The University of Idaho Faculty Senate approved changes Tuesday to the academic calendar that will result in the 2019 to 2020 and 2026 to 2027 school years being a week longer.
Dwaine Hubbard, senior associate registrar at UI, told senators at the meeting three or four years ago a change was made to the academic calendar that unintentionally included an extra week between fall 2019 and spring 2020 as well as fall 2026 and spring 2027.
This will result in finals taking place a week later during those years and professors being required to submit final grades a week after that at the end of the school year, he said, which would mean another week of work for UI faculty and potentially having to finalize grades on Christmas Eve.
Sen. Chantal Vella voiced concerns about adding an extra week of work to the end of the school year and asked if there were other options.
Linda Campos, the UI controller, responded that adding the extra week at the end of the year is necessary to avoid throwing off the established payment system.
Campos said if the change was not made, personnel in the payroll office would need to be retrained and it would not be an effective way to handle payment.
Barbara Kirchmeier, a senate member, voiced concerns about students returning home for the holidays a week later in the year, saying weather could be worse and could make roads dangerous for students.
Hubbard said this was taken into consideration when this policy was created. He said this policy was still the best option because alternatives caused UI’s commencement week to overlap with Washington State University’s commencement week.
Another issue on the table at Tuesday’s meeting was the rise in numbers of non-tenure track faculty at the university that has been observed in recent years.
Dan Eveleth, a member of the Faculty Affairs Council, told the Senate about a task force created last year. The task force was created to investigate problems resulting from this growth in non-tenure track faculty members, now being called “term faculty members.”
Eveleth said the task force’s goal is to uncover the issues and come up with suggestions for policy changes to present to the Faculty Affairs Council.
The task force has not yet suggested any solutions, but Eveleth said he wanted to inform the Senate about the existence of this group and about potential changes that could be voted on by the Senate in the future.
Aaron Johnson, Faculty Senate chair, addressed student concerns about timely grade reporting. He told senators the Teaching and Advising Committee has been looking into this issue and collecting data from students and professors about the problem of grades being returned in an untimely fashion.
Gavin Green can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @gavingreenphoto