Tag Archives: Beaver

Town Hall at Beaver Campus

Penn State Beaver held an Instructional Space Town Hall meeting in late February.

They responded to the three questions we have asked at each Town Hall meeting:

  1. What elements of the current model work?
  2. What challenges have you encountered with the current scheduling model?
  3. What should Penn State’s top 5 priorities be?

At Beaver, a campus scheduler coordinates the schedule using “instructional groups” to facilitate the various faculty scheduling needs.  Faculty seem to be very involved in the scheduling process, to the benefit of the entire process.

There remain a lack of computer classrooms and it is difficult for faculty to obtain the classrooms they most need for their teaching.  There are some general issues with scheduling popular courses, like Spanish, in ways that don’t conflict with other courses.

The top scheduling priorities identified at Beaver were:

  1. To ensure that student needs for timely graduation are met
  2. Maximize classroom availability
  3. Athlete schedules
  4. Faculty needs to maximize pedagogical innovation
  5. More flexibility: utilize non-standard times more effectively
  6. Reconsider the “common hour” schedule block

Thanks to Gloria Descheler, for the notes on this town hall meeting.