline.

"The long deadline was extremely difficult for the registrar," Harter said. "[He] is required to report figures on class sizes as soon as he can, and it [the long drop deadline] has caused lots of problems for him."

Harter said the 10-week drop deadline was also detrimental to students. If another institution, a professional or graduate school for example, looked at a student's Rice transcript in the fourth week, they couldn't be sure that student was going to complete all of the courses they were registered for.

Regarding the add deadline, Harter said there was a range of opinion. Some faculty preferred a longer add period to encourage students to "shop," but the majority of the faculty felt the four week add deadline made it difficult for them to begin their courses.

"There was too much flux in the early weeks," she said.

Overall, Harter said she thought the final decision was well-discussed and the best option for the largest majority.

Mangat, a Brown College senior, agreed, saying the deadlines were a great compromise, even if some students would have liked longer periods for both. Mangat said he found Harter to be very responsive and open to the concerns of students in his meetings with her.

Harter expressed similar sentiments of her own.

"[The SA leaders] were incredibly helpful," Harter said. "They were extremely articulate at our meetings and they did a really fine job of representing the student body.

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