Cerritos College is in the discussion stage of changing its traditional 18-week academic calendar to a condensed semester calendar.

The matter was discussed at an Open Forum Faculty Senate Meeting held on May 8 in the Board Room.

Rocky Young, president of Pierce College in Woodland Hills, was the guest speaker.

Young first implemented a 16-week academic calendar at Santa Monica College, which has used the shortened calendar for many years.

When he became the president at Pierce College, one of the first things he implemented there was also a shortened 15-week academic calendar.

Young believes that he had learned from his mistakes at Santa Monica College, and before implementing a new schedule at Pierce College thought about what he would have done differently at Santa Monica.

Many parents who want to attend college have children that need childcare if school starts before the Labor Day, so he wanted to change the calendar to start after the September holiday.

He also preferred the 15-week condensed calendar to the 16-week calendar, because it gave students and teachers a small break before starting a new semester or an inter-session class.

“You have to do this for the right reasons, not the wrong reasons,” Young told the audience.

Before implementing the shortened academic calendar, he stressed that administrators and faculty should be committed that the change would enhance the educational process and be a better way to operate the Cerritos College campus.

The program was implemented at Pierce mainly because the summer heat with no air conditioning caused employees to want to start the fall semester as late as possible.

“I think there is a psychological barrier to starting before Labor Day,” Young added.

Pierce also wanted to obtain a competitive advantage over other community colleges, as it had experienced a 20-year drop in enrollment.

He believed that the shortened calendar is attractive to parents that need childcare, that the traditional calendar is too long and that it is educationally better for students.

At Santa Monica College, he believed the transition would improve student performance and at the end of the semester found that student retention and grade point averages were up.

At Pierce College there were a decrease in student withdrawals from classes and grade point averages also increased.

Young also believes that the shortened calendar is popular with students.

Fall enrollment at Pierce increased 16 percent and spring enrollment increased 20 percent.

The calendar implemented at Pierce utilizes a 15-week fall and spring semester.

There are two five-week summer sessions and one five-week winter session.

The winter session helped the growth numbers in enrollment, helped students who failed or received incompletes in fall classes, allowed students to take prerequisites for spring classes, and also attracted students from the California State University at Northridge campus who wanted to take a class during the winter break.

It also allowed students to seek remediation over the break and allowed some travel trips for credit.

The biggest problem in the change to the shortened calendar is that every class on campus needs to be planned anew.

There are difficulties in classes that have labs, because the same amount of material needs to be covered in shortened periods of time.

There are also problems in programs like nursing, where compressed classes need to be addressed by certification boards.

Young also admitted that the biggest complaint came from support staff and support services, who had to deal with another session being added to their workloads.

There is also a question of whether all students can handle the compressed calendar or if “good” students handle the change better than “remedial” students do.

Young believes this has not been a problem at Santa Monica College.

While many people on campus have not made up their mind’s about whether they approve of a change or not, Jack Swanson, an English professor at Cerritos College, looks forward to the change.

“It’s smart because it makes our system match with K-12 mothers that don’t have daycare,” he said.

Swanson also feels that it expedites the education process for many students.

“What is attractive for private universities like DeVry and University of Phoenix is that they are compressed. You can finish quickly. We don’t facilitate students that want to finish quickly with the calendar we presently have,” Swanson added.

Bob Chester, faculty senate president, has received a letter from a student who disagrees with the shortened calendar.

Chester had not yet read the letter and would not provide it for consideration in this article.