Students at St. Lawrence University have seen an increase in the classes offered on Fridays this semester. While previous semesters have seen a vast majority of STEM classes offered on the last workday of the week, the university has made a conscious shift to spread out courses in other departments across the entire week. Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs Karl Schonberg noted that this increase in distribution occurred, “because spreading out the times at which courses are offered across the weekly calendar means that a smaller proportion of our classes will be offered at the busiest times of the week.”
During registration, students must line up a preferred schedule with backup options in the event that they do not get their top choices. However, recently students have run into and voiced concerns about the inability to select the grouping of classes that they want because of a frontloading of Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday classes. This administration has been working to minimize this, increasing availability of Wednesday/Friday and Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes.
Though many students prefer to avoid Friday classes in hopes to escape campus to Whiteface for the day or for other assorted reasons, Schonberg believes that pivoting to a more even distribution will “reduce…bottlenecks [in registration and] increase the total number of courses that students can choose from as they make up their schedules, giving students more options and making it easier to get the classes they want.”
There have also been grumblings amongst students about a recent increase in night classes, and complaints that these time slots make it harder for students to learn. According to Associate Dean for Academic Advising Programs Elun Gabriel, the university has “not made any changes to the evening class time slots.” Gabriel continued to note that availability of night classes can actually benefit those students who may tend to stay up late and sleep in in the morning: “those who do [hold night classes] generally do so because it works well with their circadian rhythms. For example, students who have trouble getting up in the morning and making it to morning classes can find it beneficial.”
Lauren Gulbicki ‘22 also weighed in on night classes. Gulbicki, who is taking Population Approaches to Mental Health with Professor Moralez, cited that by taking this nighttime class she’s with those who are most passionate about the subject matter. Gulbicki notes that while it is sometimes challenging to get herself out of the house in the evening, that taking this class has actually put her at an advantage: “[Nighttime classes] give me opportunities to pursue other things during the daytime, like my internship with the Canton/Potsdam Hospital.
As for the increase in Friday classes, Gabriel concurred with Schonberg, citing that, “starting with Spring 2022, the Academic Planning Committee put in place a scheduling initiative to ensure that we are spreading courses more efficiently across the week with a goal of increasing the number of choices for students [by spreading courses across time periods/days].” Gabriel cannot confirm a significant numerical increase in Friday classes as “it would be a manual process to gather that data at St. Lawrence,” however he stands by the fact that this initiative has “reduceed…student conflicts between classes they really want or need.”