University Times

Peter E. Siska's teaching load will be lighter this semester, and he's not happy about it.

The chemistry professor isn't teaching fewer courses. But because Pitt's spring term started later than usual this year (Jan. 7), Siska's courses — and those of most other teaching faculty here — will meet less frequently.

During the term, Siska figures, he will lose two 50-minute periods from the class he teaches on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and one 75-minute period from his Tuesday-Thursday class.

Losing those hours "forces all of us to revamp and further squeeze our course syllabi," Siska complained in a Jan. 3 e-mail to Vice Provost Elizabeth U. Baranger.

"Our awarding three credits for a 14 1/2-week course is already a travesty, but this makes it worse," he wrote.

Baranger, who chairs the committee of faculty, staff and administrators that advises Pitt's senior administration on the academic calendar, sympathizes with Siska. "I have always been a strong advocate for having more days in the term," she told the University Times.

And Baranger acknowledged that, even in years when Pitt's spring term begins closer to Jan. 1, academic terms here typically are shorter than those at many peer universities.

During 1999-2000 (the most recent academic year for which statistics were available), Pitt provided 71 days of instruction in the fall and 72 days in the spring, she said.

Among the 23 other public institutions that belong to the Association of American Universities (AAU), only six had fewer instructional days than Pitt in fall 1999, and only seven had fewer instructional days in spring 2000. (Penn State, for example, provided 74 days of instruction in fall 1999 and 75 days in spring 2000.) Pitt academic calendar planning was constrained this spring by two factors, Baranger said:

* New Year's Day fell on a Tuesday and the University re-opened the next day. Pitt never resumes classes the same day it re-opens following the holiday break ("That would just be havoc," Baranger said), so the earliest Pitt could have resumed classes was Thursday, Jan. 3. "The academic calendar committee felt pretty strongly that if we had started classes on Thursday, many students would not have come back until the following Monday anyway," Baranger said.

* Pitt's spring term traditionally ends in late April. This year, the term ends on April 27. Commencement is the following day, and summer term classes begin on May 6. "It's very important to both our faculty and our students for commencement to be held by the beginning of May, at the latest," Baranger said. "The students want to get jobs. The faculty want to go off to do research in the field."

The vice provost said she would feel "much more comfortable" if Pitt were to extend its spring term by one week during years such as 2002, 2003 and 2004 when New Year's Day falls in mid-week.

Baranger said she will propose that idea to the academic calendar committee.

The committee also may look into a suggestion by Siska to free up an additional day for spring term classes by moving Pitt's observance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday to the spring break for students. However, Baranger said she believes that move would be "politically almost impossible."

The University already observes Great Americans Day during spring break, a move Pitt made in 1998 to restore a class day in February while maintaining the holiday for staff.

"We got some ridicule and jokes about that, but no serious complaints," Baranger said. "On the other hand, I think people would be offended if we moved [Pitt's observance of] Martin Luther King's birthday. But I will bring the idea to the attention of various people and see what their reactions are."

One of Siska's colleagues in the chemistry department, Toby Chapman, serves on the academic calendar committee and said Pitt had virtually no choice but to delay starting classes until this week and finish the term by the end of April.

"I voted for [that schedule] and I'm one of the hard-nosed people on the committee in terms of arguing against eliminating class days," said Chapman, an associate professor.

Siska agreed that, if Pitt had resumed classes last Thursday, many students probably would have blown off classes until Monday in order to extend their holiday breaks. He noted that last fall, on the Tuesday before Pitt's Wednesday-through-Sunday break for Thanksgiving, half of the students in his physical chemistry class failed to show up.

"I guess the reason I'm frustrated is that, in chemistry, the lecture part of a course is so critical," Siska said. "Losing a couple of class periods is very important to us.

"It may be that few other people on campus care about this. The students certainly won't mind having fewer lectures," he said, with a laugh.

In contrast to spring term schedules, fall terms at Pitt have been consistent and predictable since 1998, when the University started holding its first classes of the term on the Monday before Labor Day. Before that, Pitt fall term classes began on the Wednesday before Labor Day.

— Bruce Steele