Every school year brings change and this year is no exception. One of the more notable changes students will experience this year is a change in the finals schedule.

In recent years, finals have taken place over the course of two weeks allowing students a weekend of reprieve halfway through but this year, finals are scheduled Monday through Thursday in a single week.

Director of records and registration, Dottie Collura, explained that through analysis of the most heavily used course times the office of records and registration was able to create a schedule that more evenly spreads out times for tests so that students don’t have multiple exams on one day and no exams on another.

Also, the schedule keeps Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes consistent with exam times. The scheduled exam times will correspond with the day the class was held with the exception of Friday, as there are no Friday exams.

However, the change to a single week, according to Collura, came from generally hearing from students that they would like to go home Friday rather than staying the extra few days the following week. Collura also noted that this change is a return to the way finals were scheduled in past years.

The Monday through Thursday finals schedule will not affect graduation. Graduating seniors may have a final Thursday and graduate the following Saturday, but Collura insisted that because of changes to the commencement process, this change in schedule will not affect the timeline of graduation.

“[Graduating seniors will] still get their diploma cover at commencement, but the actual diploma will be mailed out,” said Collura. “The faculty actually pushed for that from what I understand. In [the records and registration office] roll we do our best to work with both sides of the house to find a happy medium.”

Collura explained that each year the office of records and registration creates a proposal for the final exam schedule that is sent to the deans of all the colleges as well as the provost and associate provost in order to allow them to share their opinions and suggestions about how they would like to see the proposed schedule change. The schedule student’s see online is the direct result of the compromises made in this process. 

“We’re trying to provide the best customer service we can to students,’ said Collura. “We’re looking forward to a great year.”