Students return for the spring semester a week later than they have the last two years, as the academic calendar was changed to begin the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day.The change was made to accommodate various University departments, which needed more time following the winter intersession to prepare for the spring semester, said Robert Doolos, University registrar.”There were issues with awarding aid and issues with senior college offices not having time to do what they needed to do,” Doolos said. “With the spring semester so close [after winter intersession], they were jammed up with working with all the students they needed to work with.” The extra time makes it easier for students to get proper attention from counselors and advisers when making academic decisions between the intersession and semester, said Stacia Haynie, vice provost of Academic Affairs. “If you’re a counselor with hundreds of students and each one needs your attention, you have to have serious conversations like, ‘Can you continue in this major, and what resources can we provide you with to help you succeed?'” Haynie said. “We don’t want that rushed.”Paul Ivey, University College associate dean, said starting the semester earlier didn’t provide for enough time for tasks like new student orientation, class scheduling and examination of enrollment appeals.”[With the semester starting later], we can get those things processed and get everybody in class who is eligible to be in class for that first day,” Ivey said. The semester started a week earlier for the first time in spring 2008. Doolos said he thought moving the semester up might give more flexibility with the schedule. “Because we have so many intersessions, there’s little flexibility with terms and beginning them,” Doolos said. “We were trying to see if we could get more flexibility in the calendar by starting earlier, but it just didn’t work.” The University offers three intersessions — one in the spring, summer and winter — which Haynie said make the calendar “exceptionally complex.” Those intersessions along with semesters in the spring, summer and fall make for a packed academic calendar, Haynie said. “The day on which you start at the beginning of the year affects the start date of the spring intersession, summer intersession, summer session, fall calendar and the graduation date,” Haynie said.Starting the spring semester later can also benefit high school students interested in beginning their freshman year at the University in the summer, Haynie said.”If we start one week later, we can service far more students who graduate [from high school] in the last week in May or first week in June,” she said.The University’s calendar is also difficult to work with because of the Mardi Gras holiday, which other schools don’t have to take into account, Haynie said.The most recent change in the academic calendar was made after Doolos received feedback from various departments about the difficulties created by starting earlier.Doolos drafted the change into the academic calendar for this spring, which got positive responses from the Office of Academic Affairs and various deans and vice chancellors. Doolos said feedback from students about the semester starting earlier for the past two years was minimal, but he did hear some concerns. “There were students who wanted to know why the [winter] break wasn’t as long,” he said. “But it wasn’t missing — you got an extra week between spring and summer term.”–Contact Ryan Buxton at [email protected]