Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff,

The Academic Calendar Work Group was originally charged with reviewing the university’s quarter calendar and developing recommendations on how to enhance it to more effectively strengthen student success and retention.

I have redirected the Work Group to expand its scope and explore the unifying of Seattle University’s academic calendar. This expanded scope includes considering the benefits of moving to a semester system.

Multiple factors have led to revisiting the question of semesters and moving to a single academic calendar at Seattle University. As the Work Group explored enhancing the quarter calendar, it became clear that the quarter system inhibits us from fully leveraging our Student Success infrastructure. The quick turnaround between terms creates hurdles for advising and registration and the brevity of winter and spring break offers little time for orientation, restoration, and preparation. The short quarters make it challenging for students who are struggling in courses to get the assistance they need to persist and succeed.

Seattle University is moving to a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software system to replace Colleague and other systems that are expiring. This is a multi-year transition, and the academic calendar is an essential part of the foundational data framework to set up the ERP new system. The ERP transition is underway and resources to support this necessary change have already been identified. However, we need to decide on an academic calendar now to avoid modifying the calendar during or after the new ERP system and incurring significant additional costs and disruptions.

Our current system of multiple academic calendars is untenable. While undergraduate and graduate programs operate on the quarter system, both the Law School and Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University run on semesters. Multiple calendars impose additional costs on university operations, including running multiple cycles for admissions, registration, financial-aid awards, and billing. The lack of a unified calendar also stifles our ability to innovate and create new interdisciplinary programs across our schools and colleges which are called for in Strategic Directions. For example, there are complications for internal and external joint degree programs with the Law School. There are major obstacles for new opportunities for our students who wish to take arts courses at our South Lake Union campus, and obstacles for Cornish students to take courses in our First Hill colleges such as Albers School of Business and Economics, Arts and Sciences, Science and Engineering. Additionally, federal financial aid regulations prohibit awarding students enrolled on two different academic calendars.

The Work Group is hosting a Town Hall on Unifying Seattle University’s Academic Calendar on Thursday May 15 from 12:30-1:20 p.m. in Pigott Auditorium. This event is open to all students, faculty, and staff, and I encourage you to attend.

Throughout May, the Work Group will continue to engage with groups across campus to provide information and receive input on the consideration of a semester calendar. Written input can also be submitted to the Work Group at this address: academic_affairs@seattleu.edu.

Based on the input, the Work Group will prepare a report for the Provost’s Office and President’s Office to present to the Board of Trustees for a discussion at its regular meeting in late May.

Respectfully,

Shane P. Martin
Provost