The faculty unanimously approved the 2011-12 academic year calendar at yesterday's faculty meeting, prompting one professor to request that the administration report on the status of the proposed calendar changes that took center stage last spring.
Possible calendar alternatives put forth last year included extending the first semester's duration from 12 to 13 weeks, eliminating Fall Break and classes during midterm week, extending Thanksgiving and winter breaks and having fall term examinations before winter break.
Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel, who chairs the Committee on the Course of Study that led the review of the current calendar, emphasized that there had been a stark lack of agreement regarding the issue of calendar revision.
"What became very clear to us is that there is no consensus on the part of faculty and no consensus on the part of students that there is an alternate calendar that is preferable to the calendar we have now," she said. "And in the absence of such a consensus, it seemed to us that the only sensible thing to do for the moment is to table the subject, and undoubtedly we will come back to it."
Malkiel listed the many methods through which the Committee has approached the issue, such as the formation of the Committee itself, surveys conducted by the USG and administration seeking the input of faculty, undergraduates and graduate students, and informal discussion at a faculty meeting last March.
But with conflicting input from all sides, Malkiel said, moving forward surely would have met with failure. Nevertheless, she said she recognizes the importance of the issue, especially since Princeton will be the only Ivy League school to hold fall exams after winter break after Harvard changes its policy in fall 2009.
Even on this issue, there was no consensus among students. "If the undergrads clearly favored exams before Christmas, we might have had a somewhat different conversation," Malkiel said.
The approved calendar includes no major changes to this year's model. "This is a very straightforward calendar," Polly Griffin, the University registrar, said.
At the meeting, the faculty also approved the addition of a number of graduate school courses to the curriculum.
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