Semesters vs. quarters/Email exchange between Kevin Baaske and Lili Tabrisi

Greetings,

I am a full professor of electrical engineering at CSULA and I think it is important that the faculty get actively involved in the decision making process related to transition from quarter to two semester system. I strongly oppose the transition idea and I have many reasons for my opposition.

1. It is wrong to make a major decision without involving the full time faculty in the voting process. The faculty vote should determine the outcome and not just the decision of the academic senate and/or the President.
2. The outcome has both short term and long term impacts (mostly negative) on enrollment, quality of education, outreach efforts, summer programs, follow up fall courses, summer internship programs, etc., and should be decided based on the fact findings, careful investigation and careful comparison of two systems.
3. It is absurd and nondemocratic to take way the voting right of the faculty in order to ensure the approval of the proposed transition plan and it is unfair to those who strongly believe in the currents system and find the “year round” quarter system as the most effective academic plan for CSULA’s commuter student body.
4. I believe eliminating “year round” operation and substituting by two semesters and “dead summer” (or self supported summer) has the most negative impact on our educational process, administrative process, and the retention of our students.
5. At CSULA, we don’t have too many self supported summer programs. Most summer programs are supplementary educational programs where faculty is not fully compensated. I am one example with two summer programs: internship (no compensation) and Professional Engineering review classes (minimum compensation). If I am not teaching my full load during summer, I do eliminate all my extra summer programs including internship and PE review classes (I can’t shift them) since I don’t have the option of choosing another quarter (semester) as my off quarter (semester).
6. Non Ph.D (no research) students don’t come to campus to participate in extra curricular activities during summer, unless if they have the options of taking classes.
7. Elimination of the full load summer is especially damaging to the status of our international (mostly graduate) students. Immigration used to be more lenient towards minimum load requirement for international students during summer, not anymore. Actually the immigration office (the office of homeland security) is imposing almost the same minimum course load requirement during summer as other quarters (or semesters). Research universities don’t have problem since they do offer many on-campus research opportunities to their international grad students during summer. Can anybody clarify what should we do with our international grad students during summer? Do we have enough research opportunities for non-citizen (no green card) students during summer if we don’t offer full load. I don’t know if you are aware of the fact that if there is no summer program, non-resident students must return to their home countries (travel expenses, wasting summer time), or they are given the chance only for ONE summer to stay (and do nothing) if the duration is not exceeding 10 weeks, but again what do they do, no courses to take, no off campus jobs (not allowed), it is the total waste of time and money and most of them can’t afford financially to “stay & do nothing”.
8. We do offer many “gate keeper” courses during summer, where the students come back in fall to take upper division courses and will be able to graduate on time. Actually during summer many of our gate keeper courses have full enrollment with many visiting students from CSUN, CSULB, etc.
9. Our administrative process (admission, transfer) and also outreach activities are mainly active during summer. We do have many open houses, student’ advisement, paper work process, etc happening during summer. Faculty has presence and maintains office hours during summer because summer is his/her regular teaching quarter. It is easy to find faculty and send students for advisement during summer (I do most of my advising during summer), without summer quarter I think no faculty is willing to be around just for advising students.
10. Many community college transfer students indicated that one reason they chose to come to CSULA was the four quarter option, where “they can finish on time and take classes all year-round” since most are working full time and part-time and can’t take full load in one quarter (or semester); eliminating summer forces students to take full load in two semesters where most working students can’t do that (also because of financial reasons)
11. Four quarter option (or at least year round trimester, or active not self supported 12-week summer semester) allows the department chair to evenly distribute courses and the teaching loads among faculty. Also, due to the frequency of the course offerings and the distribution over four quarters the prerequisite may be enforced more effectively. If students know that they have more chances to take classes in other quarters, they get discouraged from beating the system by taking overload, or taking courses without prerequisites, or taking courses that overlap.

I do have many more reasons to strongly oppose the idea of the transition. But again, my main concerns are:

• Such an important decision should be made or voted by faculty.
• In any situation, the year round status should be maintained, and summer should be kept as the regular and active (not self supported) quarter (or semester) where students and faculty have the options of studying and teaching regular courses, and at the same time be able to participate, coordinate, and supervise many educational programs. By taking away summer, many voluntary (not self supported or with minimum compensation) programs that are very beneficial to our students will be discontinued due to lack of faculty to supervise the programs, and we will end up with a “dead” campus with no activities during summer, which is absolute waste of resources and manpower.

