New Business —

1. Committee members introduced themselves and their history with the Calendar Committee
2. Review of charges
   1. Standing Charges
      1. The chairs and Caty Movich reviewed what the committee does to address Standing Charges #1 and #2, including the Calendar Exception Request process. Casey Wallace provided additional information about the final exam scheduling processes that occur before a Calendar Committee request is required.
      2. Casey said that the Registrar’s Office often needs to provide input on whether the request is logistically possible given classroom availability. The Governance Office will incorporate a step into the process to check in with the Registrar’s Office before sending a request to the committee for a vote. This will save the committee time and ensure that members are informed.
      3. Shaobo Li asked about the timing and amount of these requests. Caty specified that requests should only come in after the start of a semester. Last year the Calendar Committee received a total of 10 requests, 5 of which were unnecessary.
   2. Specific Charge #1
      1. Caty mentioned that KU’s calendar needs to align with the KBOR calendar.
      2. Charlotte suggested that we expand USRR 1.3.4, the “three or more finals” policy (students don’t have to take more than 2 final exams in one day), to the week before finals as well. John noted it could apply to the entire semester.
      3. Casey brought up a related issue that the Registrar’s Office is facing. At the AAU Conference in February, various representatives from registrar offices discussed the recent shift of final exams to final projects or online final exams. One of the largest schools in attendance said that a report found that 75% of their classes no longer have an in-person final exam. This school does not have a lot of online classes, so these are for their traditional courses. There was talk that there has been a significant shift since the pandemic around fewer final exams. Other schools confirmed similar situations.
         1. This may be causing part of the problem with the last week load.
         2. Scheduling and finding spaces for in-person final exams are a huge load on KU’s Registrar’s Office. This is done before the semester starts, and now rooms are going unused at an impacted time on campus.
         3. Could we do some sort of survey to gather information?
         4. Casey has considered asking instructors whether they have a final exam when they’re setting up courses. Not sure whether it should be an opt-in or opt-out setup.
3. Next steps
   1. The committee can ask SenEx if we could do a survey.
      1. Who would write the survey? Caty will check with AIRE if there is support for this.
      2. It would be helpful to survey both instructors and students to capture the widest amount of data possible.
      3. Casey mentioned that Academic Success has been successful with quick text-based surveys for students. We could send it out the week before finals with quick questions. Casey will ask Missy Chandler about this.
   2. Casey brought up another issue that impacts room availability. Short courses don’t align perfectly with the normal academic calendar. Occasionally we have a situation where short courses are still happening during finals week. Most are online, but sometimes they are in person and conflict with final exam room scheduling. If we can tackle the above problems, this issue will also be resolved.
   3. Charlotte and John will meet, with Caty supporting, to draft a recommendation to send to SenEx. This will include both a recommendation to expand USRR 1.3.4 and a recommendation to conduct a survey about final exams. The co-chairs will share the draft with the committee before sending it to SenEx.