No changes will be made to the academic calendar

After two years of debate, the University has decided to leave the academic calendar alone.

The Committee on the Course of Study had considered revising the academic calendar, by lengthening each semester by a week and altering break times to allow for a week's vacation during Thanksgiving.

But neither students nor faculty could come to an agreement on how to change the calendar. The revision process, history professor and committee member Hendrik Hartog said, has ground to a halt — any plans to change it are "dead in the water."

It wasn't for a lack of effort. In order to determine student and faculty preferences, the University "surveyed undergraduates, graduate students and faculty members ... the USG surveyed students to get their views on specific alternative calendars; we held discussions with department chairs and with the faculty," Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel said in an email.

From faculty discussions, "it was clear that [the] faculty did not favor any of the proposals," Chiara Nappi, a committee member and physics professor, said.

Along with the student government elections last year, the USG held a referendum on student preferences on four proposed calendars. The results of this vote, as well as a separate survey of students conducted by Malkiel's office, have not been made public.

Malkiel said she and the committee looked for common ground in choosing a calendar. "If there had been a clear path available to us that would command the support of the faculty, I can assure you that we would have pursued that path. But there wasn't."

But the effort was not for nothing, Malkiel said. "We learned a lot, and when we next come back to the calendar question ... our discussions will be informed by that learning."

The impetus to change the academic calendar came from some faculty members who were dissatisfied with the current calendar. They felt that 12 weeks of instruction were insufficient, and that there were too many breaks in the fall semester.

To address these concerns, the committee proposed Calendars B and C, which would have eliminated Fall Break, cancelled classes during midterm week and lengthened instruction time from 12 weeks to 13 weeks. Calendar C would also have put final exams for the fall semester before winter break. Both proposals were rejected by the faculty.

Calendars D and E, proposed in March 2007, would have also lengthened instruction time to 13 weeks in addition to shortening reading periods to three days and Intersession to five days from eight days. Calendar D would have shortened winter break; Calendar E would have eliminated Fall Break.

Harvard had been considering calendar reform since at least 2003, with a series of committees and calls for action from the Harvard undergraduate student government. In June, then-interim president Derek Bok announced a revised academic calendar across the whole university, effective from the 2009-10 academic year. The calendar there pushes the start of classes at Harvard to just after Labor Day, moves final exams to December and ends the academic year in May.