THE JIGSAW PUZZLE

I just started working on the spring schedule. Some say this is the most important thing I do. If you like to put together jigsaw puzzles you would love to put together our academic schedule. I used to love working jigsaw puzzles when I was younger. Maybe that's why I enjoy doing the schedule.

The first step is to figure out what courses the full-time faculty will teach during the semester. You may have noticed that most faculty have required and bar courses they routinely teach. I teach Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Pre-Trial for instance. That part is easy to figure out.

The harder part is making the days and evenings work for full-time faculty. For instance, since Professor Foster is teaching Property in the day division, the electives she teaches must be in scheduled in the evening. The bar course she teaches (Decedents Estates) will have to be offered in the evening the semester she teaches it. That also means that the other professor who teaches Decedents Estates, Professor Flannery, will have to teach it in the day division. Because he is teaching Decedents Estates in the day, his other course will have to be offered in the evening. Professor Flannery also teaches Family Law. Since it was due to be offered in the day this semester, he will get to teach it next semester when it will be in the evening. You can see how carefully my house of cards has to be constructed. If one thing changes - lots of other things have to change.

Next, I have to fill in the schedule with other electives. How do I choose those electives? I look at what has been offered in the past and try to get an idea of what should be offered. Some of this depends on what full-time faculty are available to teach. Some of it depends on what adjunct faculty are available to teach. Some of it depends on student demand. Tax classes don't seem to be very popular right now so we don't offer many. Most of our adjuncts practice law full-time or are judges. They work all day so they must teach at night. Believe me, we don't pay enough for them to choose us over their regular job. They teach because they enjoy it even though it requires lots of hours to prepare a class.

Seminars that offer students the opportunity to get Upper Level Writing credit, get offered again and again and again. It is important to give lots of opportunity to meet the requirement. There is also the Policy and Perspectives requirement. Certain class need to be offered to give students a chance to meet this requirement.

If there is some neat new course that can only be offered once in a while, it is offered in the evening division. Evening students can't go to school during the day (normally) but day students can go to school in the evening (most times). If I have a choice, I schedule such classes in the evening.

This started out as a simple explanation of scheduling and has become too long.