Oberlin's students, faculty and staff rarely have the opportunity to convene as a whole community. In response to this seemingly simple query, Associate Professor of Mathematics Robert Bosch offered the services of his class, "Practicum in Operations Research."
Bosch's class lends its research capabilities to private companies trying to solve professional problems through research and applied mathematics. Usually, he contracts his class research with a local Ohio company, but last spring his client was Oberlin College. His class concentrated not only on the problem of "community time," but also on the topic of departmental class scheduling procedures. Bosch, and three students, seniors Melanie Hart, Jennifer Kew and Kerry Lazarus, continued their work this summer with the financial support of the president's office and the math department.
Bosch's class recommended the most equitable community time, as well as made some suggestions that would improve class access for students. They based their findings on a random phone poll conducted of 56 students, and interviews with department heads. From their research, they developed a software program to solve scheduling conflicts.
Their report states that, "When the Practicum spoke with President Nancy Dye in March, she expressed great interest, in the possibility of setting aside a block of time each week for what might be called 'community time,' a time when everyone on campus could gather together to attend a convocation, a campus-wide meeting, etc."
Upon initial review, Bosch's class ruled out large blocks of time right off the bat. Evenings were out of the question, since faculty and staff often have children to tend to after work. At the same time, students responded negatively to a morning time. Left to the afternoons, the Practicum felt that community time could not be scheduled on a Tuesday or a Thursday, because there would be no way to schedule it around popular Tuesday/Thursday class times. Unfortunately, Bosch's class did not have the opportunity to survey faculty and staff about their feelings on community time.
Given those restrictions, Bosch and his students found that the best time for students would be Wednesday at 1:30, or 3:30, or Fridays at 1:30. Bosch said, "If [community time] is held, it should be held at a time that would encourage as many people on campus to go to it." However, a meeting during the lunch hour would cause the least amount of interruptions with current schedules.
Bosch presented these findings on Tuesday to the General Faculty. If the GF decides to set aside a weekly time for community gatherings, they will have to step on someone's toes. Any change in the Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule could affect language classes that meet five days a week, as well as labs and studio art classes that meet for extended periods. "If we adopt community time it's going to be hard. There's going to be a price to pay for it," said Bosch. Dye firmed up that point. "It really is a matter of will."
Bosch's class also spent a great deal of their research on class scheduling. The college of arts and sciences developed a point system years ago to spread out class scheduling and avoid the glut that had developed around the lunch hour. The Practicum's report states, "In the year or two just prior to the advent of the point system, there was a shortage of classroom space - tales are still told of faculty members with offices in King or Rice having to teach class in Philips Gymnasium or the basement of South dormitory..." Bosch and his class wanted to evaluate the point system based upon student access to classes, rather than just classroom availability.
The point system assigns the highest points to the most popular time slots, and 0 points for the least popular time slot. Right now, Tuesday-Thursday 11-12:15 is the most popular time slot being assigned a 10, while Monday-Wednesday-Friday 8 a.m. is the least popular, being assigned a 0. Bosch explained that some departments try to limit enrollment in popular classes through scheduling. "I think there are cases, though, where very popular classes are put purposefully in unpopular time slots," said Bosch.
The Practicum found that most departments actually satisfy the requirements for class distribution, but they do so without considering student interest, other department's schedules, and classes that occupy multiple time slots. Bosch said, "I think a lot of what departments do is based upon individual faculty preferences."
Bosch's class designed a software package that will optimize schedules and solve scheduling conflicts across department boundaries. "The software can be used to help a department or a collection of departments that will help create a schedule that will satisfy the members of the departments, the students, and the dean's office point value constraint," said Bosch. The software, and Bosch's services, are available to any interested departments.
Classes that cater to overlapping student interests are often scheduled without consideration of one another. Bosch said, "There was one time I was teaching an optimization class and Bob Geitz was teaching an upper level computer science class. That semester I discovered that I had no computer science majors in my class. I think it ended up hurting both of us."
One problem that Bosch's class noted in their report is classes scheduled over multiple designated time slots. The college grants permission to studio art classes, science labs and other disciplines to overlap time periods since they demand more than the allotted class time. The Practicum class discovered that in this current semester there are 50 one, two or three credits classes that occupy multiple time slots. They also found that only four departments are responsible for 38 out of the 50 overlapping classes.
Their report urges departments to limit these classes occupying multiple time slots, and to collaborate more with other departments on class scheduling.
Bosch will not teach his class again until the spring of 2001, and he is unsure of what topic his class will examine.
Copyright © 1999, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 128, Number 7, October 29, 1999
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