Provost Marty Krauss has approved the recommended changes to the course times proposed by the Block Scheduling Committee. She announced via e-mail that the new time slot schedule will take effect for fall 2011.

“One major change that I accept is that all courses will begin on the hour or the half hour,” the her e-mail said, a change many faculty members and the provost herself has considered reasonable for some time.

Krauss wrote that the changes would accomplish her goals “to maximize the use of our classrooms, to provide more flexibility in the scheduling of courses and to conform to current faculty interests in the scheduling of courses.”

The main difference in meeting times involves two-day per week afternoon classes taking place on Thursday rather than Friday.

Krauss acknowledged that faculty had many “differences of opinion” on how to change the schedule, but decided to go for a middle approach, changing some two-day classes without making the entire transition to Monday, Wednesday, Friday/Tuesday, Thursday classes, as is common at most other universities.

Another reason for moderation cited was that the university undertook other difficult decisions facing budget concerns and so the provost found these changes the best to accomplish the university’s academic goals.