Radford University
Academic Calendar Updates
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why is Radford University updating the Academic Calendar template?
Every year, the Office of the Registrar creates a new Academic Calendar for the following year. Some years, these have been very complicated, with many overlapping academic terms. Radford University has only published calendars out for one year at a time, and it is unclear if the academic calendars have been looked at holistically, shared with faculty and students, or approved by the Cabinet before publication.
This year, we wanted to step back, look holistically at the academic calendar, and make a template that can be applied for multiple years. One goal is to organize the calendar to align the fall, spring, and summer semesters with the “part-of-term” 7 week sessions and the Fast Track 7 ½ sessions. The other goal is to publish the Radford academic calendar out for three years, so that there is less uncertainty and more ability to plan into the future.
2. What were the parameters used as guidelines to design the models?
The academic calendar models attempt to balance as many of the following priorities as possible:
- Three 15-week semesters
- 7-week and Fast Track session dates aligned and within the 15-week semesters
- Two weeks of classes after Thanksgiving break
- One week between 7-week/FT sessions
- 49 days in Fast Track sessions
- Keep days equal between M/W/F accounting for holidays
- Fall start after Labor day
- Winter start before MLK Jr. Day
- 2 weeks between SU and FA terms for orientations
3. What's the timeline for publishing the academic calendars for 2025-2026, 2026-2027, and 2027-2028?
Our goal is to have the calendars published in November, after consultation with the Radford community this fall. The timeline is:
- August-September 2024: The Registrar's Office works with Academic Affairs to create parameters and produces several models for feedback. The Registrar's Office works with Academic Affairs and Faculty Senate to create a website with the models and FAQs, and with The Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Quality Improvement to create a form for feedback.
- October 2024: The Registrar and Provost conduct information and feedback forums with multiple campus groups, including Faculty Senate, AP Senate, Student Government, Student Life.
- October 3-October 18, 2024: Feedback survey available
- Late October 2024: Registrar's Office and The Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Quality Improvement analyze the results of the survey and the forums. The Registrar's Office uses the feedback to create a final version of the academic calendar for 2025-2026 and extends it across the next two years, through 2027-2028, in consultation with appropriate stakeholders
- November 2024: Final academic calendars presented on the Radford University website, in Newsletters and meetings, along with rationale for changes from the original models based on feedback. Calendars officially adopted by President's Cabinet.
- December 2024: Calendars published on Registrar's website.
4. The Registrar has created three options. Will you adopt one of these calendars no matter what?
We have proposed these calendars using the design criteria, but we are open to other creative solutions. There are some non-negotiables: to have the 6 shorter terms embedded in the 15-week semesters, to keep the fall and spring semesters within the 9-month faculty contract period, to have a winter break for everyone. But we are absolutely taking your feedback and will see how we can creatively address it in the final version.
5. You have shown us three options for the 2025-2026 calendar, but you haven’t shown us all the options for the next three years. What’s up with that? Some years we may have to start differently in relations to the Memorial Day and MLK holidays.
You are right. Academic calendar creation is complicated – we are fitting in counts of days and weeks into a calendar of holidays that are driven by patterns of the sun and the moon, and months that have between 28 and 31 days (which are named after Roman and Scandinavian gods). Once we have the pattern selected, the Office of the Registrar will apply the pattern to the future years, and we will do our best to accommodate those holidays flexibly. We will share those with the campus community before we approve them.
6. Aren’t we required to have exam periods?
No, actually. We are required to have a certain number of contact hours per credit hour, and to meet those requirements, we count the special exam period as contact hours (so we should be requiring student to attend the exams). But, we don’t have to configure them as exam periods and could keep the same class meeting schedule through the end of the semester. If we choose to do this, then faculty would have the option of multiple kinds of final exams, projects, or other culminating activities using the class period. If a class needs a traditional longer exam period, then the faculty member could request an evening block and reassign students to attend that period instead of class in the last week.
7. Why is fall to spring undergraduate retention an issue?
For the past three years, over 200 lower-division students came for the fall semester but did not return for the spring semester, and between 33-51 new transfer students– that’s over 10% of the new students. Most of these students are in good academic standing. This loss after only one semester contributes to our lower fall-to-fall “official” retention rates (which have improved from 69%-76% over the last three years). It’s heartbreaking that so many students don’t find their place here and fail to return and continue their education.
|
Academic Year |
Non-returning new freshmen and sophomores |
Non-returning new transfer |
|
2023-2024 |
218 |
43 |
|
2022-2023 |
270 |
33 |
|
2021-2022 |
272 |
51 |
Note that this chart includes active students who didn’t graduate or return to take
classes in the spring. “Freshmen” compared to “New Freshmen” are the few students
who were returning students in the fall but had not completed at least 26 credits,
and are at higher risk of not continuing.
8. What evidence is there that the calendar model with a longer summer, shorter winter, and options for shorter terms within the semesters will improve student success?
Our lower persistence rates from fall-spring show that many students who are in good standing after the first semester lose momentum over the winter break and do not return for spring classes. Anecdotally, Student Life even starts seeing a set of students becoming less engaged late in the fall semester, not returning from Thanksgiving break to finish their last week of classes, especially if they aren't required to come in person during the exam week.
