Task force reviews how university uses campus during summer
USC is considering adding a third semester to its calendar, Provost Michael Amiridis said, a change that could have far-reaching impacts across nearly all the university's systems.
The possibility stems from a university review of how it makes use of its infrastructure during the summer, when many students scatter for home, internships and travel.
The process has brought in representatives of every college and vice president's office, which speaks to the complexity of implementing such a change, said Mary Anne Fitzpatrick, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
The review is in its early stages, Amiridis said. This summer, the Presidential Task Force on Summer School began gathering information from a number of departments — from facilities and housing to student affairs and admissions.
The task force will release a report on its findings in the first two weeks of September, Amiridis said.
The goal, said Fitzpatrick, the task force's chairwoman, is to "really integrate the summer into the fall and spring."
At present, Amiridis said, relatively few students take summer courses, especially in the Summer II term. About 9,500 students enroll each summer, according to Fitzpatrick.
It's a concern Amiridis said he's been thinking about even before he was made the provost in 2009. Now, USC is stepping back to consider how it spends its summers.
"Everything is on the table for thinking about how we serve students," Fitzpatrick said.
Still, Fitzpatrick said, it's unlikely such a semester will be added in the near term.
Advisers and students need consistency year to year when they plan their schedules, she said, so an overhaul of the calendar would be at least a few years out.
Instead, she said, it's more likely that USC will roll out a few pilot programs as early as summer 2014.
Those could include a 3.5-year nursing track, a summer language institute and "a lot of other science initiatives," Fitzpatrick said, and developing them could take time, too.
"(Designing) a course is easy," she said. "This is, 'How are we going to develop programs for students that they can depend on?'"
But as the university considers a third semester later on, it faces a number of challenges.
At present, Fitzpatrick said, University Housing only has about 900 beds available during the summer, and the months off give the facilities department time to repair and renovate buildings and systems across campus. They also open up not-for-credit opportunities like sports campus that use up space and rooms.
The change would have quite an impact, Fitzpatrick said, ranging from how USC awards scholarships to how it offers students services.
But if USC moves to a three-semester schedule, it could give students a leg up on getting internships, make pursuing a double major easier and improve USC's on-time graduation rate, Amiridis and Fitzpatrick said.
It would remove "bottleneck courses" that aren't offered very often and let students fit a few more classes into their year, Amiridis said.
Plus, USC President Harris Pastides said, it will give students move flexibility to pursue fall or spring internships or other opportunities without falling behind.
"I'm hoping that we will offer a much fuller array of required and elective courses over the summer," Pastides said. "We always offer courses over the summer, but not a full curriculum. By doing that, we'll be able to market the university as a place where you can do it on your own time."
That, he added, could help reduce how much debt students rack up and ultimately "makes business sense" for the university by making the most of an infrastructure that otherwise sits idle.
Just how it will do that isn't yet clear, but Amiridis said that in spite of the uncertainty, the impetus is still strong to update USC's summer offerings.
"The one thing I know for sure is that we need to utilize the summer better," Amiridis said.
Sports Editor Isabelle Khurshudyan contributed reporting.