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Alcorn State University Academic Affairs Propose Changes in General Education Course Scheduling 

On Wednesday, March 28, 2007, Dr. Napoleon Moses, Vice President for Academic Affairs sent a letter to undergraduate students that reads:  

“The Office of Academic Affairs is working with academic departments to improve the availability of our general education courses to all students by removing the potential for scheduling conflicts between them. These courses are offered to freshmen and sophomores as part of their first two years of undergraduate study.  While not all change is necessarily good; change that is purpose-driven often is—particularly if the change offers better service to our students. We believe that this change will do just that. 

What we are planning to do is straight forward. For example, College Algebra may be offered during the first two class periods on selected mornings, while English Composition could be available during early afternoon sessions.  Evening sessions of these courses would also be available for students with day-time jobs off-campus or similar scheduling concerns.  Similar course scheduling is envisioned for other general education courses as well.  We are far from working out all of the details and we may not get things perfect at first.  But, it is a start -- and we will fix any problems that students encounter immediately. 

Department Chairpersons and deans will also add additional course sections during these set-aside times when courses become filled, rather than placing students in a classroom that is already filled to capacity.  We are also auditing each classroom and laboratory to make certain that we have the correct amount of student desks in place before courses begin.  

Removing course scheduling conflicts will also help reduce most students’ total cost of completing their undergraduate degree.  Currently, too many of our students, especially freshmen and sophomores, enroll in fewer courses than they should as full-time students. When our students cannot resolve course scheduling conflicts during registration, they often enroll in only about 12-14 semester hours to meet the requirement for full-time status needed by them to access optimum financial aid.  However, this low number of total semester hours each term has a cumulative affect and can easily add an extra year or more to their time in college before graduation. 

We know that it is human nature to automatically resist change of any sort.  But when the purpose of the change is to improve access to courses and to ensure that class sizes are more evenly distributed, one can take comfort in knowing that our students will benefit from these new ways of doing things at the University. 

With Alcorn State University’s total cost of annual full-time enrollment approaching $14,000 for out-of-state students ($9,000 for in-state),  we are counting on everyone to help provide institutional leadership (students, faculty, and administration) to make the course scheduling changes that, if not done, will continue to influence whether many of our students can afford to persist at the University and graduate.  Moreover, failure to do something now means more and more of our students may have to pay back un-needed school loans and be un-necessarily delayed in starting their careers. 

To those students who took time on yesterday to make their concerns known through demonstrations and attending meetings, your engagement is appreciated, for these issues may only indirectly affect you because the anticipated changes should most impact course availability for our Fall 2007 entering freshmen. We encourage you to continue to express your interest in academic issues and activities at Alcorn.  

Each student’s participation on yesterday helped demonstrate that the University values and celebrates dissent among all members of the Institution’s community.  This respect for a diversity of opinions is the hallmark of a great university and must be cherished and protected always.  We expect each of you to remain engaged in the affairs of the University and in the great issues of the day.  I look forward to seeing and hearing from you later today at our 12:30 p.m. listening session in the Campus Union Ballroom.”