Friends and Colleagues,
As the current Academic Chairman of your student union, I am excited to engage with you all in an effort to garner some feedback following our transition from the fall into the spring term.
Several of you have voiced concerns with me regarding the transition between terms and the overlap of paper deadlines, exams, and the beginning of the new term. I am happy to report that upon discussing these concerns with the faculty and staff at the most recent joint council meeting we are poised to make some changes for next year’s academic calendar.
What I need now is some feedback from the student body regarding how you would prefer the exams and paper deadlines be re-formatted. In the most simple terms we have two possible courses of action. I will outline them quickly here and would request that you review them and provide feedback to me no later than Monday 2 March through facebook or email at agsj2@kent.ac.uk. Please keep in mind that the ultimate goal is to reduce the current overlap between terms that prevents students from focusing on new classes in January while simultaneously finishing classes from September.
Option (1): Move exams back one week so that exams following the September term would be given the week prior to the start of the January term. This would inevitably coincide with pushing the paper deadline for September courses back by approximately one week. To illustrate, had this been applied this year, papers would have been due on Tuesday 13 January, exams would have been administered Wednesday-Friday 14-16 January, and classes would have begun on 19 January.
Option (2): Revert to the University’s previous examination schedule in which case all exams for September students would be administered in May and all exams for January students would be administered the following January. Additionally, paper deadlines would be moved back to either the Friday before the January term began or at a minimum to 9:00 on Monday. Yes, this arrangement means students will be taking exams for both fall and spring terms at the same time. The rationale for this arrangement is to allow the courses a student takes to compliment and build on one another, and to allow a student to demonstrate an effective grasp of the required material at the conclusion of their coursework.
Thank you in advance for your feedback. As always, please let me know if you encounter issues or have any comments or concerns regarding your academic experience.
Best Regards,
Alex
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Alex G. Jabbal
Brussels Graduate Student Union
Academic Chairman
agsj2@kent.ac.uk