Please let’s try to get actively involved before it is too late and before we regret our decisions few years from now and after we are forced to encounter many problems created as a result of the transition from “year round” four-quarter system to two-semester (self supported summer) system.

Best,

Hi Lili,

I am afraid you are operating under several misconceptions. Let me first clear these up.

No decision has been made as to whether or not we will return to semesters. No decision has been made as to whether or not there will be a vote of the entire faculty or just the Senate (as was done the last time we considered such a move). No decision on these things will be made until after: (A) information on the pros and cons of converting to semesters is made available to everyone; (B) each college has a town hall meeting to discuss the possibility of a change; and, (C) the senate has had at least two open meetings to discuss this. That is more consultative than the process the last time.

As to your arguments against semesters, let me respond to just a couple because while there may be cons to teaching on a semester system, both for the students and the faculty, there are also many benefits--after all, there are many more universities that use semesters than quarters.

Semesters are generally considered pedagogically superior because they permit more time on task. Many of the existing quarter campuses (and there numbers are declining) are elite institutions like UCLA and Northwestern. Few universities that enroll large numbers of historically underserved students are on the quarter system. Semesters would provide the opportunity for additional employment during summer sessions and/or intercessions--something that was promised when the faculty agreed to move from semesters to quarters in the late 60s. This will mean it will be somewhat easier to compete for faculty with our sister campuses who offer such additional employment to prospective faculty who cannot afford to buy homes in Southern California on their base salaries. Finally, in the CSU the campuses that have struggled the most with making FTES targets are mostly quarter-based campuses. It could be a coincidence, but it could be that it is easier for students to transfer from semester system community colleges to semester system four-year schools. Apparently students, local and international make sufficient progress at CSUN, CSUF, and CSULB because these campuses are bursting at the seems and we are not.

Bottom line, I am glad you are interested in the issue and that you have given thought to whether or not we should return to semesters. I hope that all of the faculty are as interested in sharing their views. And I hope that they will read the materials that are made available to them so that their arguments are informed by research rather than opinion. An open and productive conversation may result in a decision to return to semesters or it may result in a decision to stay on quarters. Only time will tell.

All the best, Kevin Baaske, Chair CSULA Academic Senate

Greetings,

Thanks for responding, however I do disagree with your arguments and want to challenge them for the last time (I don’t want to bore people with the email exchanges and I think I made my point, it is time for others to speak up)

Your statements are in “red”

“Semesters are generally considered pedagogically superior because they permit more time on task”

Why? Based on what statistical or scientific well research and well documented studies you make the claim? Are you telling us that if I teach a “circuit course” under semester system, students understand more? In semester system we combine two courses as one. At CSUN they teach equivalent to our EE204 AND EE 332 in 15-16 weeks, where we teach them as two separate courses over two quarters total of 20 weeks, so how students learn better. If we expand the course content of one course over 15 weeks, then we cover only 2/3 or even half of the materials that we cover over 2 quarters. I have many graduates from CSUN, CSULB, etc in my PE review classes (I can present proofs) most come to me afterward and claim that they have not seen at least 30% of my review materials and they took the course before (under semester). I do my own research (talking to many faculty and students at different campuses) before I make the claim.

“Many of the existing quarter campuses (and there numbers are declining) are elite institutions like UCLA and Northwestern.”

I didn’t understand your point here, I absolutely don’t see any correlation between “elite” status of the university and quarter system. Are you telling us that only “elite” universities can afford quarter system and since we are not under elite category we should convert to semester??

Actually, I can argue the reverse that just because we are not “elite” university; we should stick to quarter system, because students at “elite” universities are not normally “working class” students with time and financial constraints. In quarter systems, we allow students to distribute the course load over 4 quarters and be able to work part time so they can afford to come to school and finish their degrees in a timely manner.

