The shift from the quarter system to the semester system has begun for two of the last six CSU campuses slated to switch over in the coming years; but for Cal State East Bay, the discussion continues with no official timeline in sight.
CSU Los Angeles and CSU Bakersfield have formally announced a timeline to move away from the quarter system. CSULA is committed to launching in fall of 2016 and CSU Bakersfield is aiming for 2015.
“We are already starting to move forward on the process with Bakersfield and Los Angeles ” said Michael Uhlenkamp, Director of Public Affairs for the Chancellor, “In terms of East Bay, we haven’t necessarily been engaged in those discussions yet.”
CSU Bakersfield President Horace Mitchell has estimated it will cost their campus $2.5 million to $3 million to convert, according to news reports. Only six of the CSU’s 23 campuses are on quarters.
According the Uhlenkamp, the general idea of converting the quarter campuses to align with the semester ones would increase efficiency for transfer students coming from community colleges.
Additionally, the conversion would allow for CSU students to have access to programs like online concurrent enrollment. The program offers 33 fully online courses and aims to alleviate “bottleneck” classes but they can only be offered to campuses aligned with a semester system.
Uhlenkamp said the quarter to semester conversion may have some costs upfront but there are administrative savings over the long term.
“If you are moving from doing something three times to doing it only twice, there are cost savings,” said Uhlenkamp.
The decision to make the change at CSUEB has been debated since 2001 and at that time, the majority of CSUEB faculty and staff were opposed to it. In a campus faculty election held in Nov. 16, 2001 the results were 230 No and 70 yes votes for conversion.
Charles Reed, the CSU chancellor from 1998 to 2012, wanted to align all campuses with the same academic calendar and it is noted from the minutes of the academic senate meetings that they earmarked $12 million towards six campuses to do the conversion. Among them were: CSU Los Angeles, CSU San Bernardino, CSU Bakersfield, Cal Poly Pomona, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and CSU East Bay.
Members of the academic senate at that time recorded their concerns about the imposition made by the chancellor and felt that they needed to be consulted and allowed ample time to research and discuss the option to convert.
“There are two issues we need to discuss: whether we want to make the transition; and campus autonomy,” records the statement made from Henry Reichman, a professor emeritus that served on the academic senate and was the history department chair from 1994 to 2002.
Today, Chancellor Timothy White is making the rounds to visit each campus to have discussions with faculty, students and staff to understand the quarter system — evaluating what works and what does not. Uhlenkamp said they will be evaluating the benefits for each campus to be on a quarter system versus a semester and consider those discussions prior to making a decision on the transition.
“It is not necessarily something where it will be a unilateral decision, it will be in conjunction with a discussion with the campus,” said Uhlenkamp.
