Dallas College will coordinate class schedules for the next semester, to be consistent with the courses offered to students enrolled at different campuses, Executive Dean Sam Govea said in an email to The Courier.

“By coordinating our times, it will be easier for students to know when classes start and end at all of our locations,” he said.

Govea said the times chosen were based on a large student survey. In an email to The Courier, Alex Lyda, managing director, said the survey was given through the Qualtrics survey software. This survey was administered April 21-May 14 and Sept. 30-Oct. 9 for current students at the time. Students who recently left Dallas College were given a separate survey on Sept. 23-Oct. 9, Lyda said.

Not all schedules had been confirmed by Nov. 17, when an email encouraging students to register for the winter and spring semesters was sent through the Dallas College email. Jarlene DeCay, senior executive dean of enrollment management at Cedar Valley Campus, said some schedules still needed to be adjusted: “There is an entire team that has been hard to work on that. … Now that we have merged to one college which deals with the synchronization, we now have leadership that’s working on scheduling and how they’re going to merge all of these classes.” She said this team is in charge of making sure the right number of courses are being offered in relation to the number of students enrolled.

DeCay said before the merge to Dallas College, some students did not meet the required credit hours to graduate from the location they were enrolled.
According to the 2018 resource manual of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, which oversees accreditation standards in the Southern states, “At least 25 percent of the credit hours required for an undergraduate degree are earned through instruction offered by the institution awarding the degree.”

DeCay said students had to complete the minimum required credit hours from one of the seven campuses to graduate. This caused a problem as students registered for classes, especially online, from the different campuses. The synchronized schedule will help students enroll in different campuses without worrying about this requirement. “You can’t be one college with seven schedules,” DeCay said.

The new schedule might present one potential issue. “The time change has moved 5:40 p.m. start classes to 5 p.m. and there is concern that this time might make it difficult for working students to attend,” Govea said.

This adjustment will facilitate his management over faculty, Govea said. “I have never been able to use full-time faculty across campuses because our times would conflict with their other classes,” he said. “Now, that will not be a problem.”

DeCay said that some student services faculty will no longer be working in Dallas College because less staff is required.

In an email to The Courier, Kevin Hurst, Brookhaven athletic director, said for the first time since 2003 he is not going to teach Introduction to Fitness and Wellness, PHED 1164. “The new schedule will allow us to stagger practices to limit the number of student-athletes on the campus,” he said.

“I think this change is an excellent way for us to serve students who want to make a cohesive schedule across campuses,” Govea said. “It will take some adjustment on the part of our teachers, staff and students to remember new start times, but like all changes, we will eventually get used it.”