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Canceled | Classes perform a disappearing act

When she packed up and left Charlottesville for the summer last May, Rebecca Shwalb was sure she had concocted a fall schedule that was perhaps the best she'd had in her two years at the University. Or so she thought.

But Shwalb, now a third-year College student, thought wrong. In June, she received an abrupt e-mail from the University Registrar informing her that her English class had been canceled. In July, she received a similar e-mail regarding the cancellation of her sociology seminar. And just this week, she got news that one of her discussion sections mysteriously had been rescheduled.

"I was really excited about the classes," Shwalb said. "They related to things I'd like to do in the future."

Forced to rework her schedule entirely, she conceded that although the cancellations are more of an aggravation than an unsolvable problem, she found it annoying that she was not informed when the canceled class might be offered again or even why it was canceled in the first place.

Although Schwalb was able to refill the once-empty slots in her schedule with other classes, she thinks of her current schedule as far less interesting than the one she formulated last spring.

"I feel like my schedule is less diversified now," she said. "It's not set apart from the usual list of social sciences."

But College Dean Edward L. Ayers believes that these class cancellations are not a sign of a larger problem within the University departments.

Ayers commented in an e-mail to The Cavalier Daily that even a minor amount of slippage with regard to departmental class cancellations is insignificant. Ayers said that while last-minute class cancellations might seem like a visible downside to students, he maintains that "it is a small price to pay for the international-level faculty the University is able to maintain."

Fluctuations and absorbtions

Asst. College Dean Richard Handler, who examined the matter of class cancellations, compared the courses in the pre-fall Course Offering Directory released last spring with the those in the current COD to find out whether a large number of English classes had been cancelled since February.

Subsequent to this examination, Handler found that 182 total English courses were listed in the COD last spring, and 177 courses now are listed. Approximately 20 courses, however, had been canceled within that time period. While the department had indeed opened new classes to students on ISIS to accommodate the initial cancellations, about 11 percent of the department's classes have fluctuated since students enrolled in classes last spring.

Handler believes that this fluctuation within the English department is not a cause for concern because there now are enough courses to accommodate students, even if the cancellations were a cause for some inconvenience.

Student Council President Abby Fifer believes,

however, that these changes and cancellations disrupt student course planning.

"There is just no guarantee that a specific class I need to graduate will be there," she said.

English Department Chairman Michael Levenson said he would not characterize the cancellations as either unusual or problematic.

Handler and Levenson both believe that, while students may not get their first- or second-choice classes, there always are other course options to consider.

"Students have to be mature enough to realize that they're not going to be able to take courses from whomever they want," Handler said.

Balancing student and faculty interests

Handler said that the canceled courses, both in the English department and in other University departments, are an outlay of the constant push-pull forces that affect the balance between student and faculty needs.

He said that most class cancellations are caused because many faculty members must accept fellowships or grants related to research at the last minute.

Levenson said most cancellation notifications students received for English classes over the summer were due to an unusual number of last-minute faculty decisions to either resign from the department or take a leave of absence.

For example, English Prof. Charles Rowell abruptly notified the department that he was taking a new position at Texas A&M University at the end of July. Cancellation notices generated automatically by the Registrar's Office were e-mailed to students in Rowell's Faulkner and Gaines seminar soon after.

"This year a few notifications were later than usual," Levenson said. "Usually we get word about February or March."

English Department Associate Chairwoman Cynthia Wall said that the late course cancellations were just "a constellation of circumstance." Wall believes that all students vying for spots in English courses, no matter how popular, inevitably will be absorbed into some class by the end of the first two weeks of classes.

Wall maintains that it is a constant battle to balance student demand for certain classes with faculty research needs and requests.

"It's not a happy situation," she said.

Like Wall, Handler sees the pressures on faculty to produce research and scholarly works which keep the University among the top-ranked schools in the nation.

"This is classified as a research university," Handler said, "The faculty are supposed to be out there competing for these research monies."

Handler said there really is no way to control faculty members taking leave for purposes of research because they often "just don't know when they're going to get those grants."

Handler concedes, however, that it is possible to manage a last-minute faculty departure. In the example of the English department, Handler believes the cancellations were well-handled - all students have been accommodated with replacement classes.

Handler said that students must realize that an individual problem of class cancellations does not always translate into a department- or university-wide problem.

Often, Handler said, student frustrations stem from a short-term outlook on education which conflicts with a faculty member's more long-term viewpoint.

"Faculty tend to teach and think over 20-year periods," he said. "A semester class often seems like an instant."

But Fifer believes that such short-term goals are an integral part of getting a college education.

"College students are by nature ephemeral," Fifer said. "Statistics tell us that the majority of college students will change their major several times before graduating, so it is not unreasonable for these students to view their classes on a semester-by-semester basis."

Wall said that a common frustration which can add to the aggravation of course cancellations is the appearance of full classes when students flip anxiously through the COD.

"Classes seem to fill up while students shop around," she said. "There always seems to be an undergraduate illusion of a problem which is really created by an illusion on ISIS."

While the course cancellations in the English department were the only ones which have received a close examination by Handler and Ayers thus far, the issue of late course cancellations by no means ends there. The University Registrar could not be reached for comment on other course cancellations.

Economics Department Chairman David Mills said that most cancellations in his department also can result from a flush of last minute decisions by faculty members.

This semester, Mills said that the ECON 311 course had to be canceled because the professor accepted a fellowship in South Africa for the fall semester. In addition, two sections of a macroeconomics course had to be cut because a new professor, whose arrival the department had been anticipating, backed out from his new position late in the summer.

"We often just have to deal with these things on a case by case basis because every situation is different," Mills said.

Mills added that he and other members of the department tend to be conservative about opening classes up to students for pre-registration.

"We tend to want to be absolutely sure first," Mills said.

While Handler, Levenson, Wall and Mills all agree that last-minute faculty absences can be a major inconvenience, it is not a problem that can be rectified easily and often serves as a "constant burden" for both administrators and faculty.

"It's awful when students have these cancellations," said Handler. "But from the faculty perspective, we're involved in these two great enterprises, teaching and researching, and sometimes the professor cannot be all things to all people"

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