COMMITTEE: Calendar

MEETING DATE: August 29, 2006

PERSON PRESIDING: John Crammer

ATTENDEES: Jonathan Dembo, Shanan Gibson, Punam Madhok, Johna Faulconer, Donna Kain, John Crammer

EX-OFFICIO: Austin Bunch, Michael Rastatter, Atul Bhula (SGA representative)

VISITORS:

The meeting was called to order at 4:00 pm in Rawl 142 by John Crammer as chair of last year’s committee. This is the organizational meeting of the 2006-2007 committee. Crammer thanked everyone for serving on the committee. The members introduced themselves.

Officers were elected as follows:

Chair: John Crammer

Vice Chair: Shanan Gibson

Secretary: Jonathan Dembo

The committee referred to the annual report for business carried over from last year. Austin Bunch said that the Executive Council is considering what to do with Memorial Day for the university. The state of North Carolina has 12 holidays for state employees (one of them is Memorial Day). Currently ECU employees do not have Memorial Day off. The Executive Council is studying whether to trade off Memorial Day with one of the days during Winter Break. Some schools say that their university is closed one day during their winter break. Donna Kain mentioned that a problem is that there is no day off between summer sessions. Bunch said that the Executive Council is concerned with recognizing Veterans Day during the fall semester. ECU is closed a day or two before Christmas and also for most of the week between Christmas and New Years Day. Crammer pointed out that Housing is concerned about a day break between sessions. Bunch said that no changes have been made yet. Kain asked about pushing second session to end later. That would cause second session exams to be on Saturday or put exam day on Monday of the next week. Crammer said the problem is that after two exam days and the Fourth of July holiday, there are two weekdays available and three situations that want to use them: orientation at the start of summer, Memorial Day, and a day between sessions. Another item of business carried over is coordination of calendars with Pitt Community College and the Pitt County Schools. Crammer will contact PCC and Kain volunteered to contact the county schools. The committee will also work on having a survey of faculty and students concerning Memorial Day.

Bunch announced that there will be no more Founders Week in the future. The centennial celebration will run from March 8, 2007 (centennial of legislation approving the founding) to October 5, 2009 (centennial of the first day of classes). After the end of the centennial celebration, the university will celebrate on March 8 each year instead of having a Founders Week celebration. The committee talked about moving spring registration one week earlier since there would be no Founders Week.

The committee set goals for the current year:

1. Create calendar for 2008-2009

2. Resolve the Memorial Day problem

3. Consider adding a day between Summer Sessions

4. Continue communications & consultations with Pitt Community College and Pitt County schools.

Crammer distributed information on old schedules, the General Administration memo of lengths of semesters, and spreadsheets with sample calendars for 2008-2009.

Bunch said the commencement task force on how to celebrate commencement is considering holding commencement on Fridays followed by unit ceremonies. They are also considering using the stadium in the spring and having only one ceremony in the spring (fall will continue to have two indoor ceremonies). Crammer pointed out that when the committee considered having commencement on Sunday there was considerable opposition to the idea.

Crammer asked the committee whether it should decide how late (close to Christmas) exams could end in the fall and how early (after New Years) the spring semester could start.

The committee will next meet in September (after a time can be found when we can all meet); Crammer will contact the committee when he has more information. The committee will work on the surveys concerning Memorial Day and the 2008-2009 calendar.

Meeting adjourned at 4:40 pm.