Faculty Senate voted to shorten the add window for classes from two weeks to one at its meeting Monday.

Once this policy takes effect, students will only be permitted to add classes by the end of the first week of each semester. The proposal states that if students want to add a course after the current deadline of two weeks for classes, they are required to have support from the course’s instructor and approval from the Office of the University of Registrar.

The policy’s target date is Fall 2014, so it will not affect seniors, according to an email from Faculty Senate chair Paul Farrell.

The policy “will not be implemented until an online form has been designed to allow students to submit petitions after the first week,” Farrell said.

The recommendation to decrease the time allowed for students to add a course affects students’ ability to self-add through FlashFAST only.

The new time limit on adding classes “should improve student success by preventing students from adding a class so late that they have little hope of succeeding in the course,” Faculty Senate vice chair Donald White said in an email.

“A student entering the class after two full weeks has very little chance of succeeding,” White said. “Too much information has been missed and it is difficult to catch up.”

Data on registration activity during the second week of the fall 2012 semester reveals that “essentially 50 percent of students adding in the second week often dropped, withdraw or get bad grades (F, D, D+ or C-),” Farrell said, citing facts from the proposal summary.

There is the possibility that there will be more requests for late add permission in the beginning until students get used to the idea of settling their schedules by the end of the first week, White said. The policy will increase petition requests to the Office of the University Registrar, according to the Certification of Curriculum Proposal.

Shortening the add window will not affect advisers, said Mary Ann Haley, assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

“We do walk-in advising the week before classes and the week after classes start,” she said. “We have the ability to accommodate students and there are even times when no one is here” for an appointment.

The Educational Policies Council, a sub-committee of Faculty Senate, proposed the revision. The EPC is responsible for long-term academic planning for Kent State.

“There was quite an extensive discussion at EPC and less at Senate since the questions had been addressed there,” Farrell said.

Contact Carolyn Pippin at [email protected].