Last week, the faculty put to a vote the potential choices for the re-appropriation of scheduling for the upcoming academic year. The re-appropriation process is underway to meet the requirements that Wittenberg must follow to remain on a four credit hour per class system as mandated by the Ohio Department of Higher Education. The issue arose because Wittenberg does not meet the required amount of time spent in the classroom mandated for a four credit class.
Faculty members had two options. The first was to revise next year’s academic calendar (which would entail adding three more days of class at the beginning of the semester) and add an additional 30 minutes to the final examination time periods for Tuesday and Thursday class. The second was to revise the scheduling system for all weekday classes. An online poll was available to all faculty, and they had from Friday, Feb. 5 to Thursday, Feb. 11 to vote.
In an email to the faculty on Friday, Feb. 12, chair of the Faculty Executive Board Peter Hanson announced that 91 percent of participants voted on the latter; starting with the fall of 2016 semester, all classes will have an additional five minutes tacked on to the end of them.
As previously reported by the Torch, Wittenberg has not been meeting the requirements of this four credit hour system since 2010. With the addition of these five minutes on these courses, Wittenberg will now hit the 12.5 hours of class time per one credit hour requirement mandated by the Ohio Department of Higher Education.
