On Wednesday, Nov. 4, the Tarleton State University Student Government Association held a public forum hearing proposing a change to the current final exam schedule. Presenting this proposal was Dr. Dwayne Snider, Associate Provost and Senior Associate Vice President for Academic Administration, and Cody Johnson, Vice President of Academic Affairs in SGA.

The motivation behind this change is to increase the percentage of diplomas that are handed out on the day of graduation.

“The University has been working 2-3 years now and doing either a better or worse job depending on the semester about trying to deliver diplomas at the actual graduation ceremony. That’s important to the president, that’s important to at least some students – there’s been some debate about that – but the consensus seems to be that we would like to deliver diplomas as much as possible at graduation,” Snider said.

“In order to do that, the faculty side of it and the academic side of it, there are things we need in order for that to work. One of the things we said is we need at least 24 hours between the last final and when the grades would need to be in by enrollment management, and then they need a day and a half for the first graduation ceremony to put those together.”

Dr. Snider, a member of Tarleton’s calendar committee, along with the rest of the committee members, created several proposals of a new recommended schedule that could possibly accomplish this goal.

The first proposal was to move finals up earlier in the week. “There are a variety of things that could be done. Graduation ceremonies could be moved into the following week on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Concerns following this was graduation attendance: if people would be able to stay in the dorms, whether or not they would go home and come back – if they would even come back. Would this make the graduation less meaningful? Also, parents would have to take off work.” Dr. Snider explains.

The second option that was presented was having more finals per day. Dr. Snider pointed out shortening the time period for finals and having more per day increases the likelihood of having 3+ finals in one day. Also, he stated that typically faculty do not tend to be supportive of this idea because it inhibits them from fitting all of their material for a comprehensive final in under 1 hour and 15 minutes.  

Thirdly, the last possibility presented was having finals on a Saturday. “It’s kind of the inverse function of back to the future. It would be a return to giving finals on a Saturday, which we have done at Tarleton previous years.” stated Dr. Snider.

Before Dr. Snider opened the floor for questions, Cody Johnson spoke what he thought was best. Favoring with the third option of having a Saturday final, Cody Johnson adds, “As a student representative and your kind of representative as a liaison to the academic community, I think this is our best option. It requires the least amount of reworking on our schedule. It allows us to keep dead day as a day to study. I know the concern for a Saturday final is that we will lose studying time. I don’t see that being a problem. I see this making it easier on all parties involved- enrollment management, registrar, student body, and the faculty all have the perfect amount of time needed.”

After about 30 minutes of back and forth discussion with several concerns being addressed, a hand count was taken for a general idea of how the proposal settled with the audience. The results of this vote was in favor of a Saturday final. While the proposed schedule is in no way finalized, the calendar committee will now be able to more effectively create an exam schedule with a Saturday final in mind.