Senate Executive Committee chairwoman Martha Nell Smith.
Many students at this university are used to it: Sitting on the couch alone at the end of a long winter break after friends all have gone back to their respective colleges, arriving home for spring break after many peers have already come and gone and completing final exams when other schools have been done for weeks.
A proposal brought to the University Senate earlier this month sought to change that, suggesting administrators consider shifting the academic calendar forward one week to better align this university’s winter and spring breaks with those of peer institutions. But for the foreseeable future, the university’s calendar will remain relatively the same, after officials rejected the proposal at a Senate Executive Committee meeting Friday. The schedule is a responsibility covered by state higher education officials, senators said, and could not be altered by the university.
Eleven of the university system’s 12 institutions share a common calendar, a system-wide policy designed to support “inter-institutional registration and students’ ability to participate in special programming,” Mike Lurie, a USM spokesman, wrote in an email. USM leaders developed the scheduling cohesion to help the state take advantage of “economies of scale,” with a number of campuses operating under one state system, he added.
“The establishment of a common academic calendar was conceived to help maximize that advantage,” Lurie wrote.
None of this, however, explains why the academic calendar is unusually timed in the first place — with a lengthy winter break and a spring break that don’t line up with other institutions’ breaks. Lurie noted several academic considerations as reasons for the discrepancy: The ability to offer a full winter term with about 2,250 minutes per three-credit course, per a state regulation, and the ability to offer athletes winter courses to lighten their loads during playing seasons.
Michael Waldmann, a freshman enrolled in letters and sciences, initially proposed the calendar shift out of “personal interest,” he said.
“It’s just kind of unfortunate that the times that I’m home don’t match up with my friends from other colleges,” he said.
Classes at this university began Aug. 29 in 2012, and next year they won’t begin until after Labor Day, on Sept. 3. Meanwhile, final exams this semester will not wrap up until May 17, and they will last until May 21 in the 2014 spring semester, according to the provost’s official calendar — comparable with USM institutions such as Towson University but weeks after institutions such as the University of North Carolina and Penn State let out.
Some students said the university’s breaks pose problems.
“For winter break, it’s way too long, and people just get bored and you run out of things to do,” said Abigail Smolar, a sophomore hearing and speech sciences major.
This semester’s spring break also fell the week before Passover and Easter, which Smolar and other students said was an issue for those celebrating the religious holidays.
“For me, being Jewish, it was annoying that spring break was right before Passover when so many people observe Passover, when literally just moving it off one week would have been 100 percent great,” Smolar said.
The 2014 spring break will not align with Passover or Easter, either.
Though they could not impose change, a number of senators on the executive committee said they would like to see changes to the academic calendar.
While the 2013 fall semester will begin the day after Labor Day, the university’s recent practice of starting class just before the holiday was disruptive to classes, said Chris Davis, faculty senator.
“It’s very disruptive. I don’t think anything substantive occurs academically [before Labor Day],” he said at Friday’s executive committee meeting.
Senate Chairwoman Martha Nell Smith suggested cutting the university’s 15-week semester to 14 weeks to better fit with other universities. A 14-week semester, she said, could solve issues with Labor Day disruptions.
Some students, though, said they are pleased with the university’s academic calendar because it allows them to take credits over winter break.
The winter term allowed freshman Sarah Kwon to take a music history class and gave her time to adjust to the campus, as she did not attend the university in the fall.
“My motive wasn’t necessarily just to squeeze the class in,” Kwon said. “Because I was new this spring semester, I thought it would be a class to help me get introduced to the University of Maryland and how the classes would work.”
