Chancellor Kenneth A. Shaw is a lame duck administrator with a big decision about whether to implement the scheduling paradigm ahead of him.

It is a decision that will affect almost everyone at Syracuse University, from students with perfect grade point averages, to star athletes, to people who work in the dining halls – everyone except Shaw himself, who won’t be at SU in the plan’s first year of implementation.

‘It is better for the old chancellor, old number 10 as I’ll be remembered, to make that decision and then to be on leave for a year and then to come back,’ Shaw said. ‘By that time, it’s forgotten with the new person not having to take the heat. There’s enough things for the new person to do without having to be embroiled in one of these things where any decision is going to be unpopular.’

Shaw would be affected when he returns in a teaching capacity the following year.

‘Boy, will I be complaining if I have a Monday-Wednesday-Friday class to teach,’ he said.

For now, however, he is not worried about his teaching schedule. He is glad to make what will inevitably be an unpopular decision either way and then step back and let someone else start as chancellor with a clean slate.

Vice Chancellor Deborah Freund, a candidate to replace Shaw, agrees.

‘It is good to get the process done now,’ she said. ‘In my experience, like some other issues, this one has many emotions attached. In these cases, discussion is very important.’

This discussion will continue today when the University Senate debates whether it feels SU should adopt a new scheduling paradigm or enforce the current one. USen will vote next month on which policy to support, and the decision will then fall to Shaw, who will decide to either agree or disagree with USen.

One thing is for certain: No matter what USen decides, Shaw will not allow the schedule to continue as it is. He feels the university must take back control of it, even if it means depriving students of a light Friday schedule.

‘I will have to confess going in that I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the view that there should not be anything on Friday,’ Shaw said. ‘The reality is that in either paradigm, there will be things on Friday, whether you have the old one where it is implemented or the new one implemented.’

Two things Shaw does have sympathy for are students’ need to take the classes they want and professors’ demands for enough time to do research. Shaw feels this can be accomplished by adhering to a strict schedule, whatever it may be, with exceptions doled out to faculty after a review process.

This review process for exceptions, along with the implementation of the schedule that is chosen, will fall to Freund’s office. Because of this, during the discussion on the Senate floor Freund will remain silent and not voice her own opinion. She believes that no matter which schedule is chosen, the university will move on and things will work out.

Another administrator whose department will deal with the schedule on a day-to-day basis is SU’s registrar Maureen Breed. Breed, who was on the committee charged with creating a new paradigm, feels that changing the schedule is not a temporary fix, as some may think, because the review process for exceptions would force the deans to look at how exceptions will affect students.

Many students on campus seem to feel that the schedule’s effects on students is not something administrators and the paradigm’s creators have looked at thoroughly enough. Breed said this is because when creating a schedule, if you were to ask 10 people their preference, you would come back with 10 different responses. Instead of responding to preferences, Breed thinks it is important to identify the issues a schedule needs to address.

‘A schedule is a tool that helps support the educational mission of an institution,’ she said. ‘Some other plans don’t address everything if you are looking at a full range of issues. You need to come as close to dealing with all of them as you can, and the proposed new paradigm does this.’

Although the process to create a new paradigm may not have used student input, Shaw said he will listen to all criticisms and concerns brought up about the proposal before making his decision.

‘Concerns that students have should be listened to, but at the end, it will go the Senate where they will be listened to and then it will come to me where I will hear all these views,’ he said.

One of the concerns Shaw must address in his final analysis is how a schedule change would affect SU economically. These concerns would include increased costs associated with opening dining halls a half hour earlier and increased bus service to accommodate the earlier class times.

David George, director of food services at SU, said his office has been researching how a change in the paradigm to an earlier start would affect food services.

‘There will certainly be an impact based on when classes start and finish, but it is hard to predict until action is taken to see if there are any problems,’ he said.

The other key player included in this economic discussion is the Centro bus company. SU and Centro discussed the proposed scheduling paradigm, and Centro provided the university with a cost analysis of how much the paradigm would cost in bus service on North and South campuses, said Centro spokesman Steve Koegel.

Koegel would not comment on how much the extra bus service would cost SU, but said there would not be a major rise in costs.

The increased service would include extra trips in the morning to account for the earlier starting time and increased service on Friday because of the increased number of classes, Koegel said.

Ronald Cavanagh, vice president for undergraduate studies, said the paradigm’s creators have looked into the costs associated with the switch and presented them to the chancellor for review.

In terms of the money associated with the schedule, Shaw said it is important to use the resources SU already has and not be rash and think the problem is not with the schedule but instead with a lack of space or faculty.

‘You can’t have that many rooms open, and people, well, you could have enough rooms if you want to waste your money. You would have enough faculty if you want to overload on faculty,’ he said.

Published on October 14, 2003 at 12:00 pm