U. Senate to consider two-exam-a-day limit

Last semester, Sara Gaisior faced an academic Everest — six hours of final exams in one day.

"I think most of the exams that I had to take that day were cumulative," the junior math major recalled. "Trying to study for all three of them would have been crazy."

One of Gaisior's professors let her reschedule an exam, but some students at the university don't have that option. A university policy allows students with more than three exams in a day to reschedule, but some faculty and students say the number should be lowered to two. The University Senate's Educational Affairs Committee will consider the proposal this year.

"In principle, I think everybody reasonably agrees that two final exams is probably more than enough for one day," said chemistry professor and committee Chairman Neil Blough. "So we're trying to figure out what things can be done to take care of this."

Before any action can be taken, the committee needs to figure out how many students would be affected by the proposal, Blough said.

About 4 percent of students have more than three exams in one day, according to a letter sent to the committee by Sterling Grimes, who served as an undergraduate committee member last year.

Allowing more students to reschedule could cause administrative headaches, said Elizabeth Beise, interim associate provost for academic planning and programs.

"If providing this extra flexibility would involve increasing the length of the exam period ... that's another day that would have to be scheduled, and that's very challenging," Beise said.

Other issues, such as the definition of an exam, need to be worked out, said Student Government Association Speaker Pro Tempore and committee member Jennifer Hill. For example, she said, the committee will have to decide whether a final paper, which may have been assigned several days prior to the exam date, should count toward a student's exam total.

This proposal is not a new idea; the SGA considered a similar idea three years ago. At the time, then-Provost Bill Destler and then-Registrar David Robb said they worried the plan would take too much work to benefit too few students.

Beise, who has been an associate provost for about two months, said the benefits have to be weighed against the drawbacks.

"I think until we actually know the cost — I don't just mean the fiscal cost — it's hard to say whether it would be good or not good," Beise said.

Committee member Jonathan Dinman, a biology professor, said his support for the proposal stems from memories of having many exams in one day as a student.

"As for my feelings, I really hated it, and usually had to choose which one to blow off studying for (usually the multiple guess exam)," Dinman wrote in an e-mail.

Any proposal prepared by the committee would have to be reviewed by the senate — the university's most powerful legislative body, which provides policy advice to university President Dan Mote — and approved by Mote before becoming a university policy.

Blough said the committee will also study the possibility of warning students electronically before they enroll in several classes with exams on the same day, akin to the alert system that warns students about having too little time to walk from class to class.

"More information is almost always better," Beise said. "It's much better to have the information and be able to make the choice than to be caught off guard."

For that to work, all final exams would have to be scheduled before the start of the semester. As it is now, the dates of some exams, such as those for classes that meet at "non-standard" times, are not set until the middle of the semester.

cox@umdbk.com