Elliot Steeves-
Major changes are coming to the Gustavus Academic Calendar in 2024.
The January term is going away, Fall Break will extend to one week in duration, Saturday finals have been eliminated, and the Spring semester will start the second week of January and will now end in late April, with commencement being in early May.
All these changes will commence in the 2024-2025 academic year, when the new Gustavus academic calendar takes hold. The changes were implemented by a faculty vote of 121 Yeses, 31 Nos, and 5 Abstained.
To begin with, there are a lot of overall changes that will happen within education and its requirements here. Gustavus’ first change will be with General Education requirements. Not only will the wellbeing requirement be eliminated, but the theology requirement will be expanded so that students can fulfill it with courses in philosophy, history, or communications.
Next, Students will no longer have to take two semesters of a non-English language. The new requirement is one semester of a class leveled 102 or higher. This allows students who are placed at a higher level to forgo a semester of unneeded education in that language.
Gustavus has also eliminated standalone writing requirements. They will implement this writing into courses that students already take. Gustavus will also introduce a new digital credential, similar to a writing minor, that students can apply to their resumes or LinkedIn profiles.
Speaking of jobs and resumes, Gustavus will also introduce a new “Signature Experience” requirement. This is a credit that students will receive for an internship or job experience that applies to their major. The faculty hopes that the connective tissue between academic activities and future careers will be strengthened by this new program.
The school has not eliminated any majors or minors. However, they will bring down the number of requirements within each one. Additionally, Gustavus has made some of the prerequisites within departmental requirements more clear, especially ones that students were unaware of in recent years. Accredited majors, such as nursing and education, will remain the same, as they contain external requirements from outside Gustavus.
The hope with all of this is that Gusties will have more room to explore course offerings. They can take additional classes for fun, and can also more easily declare a second major or minor.
When thinking about implementing these changes, the faculty paid attention to student-surveyed data over the years. They also paid attention to budgetary challenges that came about after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Students get surveyed every spring, and we look at that information,” Official Chair and professor of Political Science, Kate Knutson said. “We also did a lot of tabling and a more specific survey for students. Student leaders, student senate, multiple feedback surveys, multiple faculty surveys, and multiple feedback discussions contributed to this.”
“Some institutions have decided to discontinue programs, and we did not want to do that at Gustavus,” said Provost and Dean of the College Brenda Kelly. “We took a different approach, and decided to enact a comprehensive review of the program and curriculum requirements and how changes would impact both low student enrollment and student feedback.”
Using all of this data, the faculty took action on some common elements.
“There were themes about how General Education was too big and too complex,” Knutson said. “It didn’t make sense why some things counted and others didn’t.”
There was a similar thought process with the elimination of the Saturday final, as neither students nor faculty had been particularly fond of taking or delivering exams on Saturday.
After education changes were looked at and made, there were calendar changes as well. A new scheduling grid has been implemented, in which Gusties will have allotted time for music ensembles and/or their athletics teams.
“We can at least get big ensembles into this grid so that it avoids major conflicts for students,” Knutson said.
One of the biggest changes that a lot of Gusties have heard about is the elimination of January term. There were two main reasons behind this: the biggest calendar change that Gustavus has perhaps ever implemented.
“One, financial. J-term was very expensive to run, and college can’t afford it,” Knutson said. “We also heard from students that, because we get out in late spring, students were having a hard time staying competitive for jobs, internships, and research projects. We wanted students to be competitive for those things.”
As part of the change, previous J-Term study away programs run by Gustavus will now occur in May and summer classes will be offered in June.
This was a massive change for the academic program, and a change of this magnitude will likely not occur again anytime soon. That does not mean, however, that departments at Gustavus must make changes to adapt to the new norm.
“In my previous 21 years at the college, we haven’t had this comprehensive of a change to the program. I do not expect that that will happen again in the near future. I imagine we will have adjustments along the way, particularly regarding aspects of the changes that aren’t working as well as we thought they would,” Kelly said.
The decision to make all of these changes all at once was dependent on the ecosystem that Gustavus has and that many aspects of the college are intertwined.
“We talked initially about stretching this out, and instead chose to do everything at once,” Knutson said. “Everything is big and interdependent. So it’s easier to make changes at one time, and not make some changes a second and third time.”
Ultimately, Gustavus is an ecosystem that has changed before and will change again. It is hoped that this change will benefit Gustavus students’ academic future, and perhaps even their career after college.