Update on 2023-2024 Schedule of Classes

October 27, 2022

Dear Stony Brook community,

With the easing of COVID restrictions over the past year and a return to in-person instruction, the Office of the Provost is preparing for modifications to the schedule of classes for the 2023-2024 academic year.

We are balancing a number of factors in order to build next year's schedule, including the preservation of Campus Lifetime, students' commuting schedules, and classroom demand. In particular, this review has been focused on the amount of time between classes, which has been 20 minutes over the past two years. I have reviewed several options with academic leadership, the University Senate Executive Committee, and Deans and Directors of our colleges, schools and academic programs.

The consensus has been that a return to our pre-COVID time vectors will provide the best balance for class schedules next academic year. While it does shorten time passing between classes to 10 minutes in most cases, and 7 in some instances, it does allow for a full maintenance of Campus Lifetime on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. and prevents courses from starting earlier than 8 a.m. and avoids shifting classes into the weekend.

Notably, in our conversations we also heard considerable feedback about how shorter time vectors can be a hindrance to instruction and movement between classes, and may be particularly difficult for those with mobility challenges. This led us to consider several other options, but all brought other limitations and there simply wasn't sufficient time to undertake a more engaged level of shared governance to deeply consider these other options at this time.

Thus, while we return to the previous approach as our best option for next academic year, we also will use the upcoming weeks to forum a group of students, faculty, staff, and administrators to explore course time vectors to facilitate enhanced learning. This group will convene at the start of the spring semester to assess possibilities and then make recommendations to campus leadership that we can consider for the 2024-2025 academic year and beyond. The 2023-2024 time vectors are presented in the table below.

We will send out more information on possible future time vectors and our upcoming community review in the coming weeks. You are welcome to email any feedback.

Sincerely,

Carl

Carl Lejuez, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs