Change negotiates building uses, student preferences
8 a.m. classes are gone — but only just.
Most days next fall, the earliest classes will start at 8:30 a.m., but for Monday/Wednesday sections, they’ll begin at 8:05 in the morning.
And those 8:05 a.m. sections are here to stay, according to Helen Doerpinghaus, vice provost and dean of undergraduate studies.
The new schedule has been in the works for the last few years, Doerpinghaus said, and it balances a handful of competing concerns.
Chief among them: As USC’s campus marches across Assembly Street with the new Darla Moore School of Business building and plans for an expanded Greek Village and privately built residence hall, it’s become difficult to traverse campus between classes in time. That’s led some classes to start late, Doerpinghaus said.
Class lengths will stay the same next semester, but they’ll be separated by longer gaps — 20 minutes in the fall versus 15 minutes currently — to allow more travel time.
And as the student body has grown, USC’s developed a need for more class sections, since they’ve been filling quickly.
“The issue has been around for a long time,” she said.
But the change also adjusts, if slightly, to issues with the 8 a.m. time slots.
Faculty are more willing to teach early in the morning if they have time to take their children to school, Doerpinghaus said, and students aren’t usually keen on early sections. Instead, they’re more willing to take classes later in the afternoon.
USC doesn’t collect attendance figures by time slot, Doerpinghaus said, but filling earlier sections has been a struggle.
They’re often among the last sections to be filled come registration time, and former Faculty Senate Chair Patrick Nolan said last year that 8 a.m. classes were “very underpopulated and underused” as Faculty Senate first voted to change the schedule.
Still, Doerpinghaus said USC can’t do away with morning classes entirely.
“Professors prefer to teach late morning and early afternoon on Tuesday and Thursday. Those are our prime spots, and everybody can’t teach then,” Doerpinghaus said. “You can’t operate a university like that.”
Instead, USC will have to keep less desirable times open, so facilities don’t sit idle and the university stays competitive with other schools — both online programs and physical campuses.
“We can’t afford to have buildings stand empty. We can’t afford to build buildings that we don’t use,” she said. “We have to use what we have.”