College condenses exam week schedule

This fall, students find themselves in the midst of a compressed final exam period. This semester’s scheduled exams run from Dec. 8 to Dec. 12, and students will have Monday through Saturday to complete self-scheduled tests. In previous years, finals period has stretched across nine days, including a reading day, compared to this year’s six days.

“Faculty Council began discussing [changes to exam week] last fall,” said Professor of Psychology and then member of the council Barbara Hofer. The Council presented the change to the faculty in February and it was approved unanimously.

“I think many felt it was an overdue change,” added Hofer.

According to Provost and Executive Vice President Alison Byerly, finances were not a driving reason for the change.

“This was a faculty, not an administrative, decision,” she said.

Rather, the primary reason was a new requirement for faculty to submit semester grades by the end of December instead of after winter break. The shortened exam period will allow faculty more time to finish grading and students more time for break.

According to Hofer, “[The faculty] have very little time between semesters and must also do all their grading in that period, and in many cases, while preparing to teach during Winter Term. Shortening the exam period gives faculty and staff much-needed additional time and the potential for at least a few days off.”

Having grades ready before Winter Term is important, especially for those students facing academic suspension.

“In the past, we often had students return for Winter Term only to find out that they were in academic suspension, and had to turn around and go home,” said Dean of Students Gus Jordan. “The new schedule decreases the risk of this unfortunate situation.”

According to Byerly, “The new grade deadline also facilitates timely processing of transcripts for students applying to graduate school.”

Student preference for earlier exams played a part in the decision to condense the schedule. Byerly noted that students often prefer to leave earlier and “would try to negotiate alternate exam times, creating a lot of work for commons deans and putting faculty in a difficult position when students approached them directly.”

For William Martin ’11, the change makes little difference, but he did agree that the longer exam period was problematic.

“I think it’s fine for me because I’m a science major,” he said. “I mostly have in-class exams, and they’re done in two days. If some teachers scheduled exams at the beginning and some scheduled them towards the end, then you basically have an entire week of nothing.”

Other students, like Emily Rosenkrantz ’11.5, welcomed the extra time between exams.

“I loved to have the time between exams to relax and actually enjoy exam week,” said Rosenkrantz. “I had the chance to really focus on the four exams and have enough time to enjoy my last couple weeks on campus. I loved exam week. Sleeping, relaxing, regenerating … it’s really valuable time I’m not going to be getting.”

As a theatre major taking four theatre courses, Rosenkrantz felt that the shortened schedule will put undue stress on students with finals in the performance arts.

“There are some things about art exams that have not been factored into this short exam period,” she explained. All of the theatre classes end with a performance. As a director, I have actors that need to rehearse all week. With the shortened exam period, there is a good chance that one of them will have exams during the three hours of our performance.”

Galen Anderson ’11.5 was also concerned about the stress a condensed schedule could put on students.

“I think that it’s not fair to students,” she said. “While professors have a couple of classes, students have four that they have to balance. Instead of getting a few days to study, we have to cram everything into one short period.”

Faculty and administration recognize the negative effects that a condensed exam period may have on students’ workloads. However, they also believe that these consequences are self-correcting.

Hofer’s concerns about stress “are that this may be difficult in this transitional year but will get easier over time as we get used to the new schedule and both faculty and students [adjust] to it.”

According to Byerly, the condensed exam week will naturally encourage professors to adjust the distribution of assigned work throughout the semester.

“Because the shortened exam schedule is paralleled by a shortened period for faculty to complete their grading, we believe that many faculty will assign less end-of-semester work,” she said. “The new due date for grades will encourage faculty to assign only the amount of work they can grade by the earlier deadline.”