Choosing classes should be an easy process — mix interests with requirements, prerequisites and professors. The only problem: scheduling.
"I wanted to take ORF 418 [Optimal Learning]," Mykel Kulkarni '09 said, "but that conflicted with ECO 363 [Corporate Finance and Financial Institutions] since both classes are on Tuesday from 10 to 11. A lot of ORFE majors had interest in it but weren't able to take both because of course scheduling issues."
Kulkarni is not alone.
Next semester, 113 classes begin at 11 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Other popular time slots are almost as crowded. Many students discover that two or more courses they are interested in are scheduled for the same time.
Deputy Registrar Robert Bromfield said it is left "to the departments to schedule courses within approved University time periods." The Faculty Committee on Classrooms and Schedule, he added, "oversees how courses are scheduled and approves the University time schedule."
Computer science chair Larry Peterson said courses in his department are scheduled based on "faculty input" and that certain classes, mainly introductory courses, are "locked into place as to not conflict with other courses," specifically other introductory courses in mathematics and the sciences.
In the politics department, four spring seminars are slated for Wednesday afternoons. Two of the classes, POL 423: Seminar in American Politics: Foundational Ideas in American Politics and POL 440: Seminar in International Relations: National Security and the Liberal Republic, are to be taught by visiting professors who will only be at the University for one semester.
Christopher Achen, associate chair of the politics department, said "we always carefully schedule our own faculty so that their courses minimize conflicts. But sometimes certain conflicts are unavoidable, especially with cross-listed courses and with visitors."
Veronica Demtchouk '10 started a petition to change the time of CHM 304: Organic Chemistry II: Biological Emphasis, which is scheduled on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 12:20 p.m.
"There are 73 scheduled classes all for Monday and Wednesday from 11 to 11:50 and many of those classes ... were very popular among the orgo kids," she said, listing MOL 328: U.S. Medical Research and Researchers: Preeminence, Problems, Policies; HIS 394: The Rise of Modern Biomedicine: Global Trends in Health and Healing, 1500-2000; and ECO 202: Statistics and Data Analysis for Economics as three classes that she thought many students who need to organic chemistry next term would also like to take.
But other premed courses conflicted with the times Demtchouk suggested. When the course instructor brought the idea of changing the time of the course to the Registrar's office, the proposal was rejected.
Bromfield said that students torn between multiple classes at the same time should "sit in on a course for a couple weeks or get hold of the syllabus for the course."
He advised against taking two classes for too long, saying that "over the life of the semester, you are robbing yourself of the benefits of the course and this can lead to not performing well."
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