For the 2018-2019 school year, the University is making significant changes to its academic calendar with the introduction of 15 week semesters and a winter intersession.   

Vice Provost for Academic Affairs John Fischer presented the new calendar during Faculty Senate’s regular meeting on Tuesday.

“Bowling Green is one of the last institutions in the state of Ohio to begin the transition to a 15 week semester in the fall and the spring,” Fischer said. This includes The University of Toledo, which will adopt a 15 week semester this fall.

“(University students) immediately go to the opportunities that they see this is going to provide for them,” Fischer said. “They talk about things like the ability to work for four or five weeks in between fall and spring…or the chance to participate in study abroad.”

On the whole, Fischer said, students see more opportunities than issues with the new calendar.

However, faculty and administrators will have to work through many complications with the new calendar between now and its implementation.

One of these complications is financial aid funding for students.

“In federal financial aid law, the word ‘term’ means something, so we will continue as an institution to have three terms,” Fischer said. “The three terms will be fall, spring and summer.”

Therefore, spring term will have two sessions – winter and spring.

When drafting potential revised calendars, Fischer prioritized a few criteria, including a total of 14 weeks and a final exam week, building time for a three week winter session, avoid weekend finals, all current holidays would continue to exists, keep winter sessions from beginning until after Jan. 1 and avoid winter commencement from occurring on Christmas weekend.

“We’ll do a draft that is seven years of a calendar, because seven year cycles tend to catch all the issues with the calendar, and it’ll be approximately two weeks,” Fischer said during an interview last year.

These calendar drafts extend all the way to 2070, Fischer said Tuesday.

Under the new calendar, fall break will seize to exist and spring break will move two weeks later in March – but still landing between the eighth and ninth week of classes.

“We have always exceeded the state requirements for the number of contact hours and the academic weeks of an academic semester,” Fischer said.

According to the requirements found on Ohio.gov’s Department of Higher Education page, “One semester credit hour will be awarded for a minimum of 750 minutes of formalized instruction.”

Students at the University currently engage in 2,370 minutes of teacher face time during a three-credit class.

The new 15 week calendar meets state requirements, but teacher-student face time will decrease to the state minimum of 750 minutes per credit hour, or 2250 minutes for the common three credit course – including an extended 150 minute final exam period instead of the current 120 minute period.

“Finals week will matter,” Fischer said. “Even more than it matters now, and it matters a lot now.”

Fisher has been actively working on the new calendar since this past fall, looking primarily toward Miami University’s calendar for inspiration.

Specific opportunities to be offered under the winter session have yet to be determined, but will focus on experiential learning and keeping students on-track for graduation.

Fischer and his counterparts have a goal of including an experiential learning component in every program offered, and the three-week winter session would help create a time for these components.

Course offerings are likely to include courses that students often struggle with or retake and online courses that can fit into a three-week time frame.

The University of Rhode Island also has a winter session and offers about 20 courses and experiential learning opportunities. Fischer would be happy with a similar offering in January 2019, he said in November.  

“The institutions who have J-terms (winter sessions) right now are talking about how it provides opportunities for students to catch-up if they struggled with something…and it actually improves the number of students moving on their way to graduation,” Fischer said in November.

Students who do not enroll in any winter session offerings would have an extended winter break of about six weeks.