By Glenn Yoder and Tim Coughlin
After nearly 40 years under a quarter-based schedule, this year’s incoming freshman class will follow a semester program.
Joining the trend of schools such as recent converts Auburn University, Troy State University and the University of Minnesota, Northeastern is now among 70 percent of the nation’s schools under a semester system.
The Faculty Senate officially approved the motion three years ago, but Executive Vice Provost and director of the conversion project Coleen Pantalon said it was necessary to take three years to get the program up and running.
“This was a three-year project,” she said. “It takes that long to thoughtfully revise the curriculum, move it through the approval process, and then code it for our computer systems. This is a huge amount of work and isn’t done lightly.”
The conversion from quarters to semesters makes it easier for students to transfer credits and requires them to put more thought into course selection.
Instead of taking the standard 44 courses, now students must complete a norm of 32. Also, the semester system compresses what used to be multiple sequenced courses into one course.
For instance, on the quarter-based schedule, a student would have to take calculus 1, 2 and 3 to amount to one credit. Now, they can simply take one calculus class.
“I like that I can combine classes,” said middler psychology major Rachel Boulton. “[Since] I’m a psychology major I’d normally have to take abnormal psych 1 and 2. But now, it’s just combined into one class.”
The class combining does have a downside, however. If a student only completed the first two steps of a three-part program, he is now required to take an entire semester which completely discredits any previous course work, said sophomore linguistics/psychology major Natalie Gargiulo.
“[Semesters] make everyone pay much more attention to the classes that they’ve taken and the classes that they want to take,” she said. “People have started to think about the classes that they would take in the future instead of just taking classes that sounded fun for the moment because the conversion made it necessary to complete any sort of 1-2-3 sequences.”
Despite the inconvenience of retaking a course, the change does have some benefits, Gargiulo said.
“I think semester conversion is going to help out the university and greaten its appeal to prospective students who before, were confused about quarters and trimesters when it’s really not as confusing as it’s made out to be,” she said. “It’s good that we now match up with other schools if and when people want to transfer. Plus, there are less books to buy.”
Pantalone said that students will find that the benefits of the program outweigh the drawbacks.
“The semester schedule provides a longer learning period for students,” she said. “The faculty believe this will provide a better opportunity for students to delve into their studying and really spend the time needed to understand key concepts.”
As the student body adjusts, Gargiulo said there should be some growing pains.
“[Students are expressing] confusion … lots of confusion,” she said. “But for the most part I think everyone is just sort of taking things as they come.”
