Educational Policy Committee selects class replacement days

At its most recent meeting, the Educational Policy Committee (EPC) voted to add replacement class days during Reading Week and Patriot’s Day in response to the number of class days that have been canceled this semester due to excessive snowfall. This semester, classes on two Mondays, two Tuesdays and one Wednesday were canceled, according to Montserrat Teixidor i Bigas, a professor in the mathematics department and co-chair of the EPC.

The combined faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering approved the decision on Feb. 18. Faculty may use the additional make-up days at their discretion, according to an email sent to students on Feb. 20.

Across Tufts, professors have tried to make up for the time lost by the snow days with a variety of methods, including online sessions, extra office hours and collaboration through Trunk, Teixidor i Bigas said.

The majority of teachers in the EPC, however, were united in voting for the motion to add replacement days, according to Teixidor i Bigas.

“Many students have not had many classes for certain courses, and we believe that face-to-face time is important and therefore there should be some way to make it up,” Teixidor i Bigas explained.

Bigas noted that in the EPC's effort to set a clear make-up class policy for students and to avoid student conflicts with other classes, in passing this motion, professors do have less flexibility to choose the days and times that would suit them to make-up classes, Bigas said.

Further, student opinion also played an important role in making of this decision, according to Adiel Pollydore, one of the EPC's student representatives.

“Like every decision made on the EPC, we do have an extensive conversation about the proposal at hand and really give all the members an opportunity to voice concerns," Pollydore said.

Pollydore favored the motion because such a large amount of instruction time was lost, especially in seminars or classes that meet once a week, but she said she is cognizant of the fact that some students were concerned about the decision.

“I know that a lot of students have expressed concern about the decision, but overall, a lot of people saw this coming," Pollydore said. "By the third snow day, there were already murmurs on campus on how we would make the days up, so many people may not have been all that surprised.”

Despite its necessity, the addition of replacement days is a rarity, according to Bigas, who has taught at Tufts for 26 years. “It has never happened in the past where there have been this many snow days and cancellations," she said. "The policy has changed a lot.”

According to Pollydore, this year's policy change reflects decisions that the university should make to accommodate similarly bad weather in the future. “I think we need to have more systems in place to help instruction continue even with inclement weather," she said.

In fact, the EPC is taking steps toward doing so by building in designated make-up days in future semesters in order to avoid a similar debacle, Bigas said.

“In the future, we will try to have some days that are specially for this reason, just in case this happens again," she said.