The Division of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) may be adding or rescheduling at least one course per department to meet on Fridays, beginning fall quarter.

Several DU colleges and divisions already offer Friday courses, including the Daniels College of Business (DCB), the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and the Lamont School of Music.

The decision to reschedule or add some courses comes after Renew DU – a strategic group formed to examine academic – and an AHSS strategic planning group that raised concern over the traditional four-day course schedule in AHSS last fall.

“That group said the dean should take care of this, and we did,” said Provost Gregg Kvistad.

In January, a faculty Senate meeting discussed the proposal. According to Kvistad, the majority of the faculty called the change “unproblematic.” However, some faculty members raised concern the change would affect the faculty’s ability to devote sufficient time to research projects.

“Some people allocate Friday as the day to do their research,” said Economics Department chair Tracy Mott. “If they’re teaching on two other days, some people think it could cut into research time.”

The current schedule calls for Monday-Wednesday and Tuesday-Thursday classes.

“It’s a question of defining your schedule, defining when you do what,” said Kvistad.

With Friday left largely unutilized, DU’s campus turns into a “ghost town on Fridays,” Kvistad said.

“What we’re trying to do is chip away at that a little bit,” he said.

While minutes from the Faculty Senate meeting suggested administrators are “considering some changes in stipend levels, tuition charges,” Kvistad said the schedule change presents “no impact on salary whatsoever [and] it can’t have any effect on tuition when we’re simply changing the scheduling of classes, not adding any.”

Kvistad said he is concerned the current practice schedule of Monday-Wednesday and Tuesday-Thursday course sends “the wrong message” because it takes away from the “academic culture.”

Kvistad described the academic culture as the expectation of student performance, the degree of rigor, the way the students think about their courses and the way they think about their major.

“This is the entire point of it,” said Kvistad. “The idea that the weekends start on Wednesday night or Thursday night does not strengthen [it].”

Kvistad also said the change has nothing to do with increasing AHSS’s academic performance.

“This is a very modest change that’s being made with one or two courses per department,” he said.

He also said the calibre of students attracted to DU, which is measured by test scores, GPAs and class participation reported by faculty members, has increased dramatically in recent years.

According to the Faculty Senate minutes from its meeting last month, the GPA for DU applicants has risen to 3.76, while the ACT average is 28.11, up .08 from last year.

“The goal is not to create a cutthroat, hyper-competitive environment,” said Kvistad. “The goal is to improve the academic culture at DU. We have extraordinary students here, extraordinary faculty. What we need to make sure is that we have a robust academic culture, where students still have fun and enjoy themselves.”

However, he also said DU appeals to academically-minded students by setting high standards.

“We’re looking at what’s going on across the university that may be different from what one might expect,” said Kvistad. “The schedule, at least in parts of the university, takes Fridays completely out of play.”

Mott said if it’s possible to add a course, such as a two-hour senior capstone course which provides a summary of what seniors learned and assists them in writing their senior paper, that fits “nicely” into a Friday schedule, then it won’t be a problem.

“Otherwise, if it’s a four-hour class, it might be difficult,” he said, adding that the department will find a way to adjust accordingly.

Kvistad said despite 42 percent of traditional undergraduate students taking a Friday class in the fall quarter, the development of a class-free Friday culture has taken place over time in AHSS, specifically.

“These things naturally grow over time,” he said.

“I don’t like my Friday classes for a lot of reasons; mostly because my friends don’t have them so it seems like extra school, which is kind of a drag,” said junior Zach Gonzales, an economics and math major.

Potential or incoming freshmen also often ask campus tour guides about the four-day week offered by AHSS and other departments.

“Of course some of them do get excited about the possibility of a four-day week,” said Shanna Pomager, senior associate director of admissions and campus visit coordinator. “However, we have to balance that with what the parents also look for in a DU experience. They aren’t always excited about the thought of the students having a three-day weekend every school week of the year. So that’s why we try really hard not to talk about any particular major.”

Kvistad said DU does not encourage three-day ski weekends.

“The university has never branded itself as a no-class-on-Friday institution because we have lots of classes already, especially in the sciences and engineering,” said Kvistad.  “For students who want to ski on Fridays – not to pull a ‘Mitt Romney’ – but I’m not so worried about that.”

“It drives me crazy,” said Ginni Ishimatsu, associate dean of AHSS undergraduate studies. “It sounds like DU is a party school, which it’s not.”

The current AHSS schedule primarily offers two-hour, twice-a-week classes that meet either Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday, or for one four-hour block.

“The schedule suggested is not to change the courses to meeting on two different days, but rather to move a few of those to Friday for a four-hour session,” said Kvistad.  “Clearly not all courses would fit that model, but some would.”

Classes in other departments might also include senior capstone projects, advanced seminars or in-class meetings for hybrid online courses.

“We’re always thinking of how to improve our teaching and the intellectual atmosphere at DU,” Ishimatsu said. “If that means being in class for five days rather than four, and it’s good for education, that’s our concern.”

Gonzales said he is concerned Friday classes could cut into his peers’ time for jobs and internships.

“It seems like the school is trying to micro-manage the ‘free time’ of students who are already doing things to contribute,” said Gonzales. “It discredits that for a mandatory fluff class purely for the sake of saying we have Friday classes. The thing with free time is, some students are going to squander it, some students will do internships and community service and some will go up to the mountains. That’s just how it is; it comes down to motivation.”

Although Kvistad said he does not guarantee Friday classes will result in a huge shift, “we’re saying that we want our students to be part of this academic community,” he said. “Interacting is the best way to learn. In order to do that you need to have experiences that bring students together. When you have a day of the week when that doesn’t happen, it diminishes the opportunity for students to have that experience.”