SEMESTER CONVERSION UPDATE: Co-op Cycles, Calendar Updates and Progress on Curricular Revisions

The first day of the University of Cincinnati’s new semester calendar – Aug. 27, 2012 – is slightly less than two years away.

The university continues to prepare: evaluating and converting quarter-based courses to semester-based courses, adding advising staff, and by making information available to the campus community via the semester conversion website.

Below are the most-recent updates.

CURRICULAR REVISIONS

Preparations for semester conversion are ongoing in three major phases:

• Ongoing curricular revisions, the bulk of which will be complete by the end of 2010.
• Encoding and cataloguing of these revisions, which will be complete by Fall 2011.
• Student advising, which will run from Fall 2011 to Fall 2012.
  

Currently, close to 100 percent of university courses and programs are either “in process” in terms of review/revision or have substantially completed the review/revision process for conversion to semesters – meaning they have been reviewed by department faculty and chairs as well as reviewed and approved by the dean’s office of each college.

UPDATED GENERAL AND CO-OP CALENDAR INFORMATION AVAILABLE ONLINE

An updated

academic calendar

spanning summer 2012 thru summer 2014 is available online, as is information about how the class day will be

organized

under semesters. Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes will be 55 minutes long, while Tuesday-Thursday classes will be 80 minutes long.

Information on the organization of

undergraduate co-op cycles

under semesters is now available online. These cycles will begin Fall 2012.

Summer 2012 will be the last quarter before the semester calendar begins. The

co-op term

that summer will be eight weeks long but will, as a one-time exception, count as a full co-op quarter.

Co-op students will be required to meet with their co-op faculty advisors to devise an individual plan for completing co-op during the university’s transition to semesters. That individual plan will encompass the accelerated summer quarter of 2012. These transitional plans will be formulated to meet the needs of co-op students enrolled in different majors, and/or students having different graduation years.

Depending on academic program and class year, co-ops during the summer 2012 transition quarter will be structured according to the following models:

• A “stand-alone” co-op quarter totaling at least 8 weeks. Because many co-op students also spend all or part of break weeks participating in co-op, a “stand-alone” summer 2012 co-op term could extend to 11 weeks.

•  An extended co-op term that combines a spring quarter co-op assignment with a summer quarter co-op assignment. This would create an extended co-op that lasts, in total, between 21 to 24 weeks. 

• An extended co-op term that combines a summer quarter co-op assignment with a fall semester co-op assignment. This would create an extended co-op that lasts, in total, between 23 to 26 weeks.

UC HAS ADDED ADVISORS

Prior to the decision to convert to semesters, as recommended in the University System of Ohio’s

Strategic Plan for Higher Education

, UC needed to improve its advisor-to-student ratios to meet national norms. Improvement in these advisor-to-student ratios, especially with enrollment increases, was necessary whether or not the state’s public institutions of higher education changed their academic calendars.

Conversion to semesters added impetus to meet academic advising needs. In all, 21 undergraduate advising positions have been filled this past summer (18 new and three reassigned positions). All are permanent advising positions but will be helpful in meeting advising needs in advance of the conversion to semesters, and in working with students to create individual advising plans (IAP) starting in Fall 2011.

From Fall 2011 to Fall 2012, each UC student who will transition from quarters to semesters will be asked to meet with his or her advisor to create an

Individual Advising Plan

(IAP). All students who meet with the appropriate UC advisor to plan and then follow an IAP receive the following three pledges found in greater detail in the

Pledge to Students

:

• No loss of academic progress related to the conversion to semesters.
• No delay in degree completion related to the conversion to semesters.
• No increased costs for degree completion related to semester conversion.
  

STUDENTS: COMPLETE COURSE SEQUENCES, COMPLETE ANY REPEAT COURSES

The most important thing transition students (students who will experience the transition from quarters to semesters ) can do is to complete course sequences. Course sequences are two or three courses that are intended to be taken together in order to fulfill a degree or program requirement. These courses are meant to be taken in a specific order, as the earlier courses are generally prerequisites for later courses.

Examples include

• Spanish I, II, III (15SPAN101, 15SPAN102, 15SPAN103)
• College Algebra I, II (15MATH173, 15MATH174)

Students planning to repeat a quarter course in order to take advantage of UC’s

grade-replacement policy

should seek to repeat that quarter course before the conversion to semesters.

CHECK OUT NEW POLICIES

As they become available, new policies are continually added to the Semester Conversion

website

. Check them out on the Semester-Based

Policies and Procedures page

.

• See semester conversion news from around the state, including past updates from UC.
• Follow semester conversion news on Facebook.
• Visit UC’s Semester Conversion website.