In an attempt to avoid early morning classes -- as well as Monday and Friday classes -- students have pressured faculty to compete for the limited time slots in the block schedule that are available in the late morning and early afternoon.
"The middle of the block schedule is just not being used properly," said Robyn Gittleman, director of the Experimental (Ex) College. "It could be reworked to allow more classes to take place in the afternoon."
Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser said that a revised schedule was presented to the Tufts Community Union Senate on Monday, Feb. 7. If the senators pass a resolution approving it, and if the faculty approves it at their meeting in March, the changes will go into effect in the Spring 2006.
Students' aversions to class times early in the morning have prompted the administration to reexamine the blocks in order to make scheduling more efficient.
"It's hard to evaluate exactly why there would be low enrollment in morning classes, but I suspect students not being able to function until afternoon because of their activities at night would be a factor," philosophy professor Jody Azzouni said. "I'd put good money on it that if I decided to teach an A+ [8:05 a.m. to 9:20 a.m.] block, no one would take it."
"Waking up early is a pain, but I don't like my classes to end too late, either," sophomore Michelle Chia said. "If possible, I like to schedule my classes to end by the late afternoon."
Gittleman helped to create the block system as part of the joint student-faculty Educational Policy Committee in order to better meet student requests. "There's too much competition for classroom space, and Ex College classes especially have been forced in the last few years to run later in the evening, since we're the last department to get a pick."
"The current system is definitely an improvement from the old arcane block system - but despite its twisted structure, it had more scheduling flexibility," Azzouni said. "If you want to teach a longer once-a-week class, you get stuck teaching it late at night if you can't get the 1:30 one."
One proposal is to lengthen the J and I blocks (3:00 p.m. to 3:50 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. to 4:50 p.m.) in the middle of the day, to allow for more substantive, thorough classes in the popular mid-afternoon time periods.
"The J and I blocks ... yeah, I just don't know what's going on there," Azzouni said. "That strikes me as a good change but I don't think it would really solve the flexibility problem. Maybe if they tried pushing in more space between the 5 and 10, 6 and 11 blocks."
The time slots between the 5 and 10 and the 6 and 11 blocks fall in the early evening hours.
"This way there'll be a more efficient use of classroom space and less limitation of students' options," Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser said. "The schedule has been changing for the last three or four years, and we just have to keep dealing with the unintended consequences of each tweak."
The majority of the faculty, however, has not expressed major complaints about the current system, according to Gittleman.
"I prefer to teach nights and so it's not really a problem for me," said Economics Professor Christopher McHugh.
Some professors have even managed to use student preferences in the schedule to their own advantage.
"I actually try to use the morning time for my class to keep class size down. Otherwise, enrollment just gets overwhelming," said sociology professor Henry Rubin, who teaches a class during the C blocks (9:30 a.m. to 10:20 a.m.). Rubin had a waitlist of over 20 students this semester.
