Academic Calendar: Semester or Quarter?

February 19, 2002

TO: Members of the Academic Senate
FROM: Professor Raymond Knapp, Chair, Academic Senate Undergraduate Council
Professor Judith Smith, Vice Provost-Undergraduate Education

RE: Joint Senate/Administration Committee to Review the Academic Calendar

On January 22, Academic Senate Chair John Edmond and Executive Vice
Chancellor Rory Hume asked us to co-chair a joint Senate/Administration
Committee to Review the Academic Calendar. The stimulus to review UCLA's
academic calendar arose from discussions at a leadership retreat last
September that focused on the quality of teaching and learning at UCLA.

Our joint committee is charged:

... to develop a brief report and an accompanying set of
materials that will inform full and open consultation across the campus.
Your report should address the effects, pro and con, of changing our
academic calendar on (1) the quality of teaching, learning and research;
(2) short-term transitional costs; (3) long-term costs of
administration; and (4) faculty welfare, including sabbaticals and
teaching loads; (5) student welfare; and (6) staff welfare. 

The committee includes 12 members, administrators and faculty members;
several of the latter are chairs or members of Academic Senate standing
committees that will be consulted in the process of drafting our report.
In addition, we have invited the Graduate Students Association and
Undergraduate Students Association presidents to meet with us.

We want to emphasize that we are not responsible for making a
recommendation to the Chancellor. As indicated in our charge letter, we
have been asked to analyze issues associated with the quarter and
semester calendars and to prepare a report for further campus
deliberation. Future discussions will occur at several levels, including
departments and IDPs, Faculty Executive Committees, and in relevant
standing committees of the Academic Senate.

The questions that we have received in the past few weeks suggest that
some faculty members have an interest in the history of the topic and
would appreciate receiving some background information now. In this
memo, we have provided a brief history about UCLA's past academic
calendar discussions (summarized from historical records).  Also, we
have placed some of these background documents on the Web at
http://www.senate.ucla.edu/calendar.  Included among these documents are
the charge letter and the list of the committee's members, the
historical summary of the calendar at UCLA, the survey of AAU
institutions, and other pertinent documents.  This website will be
updated periodically to inform the campus of the work of the committee.

As most faculty know, UCLA operated on the semester calendar for the
first 47 years of its existence and switched, as did all UC campuses, to
a year-round, four-quarter calendar in 1966-67 as a prelude to the
introduction of the short-lived summer quarters of 1968 and 1969 (before
the return in 1970 to the still-current summer session structure).
Within the UC system, Berkeley (since 1983) and Merced (starting
instruction in 2004-05) are utilizing the semester calendar. Nationally,
of the peer non-UC research institutions that comprise the Association
of American Universities (AAU), 48 of that group of 55 utilize the
semester calendar and 7 use the quarter calendar.  The seven that
utilize the quarter calendar are Cal Tech, Chicago, Northwestern, Ohio
State, Oregon, Stanford, and Washington.

Since 1970, UCLA's academic calendar has been discussed periodically,
and on three occasions Academic Senate mail votes were taken. Of those
voting in 1971, 61% voted to return to the semester system); in 1977,
54% preferred retaining the quarter system; in 1985, 59% preferred
retaining the quarter system. Despite a general consensus to retain the
quarter system, UCLA's School of Law returned to the semester system in
1978 and the School of Medicine adopted the semester calendar in 1987.

In 1990, the Quality of Life Task Force of the Strategic Planning
Committee recommended that the campus consider adopting the semester
system "in the context of enhancing the intellectual atmosphere of
UCLA." Wide-based faculty discussions were not initiated because the
Academic Senate Executive Board opposed "reconsideration of a
campus-wide discussion of a return to the semester system." Nonetheless,
in a memo to the Chancellor, the Board noted that it did not object to
individual professional schools, following the lead of the Law and
Medicine, returning the semester system.

In 1994, the Administration again opened the question of the academic
calendar with the focus of potential cost savings that might be derived
from a conversion to the semester. Although Academic Senate leaders
supported a full investigation into the relative merits of the quarter
and semester systems, the campus was soon overwhelmed by the
Professional Schools Restructuring Initiative (PSRI) and further
discussions were suspended.

We recount this history, in part, to show that interest in UCLA's
academic calendar has been a recurring topic. Faculty members on the
general campus have not formally expressed their views since 1985.
According to Standing Order 100.4(g) of The UC Board of Regents, the
authority to set the academic calendar rests with the UC President,
except that "no session shall be established or abolished except with
the advice of the Academic Senate and the approval of the Board." On
each campus, the Chancellor has been delegated the responsibility for
setting the calendar after consulting the Academic Senate. Nonetheless,
changes in the calendar such as those recently proposed by Berkeley
require the approval of the UC President and the UC Regents.

We hope that this explanation of what our committee is doing, as well as
the above historical perspective, provides a clear picture of the
efforts now underway.