The Nicholls State University administration is in the final stages of discussion of returning to a five-day class week from the current four-and-a-half-day class week for Fall 2015.

According to Todd Keller, interim vice president of Academic Affairs, cutting back on classes was not as cost effective as the University anticipated in 2012 when it started limiting the number of classes offered on Friday afternoons.

“We were looking for ways to trim some money off the University’s operational budget,” Keller said. “The idea was that if we didn’t have as many people on campus on Friday afternoons, we could maybe have all the lights off, the computers turned off and maybe have some buildings powered down.”

Keller said the reality of the situation is that without constant ventilation, air-conditioning and heating, mold would grow in some of the older buildings.

Eugene Dial, vice president of Student Affairs, agreed that it was never cost effective.

“I’m very involved in the operation of the campus, and I can’t think of one bit of savings,” Dial said.

Every student who comes through Nicholls has to take certain general education classes like English or Math 101.

“The gen-ed faculty feel like they do not have enough available sections to offer to students on this current schedule,” Keller said.

Dial said the change will be especially beneficial to freshmen who make up the majority of students in general education classes.

“It became difficult to develop a class schedule for freshmen, especially students who register in July and August,” Dial said. “A college schedule is very different from a high school schedule.”

Dial said, “A lot of first time freshmen were being forced to take online classes they didn’t want to take.”

The change will create openings for two to three more sections that will be available for students on Monday, Wednesday, and  Friday. This may sound insignificant, but Keller explained some of the simple math.

“Theoretically, we could take five English instructors and create three extra sections in a MWF format,” Keller said. “Three extra sections times five people now results in a potential 15 more English 101 courses.”

“The single most important thing to focus on is student access and student success, ” Keller said.

According to Keller, the idea is to allow opportunities for more class openings, but not necessarily for students to pile on more classes.

“We’re attracting much more academically focused students. Really driven students would be able to schedule classes with breaks in between for studying,” Keller said.

“I don’t want a student to try to take 28 hours instead of 18,” Keller said.

Instead, he wants students to spread their schedules out so they are not as academically stressed.

Freshmen will not be the only students who benefit from more course offerings. According to Keller, all students will gain from being on campus on Friday afternoons.

Some students have expressed concern about going to class on Friday afternoons, but Keller presented a challenge to all who might be against it.

“If you are here on a Friday afternoons, that is an excellent opportunity to stay around for a bit and go to a basketball game, a softball or baseball game, or to stick around until Saturday and go to a football game,” Keller said.

“The reason a student should come to college is not only to attend class, but a huge reason is to begin the process of networking,” Keller said. “The way you network is by socialization. If you’re just here for very short periods of time, then that won’t occur.”

The five-day class schedule is not something new for Nicholls. Dial explained that there was never an official change from 5 to 4.5 days.

“If you look at the (current) class schedule, we’re not going back to a five-day schedule,” Dial said. “We’ve never really switched to a four-day class schedule. It’s just that some classes were put on Monday-Wednesday rather than Monday-Wednesday-Friday, and then more and more were added.”

Keller said, “Some people are seeing this as a new initiative, but it is not. It is just returning to business as usual that Nicholls State University has done for probably over five decades.”