Also, exactly because we are not “elite” and don’t have strong financial back ups, can’t afford to take the risk of the transition and disturb the current “stable” situation.

“Few universities that enroll large numbers of historically underserved students are on the quarter system”

Again, what is the correlation between “large numbers of historically underserved students” and the quarter system? Can you give me just one example that transition from quarter system to two semester system increased the number of “underrepresented students?” This is not a grant proposal for NSF or other government agencies that we use the politically correct jargons such as “underserved or underrepresented students” to validate our ideas and fulfill the “the broader impacts” requirement of the proposal, this is more important than just trying to use fancy, and no base general jargons without well documented back ups or proofs.

“Semesters would provide the opportunity for additional employment during summer sessions and/or intercessions--something that was promised when the faculty agreed to move from semesters to quarters in the late 60s. This will mean it will be somewhat easier to compete for faculty with our sister campuses who offer such additional employment to prospective faculty who cannot afford to buy homes in Southern California on their base salaries.”

I am more confused, now? Can you elaborate on that? Please forgive my lack of sophistication, my arguments were simple straightforward and based on current, and past experiences. I used simple and obvious examples to prove my points. I don’t want to bore people, but I can give many more examples that two-semester idea is killing many summer opportunities for our commuter students and faculty (I used my case as an example, I hope other faculty speak up too!), but how this is related to recruiting faculty or competing to recruit more faculty…etc? In all of our past recruitment cases in EE , quarter vs semester was never an issue, and we never had a case that a person come back to us and say if you convert then I can afford to buy a house!

Are you indicating that we are financially better off if we convert to semester, how? Again, are you telling us the transition to semester is increasing the buying power of the faculty, and in the midst of all financial problems and high expenses, we will be much better off if we switch to semester? If somebody can prove that by hard core evidences, then I am all for it!!

I am sorry, but I thought there were very strong and well articulated evidences available that enforced our administration to propose the change.

“Finally, in the CSU the campuses that have struggled the most with making FTES targets are mostly quarter-based campuses. It could be a coincidence, but it could be that it is easier for students to transfer from semester system community colleges to semester system four-year schools.”

Here again, you are using the argument that has no validity since Cal Poly Pomona, UCLA, UCI, etc, have no problem handling transfer students. Different committees, meetings, and past efforts (by late Mr. George Buchman) have established a very well documented transfer procedure. Please do not blame our transfer student problems on quarter system. Please try to look into the misconduct and the incompetent operations of few administrative entities in charge of our transfer students. As a matter of fact, if we invest the time and the money, that we are wasting on transition plan, on correcting some of our administrative operations, we are much better off. I strongly believe that, the transition will intensifies our bureaucratic paper work since our staff, students, and faculty are even more confused under the new system

“Apparently students, local and international make sufficient progress at CSUN, CSUF, and CSULB because these campuses are bursting at the seems and we are not.”

Actually you made a good point I am copying your statement here: “Apparently students, local and international make sufficient progress at” CSULA, what is the need for the change??

Also, the “bursting” factor and the lack of students should not be blamed on quarter system (Pomona is under quarter systems and Pomona’s campus is bursting), it should be blamed on our bureaucratic & very delayed transfer procedure, and it should be also blamed on the lack of efficient, ongoing, and well planned outreach efforts. We will not see any enrollment change after the transition. As a mater of fact we do loose the students who chose CSLA because of the quarter system.

At this point, I think we should be more articulate in our arguments than just using general terms. Again, this issue is much more important than making decisions only based on general statements, and politically correct jargons. I can also give you example of many CSUN and CSULB students coming during summer and trying to take some of our EE courses under Open University (since there is nothing offered at their universities). Also, I have heard from many faculty at CSUN, that there is strong sentiment that their system should be converted to trimester, making summer as regular semester with regular course offerings (not too happy about wasting their resources due to lack of activities during summer).

I am sorry to bore people with my long email, but so far I have not seen or heard even one convincing argument or well proven evidence to support the transition.

I strongly believe that the full time faculty (ONLY) must make the final decision, and regardless of the final outcome, we must keep a very active “REGULAR” (NOT self supported) summer session.

I encourage all my colleagues to speak up, and to get actively involved before it is too late.

Thanks