To: The Wellesley Community
From: Ann Velenchik, Dean of Academic Affairs
Re: Changes to the Weekly Schedule Effective Spring 2019
Date: September 26, 2018
In order for the College to be in compliance with federal guidelines regarding the workload of each one-unit course, Wellesley courses must meet the 150 minutes per week minimum. Currently our campus standard is 140 minutes. To meet accreditation standards, Academic Council voted last spring to make changes to current legislation and practice.
One way to accomplish this is to add five minutes to each class block, as indicated in the updated course schedule. The addition of five minutes changes neither the number nor the arrangement of the course blocks in our academic schedule. There are, however, two noteworthy effects of these changes:
- The “lunch hour” on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday has been reduced to 55 minutes (12:35 to 1:30). Making this change allows us to start the afternoon classes at 1:30 and avoid pushing the end of the academic day later by 25 minutes.
- The start of the afternoon classes on Wednesday is delayed by 10 minutes relative to the current schedule in order to allow for a full 90 minutes of community time.
We are implementing this change now in order to be in compliance at the time of the accreditation visit next semester. However, more substantial changes to the course schedule will be the topic of further conversation and decision making this year, and we encourage community input as we work on these changes.
