With 5.5 Snow Days shutting down both Tech’s campus and Atlanta as a whole this Spring Semester, the questions for many is what’s next? Emails to students about revised deadlines have left people wondering exactly what else that means, as the deadlines for professors to report midterm grades and for students to drop individual classes have both been pushed back one week. The new deadline for reporting midterm progress reports is Friday, February 21, while the new deadline for students to withdraw from a course if Friday, March 7.
Through discussions between Rafael Bras, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Colin Potts, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Susan Cozzens, Vice Provost for Graduate Education & faculty Affairs, staff from the Registrar’s office, the office of Capital Planning and Space Management, and the office of the Dean of Students have been working together through these snow days to determine a future course of action.
In an email from Potts, he explained what the administration has been working through this week, mostly from home, trying to make the appropriate plans for the rest of the semester as well as planning a possible make up schedule for days missed. Potts stressed the need for institutional level organization in order to reduce conflicts between makeups and to ensure the the makeup schedule would be staggered to prevent clustering of class requirements, such as assignments.
He also stressed the need for communication in advance of the make up plan taking effect to allow students time to adjust to meet the requirements on the plans.
“We do not want to have to handle a large volume of legitimate grievances from students who are penalized for not being able to attend classes when they have made other commitments previously,” Dr. Potts said.
The campus community can expect more definitive announcements early next week as the administration is working to determine what would be best and most flexible for all.
According to Potts, what many can expect right now are some Saturday or evening classes for some students, lots of rescheduling of services and events that have been affected by closures. He also assured that this kind of thing would eat into Spring Break only as a last resort and that the end of the semester can not be delayed for many reasons.