A faculty-driven survey found that 92% of students opposed Cal Poly’s newest transition — year-round operations.
Under year-round operations, Cal Poly will transition to a three-semester academic calendar in which 23 degree programs will offer three track options: fall and spring, fall and summer or spring and summer, according to an internal Cal Poly SharePoint.
The faculty-driven survey found 86% of current students would not have committed to Cal Poly if they were assigned a fall-summer track or a spring-summer track. The group of faculty members also launched a letter requesting a pause on the implementation of year-round operations, which 1,220 students and faculty members have signed.
Students could write their specific concerns on year-round operations in the survey, which included lack of transparency in the decision-making process and impact on relationships between students, according to survey results.
Cash Tompoles, an economics freshman, said he was concerned about the summer-fall track or summer-spring track’s effects on internships.
“I would not support it,” Tompoles said. “Internships are important, and almost all of them are in the summer.”
Students may change tracks through a process similar to Cal Poly’s current change-of-major process, according to the SharePoint. However, Cal Poly is still developing the necessary process and review criteria.
At an Oct. 13 academic senate hearing, Ben Ruttenberg, a biological sciences professor and the survey’s creator, presented his findings and also spoke on the process’s lack of transparency. He pointed out the disruptions to the Cal Poly community — including clubs, teams and Greek life — along with strain on faculty and staff and infrastructure issues such as excessive heat.
Ruttenberg said “student equity is at risk,” and other academic senate members grunted in agreement.
Surveyed students and academic senate members also said they were confused about the university’s decision to implement another large-scale change immediately after the switch from quarter system to semester system, especially when the university claimed a major reason was to align with the rest of the Cal State system, according to their semester conversion webpage.
Emily Rodriguez, a biological sciences senior, said she opposed year-round operations and that a slow implementation process would be the only way for it to be successful.
“The only way I see [year-round operations] working is if they phase it in. They just did the change from quarters to semesters,” Rodriguez said. “It seems like a money grab.”
Cal Poly initially scheduled year-round operations to begin in summer 2024, but they have delayed the transition three times and now have the scheduled start date as summer 2028.
The Engineering Student Council sent a survey to engineering students about year-round operations in April, and it received over 1,200 responses.
The survey results showed over 80% of engineering students believed year-round operations will harm Cal Poly, according to previous coverage by Mustang News. Two weeks later, Cal Poly announced they would begin taking student input on the change for the first time since its introduction nearly three years prior.
The university has yet to publish an official public website detailing the transition process. The SharePoint links to calpoly.edu/year-round-opportunities, which states “page not found.”
Cal Poly stated three reasons for the move to year-round operations: to serve more students, to create more choices to combine coursework with internships, study abroad and research and to allow Cal Poly to remain a leading university, according to the SharePoint.
The university also claimed other institutions have tried and succeeded in year-round operations, such as Purdue University, Montclair State University, Dartmouth College and Northeastern University.
However, Ruttenberg’s findings provided examples of universities that tried year-round operations but reverted to semesters — University of New South Wales Sydney, Florida State and University of Pittsburgh.
Cal Poly recognizes year-round operations’ impact on the community through changes in housing demands and in public transit and mobility patterns, according to the SharePoint. The university states they will continue to engage with the local community throughout the planning process but did not provide any specifics.
The SharePoint does not provide a specific budget, projected revenue increase or overall enrollment target.
Erin Pearse, a mathematics professor and a member of the academic senate, created a non-peer-reviewed model using publicly available data and other universities’ attempts at year-round operations to roughly estimate its financial impact.
Pearse said he asked the administration for their specific models, but they declined.
He said when adding a student to a spring-summer track, for example, the university would need to move an existing spring-fall track student to fall-summer track to avoid going over capacity. However, while the university now has two students on the summer track as opposed to none, only one is new to the school and brings new revenue.
“The new addition brings more revenue, but the existing one didn’t. However, both add to summer instruction costs. You have to pay someone to teach a new summer class with 40 students, but only 20 of them are providing revenue to run the course,” Pearse said.
​Representatives for each college, known as caucus senators, also spoke at the academic senate meeting, each presenting similar concerns.
Some members discussed faculty and staff burnout and another redesign of classes after just doing the same for the conversion to semesters. Members, similar to surveyed students, pointed out the fact that Cal Poly’s schedule will again be out of sync with the rest of the Cal State system.
Seven strategic focus teams, including academic affairs, student enrollment and administration and finance will begin in-depth planning for year-round operations this month.
This story originally appeared in the October printed edition of Mustang News. Check out more stories from the issue here.