By Keely Coxwell
A common period allows for shared governance and is a time for our community as a whole to connect. As early as the 2017-2018 academic year the common period will be implemented at the University. The common period will be a 90 minute period time every Wednesday from 12:00 to 1:30 where there will be no classes scheduled.
There are many benefits of having a common period, but the primary reason is a solution to the difficulty of scheduling faculty meetings, according to Academic Vice President and Dean of the University, Kris Bartanen.
“There are a lot of decisions on the campus that are important to make together and a challenge that we’ve had recently is that faculty meetings are 4:00pm to 5:30pm,” Bartanen said. “For some people that has overlapped with classes or it’s a challenge in terms of child care, so attendance has been lower.”
“There is, for some, a sense of disenfranchisement so the hope is that having a time when everybody who is a voting member of the faculty can participate or as much as possible,” Bartanen said.
“I think on campus we all do a lot of things and it’s really hard to find space to do the work of governing the institution that we do as faculty, staff and students,” Chair of the Faculty Senate and the Chair of the Department of Politics & Government, Alisa Kessel said. “It’s becoming increasingly clear to the faculty that not having a good time for governance is becoming a challenge for people.”
“The idea is to create a space in the weekly schedule that will facilitate shared governance of the University,” Kessel said.
The benefits of the common period are not limited to just the faculty.
“Students were recognizing that even when you try to have a student-wide event, even if it’s at night, there are still people in class or lab, there are still people who are doing clubs or doing rehearsals,” Kessel said.
“As we started thinking of what else could happen, we realized it could do much much more for the campus than just allow for faculty to have their meetings,” Bartanen said. “Students could have gatherings of student bodies, as well as have opportunities for campus wide conversations, events, speeches and speakers.”
Terry Halvorson, the Director of Dining and Conference Services has been contacted, to make sure the common period wouldn’t adversely affect her staff or the diner.
“The biggest concern was would the diner have a significant impact, such as everyone in the diner at once,” Halvorson said. “But our staff felt the opposite way, when you have a bigger break a couple of things happen – more students will leave campus or be attending meetings. Also when you have an amount of time without classes it spreads out the business more.”
The common period is likely to be a trial run, as. The faculty is ready to alter the period if necessary.
“The faculty is going to be monitoring it closely to make sure it works and that student course schedules aren’t adversely affected,” Kessel said. “We are going to try it and see if it accomplishes our goals.”
“If it turns out that we don’t need the 90 minutes then I think we would shift it down to 60 minutes. It’s very much a test run,” Bartanen said.
“With the common period we could have this chunk of time,” Kessel said. “Which we can truly devote to being in community with each other not distracted by all of the other important things we do.”