Two years after its initiation, Fruesday isn't too popular. University Senate is considering how a second day for Fall Break might replace Fruesday, and just how soon new legislation can be passed.
At its meeting Monday morning, the University Senate Agenda Committee discussed the waning effectiveness of Fruesday classes and congratulated students and faculty for their response to the state budget cuts for higher education.
Chairperson of University Council Laura Helms presented provisions to the academic calendar suggested by the University Education Committee. She said the committee would like to see Fruesday eliminated in favor of a second day for Fall Break. In this scenario, Fall Break would begin two days before Thanksgiving Break traditionally would. This would push back Fall Break and give students a week off school.
"There are three reasons we'd like to change it," Helm said. "Fruesday isn't working well — pedagogically it doesn't work. Professors cancel classes, or cancel them under the guise of an electronic assignment. And Fall Semester is currently a day longer than Spring Semester, but moving final exam week to four days won't work."
Helms said there is no standard in higher education mandating the number of days students must be in class.
The first Fruesday at Ball State University was Nov. 20, 2007. The University Calendar explains, "To accommodate the elimination of Saturday finals, on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break, students and faculty will attend Friday classes. This will ensure that there will be an equal number of classes for each day of the week."
University Senate Parliamentarian David Pearson said science departments supported Fruesday classes, so the lab classes that normally meet Fridays would not be behind schedule.
"Historically, this was the first option on the plate when we began to pursue it, and students were overwhelmingly supportive of it," he said.
Chairwoman of the Chemistry Department Patricia Lang said Fruesday is actually a nuisance for science departments, creating havoc for instructors.
"Lab times are coordinated with classroom material, and having labs two days in a row throws things off," she said. "About 600 people are in freshmen labs and about 200 were out of sync [because of Fruesday]."
Provost Terry King said he was leery of the board's proposal to drop another day from the fall semester schedule.
"The key concern is dropping a day from the calendar," he said. "How you structure it isn't as important as losing a day."
Faculty Council Representative Dan Waechter said he hopes the committee will consider King's concern when writing the proposal.
Helms said the University Education Committee's proposed calendar provision could possibly be adopted in the 2011-2012 academic calendar. She said it could not be applied to the 2010-2011 school year because University Education Committee has already approved the calendar for next year.
As another topic of discussion, Chairman of University Senate Brien Smith said he feels the University Senate should take an active role in offering input to the administration regarding solutions to the funding loss for higher education.
King said half of the university's operating budget comes from state appropriations and half comes from tuition. Ball State's loss of $7.5 million comprises five percent of the state appropriations portion of the operating budget.
He said the largest cost at the departmental level is the use of telephones. Turning off some office phones wouldn't be very helpful because the university pays one lump amount for telephone use across campus. He also said long distance service could be accomplished through the Internet.
Pearson suggested taking an aggressive stance toward going paperless. He said the School of Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Science has turned all paper documents into PDFs, saving the department thousands of dollars each month.
"Some students go and print the assignments, but not all of them," he said. "It gives students a reason to bring laptops to class."
King said he's very pleased with the response from faculty and students in working together to find solutions to the loss of state funding. As a cost-saving effort, he suggested reducing the number of credits needed to obtain a bachelor's degree from 126 hours to 120. He said 120 is a typical minimum requirement. A few committee members said they would like to see how this might fit in with the new core curriculum. The recommendation was forwarded to University Education Committee.
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