There aren't many case control studies that show that just shortening a break increases persistence, as several colleges have simultaneously moved more classes into a 7-8 week terms as well as shortened the break. Odessa College has presented on their results at SACS and are quoted by the Ad Astra team on the success they had by doing these two things together:
LINK: https://www.aais.com/resources-insights/report/2024-benchmark-report
There is evidence that students are more successful in shorter term classes than in full semester courses. Santa Monica College showed that “students perform better (in retention, success rate, and GPA) in a 6-week compressed sections of classes than they do in 16-week, full semester sections, and they appear to use the material at least equally well in subsequent semesters” (Logan and Geltner, 2000). Achieving the Dream, a consortium of community colleges, has a guide to the benefits of shorter academic terms, although it only tangentially refers to the value of shorter breaks and the ability to use each term as an opportunity to re-enroll quickly after a setback.
If you want a fun take on the history of winter breaks, there’s an old (2009) Explainer in Slate magazine.
While we aren't proposing to convert all of our classes to be offered in terms rather than semesters, having the template set up means that programs can decide to do some more creative scheduling in the future. Once we have the systems set up over the next 18 months, it will be easier for students to enroll in a mix of term and full-semester courses. It gives us the ability to match the length of the course with the best delivery mode.
As we intentionally update the calendar and track student success measures, I hope that our team will be the first to publish a peer-reviewed study on the effect of winter break length on student retention and success. It will build on our reputation of prioritizing student success, and continue to highlight Radford as a model. And if we find that these changes don’t have an impact after we implement for several years, we can consider other calendar options.
9. What are other schools doing?
While we trying to make the best schedule we can for Radford, a survey of other universities shows a whole variety of schedules. For instance, the University of Virginia starts their spring semester this year on January 13, and will be starting their spring semester before MLK Day for several years. UVA Wise starts on January 15, 2025. JMU is planning to start fall on August 20, 2024, and spring on January 20, 2025.
Other schools are also experimenting with more radically changed academic schedules. Montclair State is moving to a three semester model of 14 weeks each (with embedded 7 week sessions), with the goal of encouraging more of their undergraduates to enroll over the full year. Their model actually looks very close to what we are proposing. Note that they do not have separate exam periods.
Randolph College, a very small private here in Virginia, used their QEP to re-organize
their academic calendar so that the spring and fall semesters were divided into two
seven week sessions, called Take2. They started the program in the 2023-2024 academic year, and reversed their multi-year
enrollment decline that year.
Upper Iowa University’s academic calendar is comprised of six sessions ranging from six to eight weeks in length. At UIU, students are encouraged to take two classes per session for fewer concurrent classes. Radford University will continue to offer 15-week classes, and UIU’s model demonstrates the flexibility and creativity that may be possible with “part-of-term” and Fast Track sessions within the 15-week semester.
10. How do these dates fit in with Virginia Tech’s academic schedules?
For 2025-2026, VT’s fall classes begin August 25, and final exams end on December 18 (they take a week at Thanksgiving). Their fall commencement is December 20. For Spring 2026, their courses begin on January 20, and their graduation is May 16.
11. Does this mean that faculty have to teach more weeks of classes?
No! The number of weeks in each semester is the same. Faculty who teach in the year-round Fast-Track programs already fit in six 7 ½ week terms over the course of a year.
12. What about Wintermester, Maymester, and summer courses?
In this model, we will no longer have Winterim courses. In the past five years, we have had a steady decline in the number of Wintermester classes, from a high of 48 in 2019 to a low of 23 last year. Wintermester accounted for only 235 total registered students, or 0.4% of all student registrations. Maymester is even fewer, with 14 courses in 2024 (down from 28 in 2020, the highest in recent history, despite the pandemic), which account for 0.15% of all student registrations.
Summer I, II, and III have higher registrations (accounting in total for about 7% of student registration over the year), and we will have those in place along with the 7-week Summer A and B during the 2025 summer. We can consider keeping the various length summer terms in the future, or move to allow flexible scheduling within Summer A and B.
We want to encourage creative scheduling for experiential learning, study abroad opportunities, and other intensive activities.
13. How will faculty work in breaks, planning time, and vacations with the proposed models?
That is up to faculty! But, in this model, there are breaks between each semester and between each term, and the breaks for terms and the semesters are aligned as closely as possible. In the current calendar, faculty teaching in different terms have overlapping obligations and may not have a chance to take a break at all. If one was teaching every term/semester in the new templates, there are still over five weeks with no classes.
If you are a nine-month faculty member, the fall model will usually add in an extra week of planning before the fall semester starts. The spring models vary, but starting before MLK Jr. Day may reduce the time after the winter holidays by up to several weeks, depending on the model chosen, but would have more time in May for projects after classes end. The total teaching and planning/non-teaching time on a nine-month contract would not change.
14. How will an updated academic calendar affect 7-week class schedule blocks/grids?
When a model has been selected, the Office of the Registrar will lead discussions on updates to schedule blocks/grids.
15. What will happen to IT processes and systems I use that are built around the current model?
This is a large project that will take place over the next 18 months. A Task Force with representation from the full campus community will be working with IT to identify and update Banner processes with a goal of having these updates in place for the 2026-2027 academic calendar. Please make note of your processes or areas of concern to provide input at a future date.
16. Does this calendar mean that students will only have one week of Winter Break?
Students' winter break begins when they finish their last day of classes or exams in December, and ends when they begin classes again in January. The university officially closes for a week in late December to give our faculty and staff (who work year-round to support students) time to step away and relax as they choose before returning after the New Year to prepare for the spring semester.
17. Labor Day in 2026 is very late. If we start after Labor Day, classes would run until December 24. Are we going to follow the "template" no matter what?
Of course not. Because the holiday calendar varies so much, we will adapt each year. In 2026-2027, it looks like the Fall semester and Fall A term will need to start before Labor Day to have the semester end with enough time for the winter holidays.