By SUSAN JONES
The 2024-25 academic calendar for Pitt, which was approved last week, has some notable changes from recent years.
In both semesters, there is a longer gap between the last day of finals and undergraduate commencement. But in contrast to previous year, final grades must be submitted before the graduation ceremony, which shortens the time for instructors to complete grading.
In several previous years, finals week ended on Friday before the Sunday undergraduate commencement and grades were not due until the next week.
Juan Manfredi, chair of the calendar committee and professor of mathematics, said the change for the fall is the result of the Thanksgiving break being the last week of November.
The addition of a two-day fall break in October, “made it necessary to add two more days of classes after Thanksgiving. That is why classes end on a Tuesday — Dec. 10,” he said. “ In addition, we don’t want the students to have only one week of classes after the Thanksgiving break.”
The Senate’s Educational Policies committee at its March 22 meeting had the same concerns about the academic calendar for this fall, when grades are due two days after finals end. In the spring there is a three-day period to complete grading.
“There are so many competing priorities when one is setting a calendar,” said Amanda Godley, vice provost for graduate studies, who offers monthly reports to the group. “I have never seen a calendar discussed as much as next year’s calendar” before it was decided. “We have no exact answers” for the conundrums posed by a late Thanksgiving and the need for staff to get final grades into Pitt’s systems, she added. “Those were conversations that happened … (but) there is no magic insert” to solve this calendar problem.
John Stoner, Educational Policies co-chair and history faculty member in the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences, and others on the committee suggested that this was a good time to consider ways to avoid a comprehensive end-of-term exam that is time-consuming to grade — perhaps by instituting more and smaller assessments throughout the course or by implementing a different sort of assessment at the end. They also suggested this would ease the burden on the teaching and learning center, as center officials outlined at last month’s committee meeting.
In the spring, classes start on Wednesday, Jan. 8, “to give time to the academic staff and advisors to process academic actions as much as possible before classes begin.” Staff return to the office on Thursday, Jan. 2.
Once the Martin King Luther Jr. holiday and spring recess are added in, “the rest is determined by the number of days left,” Manfredi said. Commencement is always on a Sunday, usually at the end of April, but had to be pushed to May 4 for 2025.
The other significant change is that on Election Day — Tuesday, Nov. 5 — classes will be remote, except for labs.
Manfredi said the Student Government Board representative on the calendar committee “suggested that we cancel classes on Election Day. The committee opted for making this day remote, except for labs, so that we would not have to add one more Tuesday to the academic calendar (no more Tuesdays were available).”
The winter recess for faculty and staff will include eight weekdays (Monday, Dec. 23 through Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025), as opposed to this year’s break, which only had six weekdays, because of how the holidays fell.
FOR FALL 2024:
Aug. 19-25: Welcome week
Aug. 26 (Monday): Classes start
Sept. 2: Labor Day
Oct. 14-15 (Monday-Tuesday): Fall break for students
Nov. 24-Dec. 1: Thanksgiving recess for students
Nov. 28-29: Thanksgiving recess for faculty and staff (University closed)
Dec. 10 (Tuesday): Last day for undergraduate classes
Dec. 11-17 (Wednesday-Tuesday): Final exam period for undergraduate classes
Dec. 19: Fall term grades must be approved by instructors by 11:59 p.m.
Dec. 22 (Sunday): December commencement. This is the second year for this convocation, which includes undergraduate and graduate students.
Dec. 23-Jan. 1, 2025: Winter recess for faculty and staff
FOR WINTER/SPRING 2025:
Jan. 2 (Thursday): University offices and buildings reopen and employees come back to work.
Jan. 8 (Wednesday): Spring term classes begin
Jan. 20: Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday observed (University closed)
March 2-9: Spring recess for students
March 7: Spring holiday for faculty and staff (University closed)
April 22 (Tuesday): Last day for undergraduate classes
April 24-30 (Thursday-Wednesday): Final exam period for undergraduate classes
May 3: Spring term grades must be approved by instructors by 11:59 p.m.
May 4 (Sunday): Annual undergraduate commencement
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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