Schedule Request Email to Chairs/Program Directors-2009
The following email was sent to department chairs and program directors on Jan. 23, 2009 regarding the process to send schedules to the Registrar's Office to prepare for registration.
It is my hope that your dean has communicated with you regarding class schedules for next academic year (both fall 2009 and spring 2010). As was agreed upon, schedules are due by Feb.1 (which means that the deans may need to receive schedules in advance of that date to review loads, etc.). If your department or program is able to submit your schedules prior to that deadline we would be happy to accept them in advance so we can review them for completeness. I know that graduate programs have traditionally submitted schedules much later than this but it is imperative that, in particular, those classes scheduled on the Newberg campus be sent by the stated deadline. If not, we run the risk of over-booking certain timeslots.
Block Schedule Guidelines
AAO recognizes the need to push class offerings to the outside of "prime time" (which is anything from 8:30 am to 1:30 pm in Newberg and certain evenings and weekends in Portland). For those classes that do fall within the "prime time" slots it may be necessary for departments/programs to "negotiate" with each other for the ability to place classes during those times. If your department or program holds classes on the Newberg campus I would encourage you to review the Block Schedule guidelines on our website. It is very important that classes use these guidelines to avoid overlapping schedules for both student registration and facility conflicts.
Schedule Submission Form
Please be sure that you use the Class Schedule Submission Form for each course discipline submitted (yes, we would like one form for each course discipline to be able to track them and we need you to use this specific form even if the one you use has some of the same information). Each spreadsheet has a separate tab including instructions and explanations for the data that should be included. I need you to know that we will look at these and return any that are missing components (especially since our office staff build around 1500 class sections every term in the span of a few weeks). It is almost impossible for us to know what has been completed and what is yet incomplete (incomplete data actually prevents us from building the class) except to track completed submission worksheets by discipline.
For many non-Newberg programs, please be aware that we will require all alternate meeting information (which includes face-to-face dates/times for hybrid courses) at the time we build classes (again, we will return scheduling spreadsheets that may be missing any of this information). That includes weekend dates for class meetings as well as specific information regarding combined cohort classes (should that occur for your program). In the past, this information comes far too late for us to effectively schedule our classroom space (on all non-Newberg campuses). We realize that this will require that these dates be identified much farther in advance and that this may now restrict faculty desire to teach on specific days/nights/weekends. However, this is necessary given our increased complexity and the manner in which we must schedule classes to best serve our students.
Schedule
Once we receive all submissions by Feb. 1, our office staff will review the submissions and begin to build the classes in our database. By Feb. 15, we will communicate with the deans any conflicts for resolution (this will happen if there are too many sections placed in a particular timeslot). We then plan to have all courses built by Feb. 29. Preregistration will occur for Traditional Undergraduate students sometime mid-March (which will allow several weeks for advising appointments prior to registration). Even those programs that do not begin registration for fall until later must have schedules built in order to assign classrooms and resolve all scheduling conflicts.
Communication with You
We are very happy to sit down and walk through all of this with you. Please contact the particular enrollment counselor serving your program and they would be happy to assist you with the process. Thank you for your assistance.