dailF°£merald
%my An Independent Student Newspaper
Vol. 77, No. 4
Eugene, Oregon 97403
Thursday, July 10,1975
EMU employe Cora Fisher serves up beer as fast as she can pour.
I*T>| ha i .. » ■
rTKjios oy warren Morgan
Beer is
here
Wednesday afternoon, you’re
strolling by the EMU courtyard
next to the dining room and what
is that you see? No, it's not a
scene from your favorite tavern
but the EMU courtyard turned
beer garden. From 4 to 6 p.m.
Wednesday beer was served for
30 cents a glass. The beer garden
is scheduled to repeat the next
two Wednesdays at the same
times, according to Adell McMil
lan, EMU director. Following that,
she said, a decision win be made
on whether it will continue.
Faculty ponders
low FTE hours
dilemma
By MONTE ENBYSK
Of the Emerald
“Go out and tell every student to
register for extra class hours next
fall,” Bemd Crasemann, Univer
sity professor of physics, said to
an Emerald reporter before the
executive committee meeting of
the Faculty Senate Tuesday.
One may have thought
Crasemann was joking faceti
ously, but he was serious.
The committee fears a crises
coming this fall. The projected
student enrollment for fall term is
“substantially” down, according to
committee members, and so is the
average number of hours each
student is taking.
“The University is budgeted on
the basis of students taking 15
full-time equivalent (FTE) hours,”
said John Lallas, executive dean
to the president s office. “Not only
is our projected enrollment for this
fall substantially less than the en
rollment budgeted for, but stu
dents in the past four years have
been taking a lesser number of
hours and we expect this trend to
continue."
Lallas said that the average
freshman load has “significantly
diminished” to 14.74 hours a term,
compared to the normal 15.3
hours a term needed for one to
graduate in four years.
“This figure may sound minute
for just one student,” he con
tinued, “but when multiplied by a
large number of freshmen, the
amount of money lost can be dis
astrous.”
Lallas said that the fall projec
tion is now in the range of several
hundreds of student credited FTE
hours less than what was
budgeted for.
“It's very dose to a thousand,”
added Harry Alpert, vice
president for academic affairs.
Alpert put such a possible loss
of FTE hours into figures.
“If the decrease of FTE hours
students urged to carry more hours
wny are students now generally taking less
hours a term than in the past?
ASUO Pres. Jim Bemau has been con
cerned with this question for some time.
A study on why students drop classes
was conducted this past year by the MBA
(Master of Business Administration) Consul
tant Bureau of Business Research for the Of
fice of Academic Affairs," he said.
By MONTE ENBYSK
Of The Emerald
“This study dearly indicates two things.
First, a student often drops a class because no
information about it has been provided at re
gistration time. He doesn’t know what he’s get
ting into.
"Second, larger classes usually provide
more work for the student." ,
The study, he said, was based on a ques
tionnaire mailed to 2,000 undergraduate stu
dents and responded to by 572. The question
naire was mailed in February of this year and
the returns were assessed in April.
"I’m against encouraging students to enroll
in more hours by making the popular classes
larger," Bernau said. "The larger class size, as
this survey shews, forces more work on the
student for the teacher to evaluate. There is
much less interaction than in a smaller or
normal-sized dass.”
Bernau said he has five ideas to help en
courage the students enrolled to take more
hours. Applying these efforts, he said, would
require a joint effort on the part of the Univer
srty administration and the ASUO executive.
They indude:
•Furnishing a course syllabus booklet to
students at registration time. This would give
the contents, requirements and a detailed de
scription of each class.
•Making finandal aid more available to stu
dents from middle-income families.
•Reinstalling five credit hour classes in the
University curriculum.
•Giving a student two extra credit hours for
taking on work outside a regular course’s re
quirements.
•Pushing for a more active career planning
and placement program for a larger number of
prospective occupational ties with students.
“I stress the importance of considering
these proposals before fall term begins," Ber
nau said.
continues in the manner we
foresee,” he explained, “the Uni
versity budget may be cut back
$420,000 in the first biennium (two
years).
“For the second biennium, we
may lose not only this amount
(from student contributions in the
form of tuition expenses), but
state support, too, which could
total around $1.7 million.”
Lai las warned that the students
themselves would be affected,
with large increases in tuition and
fees.
The main purpose of the Tues
day meeting was to discuss ways
of helping remedy the situation.
Recruiting more students for
the fall would not help at this late
date in the summer, Lallas told the
committee.
“We must concentrate now on
encouraging the students already
planning to enroll to take more
hours.”
A number of suggestions for
doing this were discussed.
The first was having a faculty
desk at registration, where gui
dance cotiid be offered on the spot
to students who aren’t getting into
the classes they seek. The desk
personnel would also serve as
ombudsmen.
Another was giving the students
extra class hours credit for taking
on additional work such as re
search papers, extra reading and
things of this nature.
A third idea, agreed upon by
most of the committee members,
was inserting additional sections
for popular classes into the term
schedule. These sections could
be held in the afternoon or even
ing.
Crasemann noted that many
students are unable to get classes
they want because space prob
lems force instructors to close
them early in registration.
“If only the areas of biggest de
mand could be accommodated so
we wouldn’t have to turn students
away like this,’’ he said.
It was generally agreed by the
committee that more collaboration
would be needed between de
partments in scheduling the
right-sized room for each class.
“Most departments have been
aware of the space need in the
past,” said Don Rhoades, dean of
student administrative services.
“When they request a specified
space, all is done to help them get
it. But at times, things just don't
balance out.
“We are hopeful that additional
sections for some classes will be
offered in the afternoons and
evenings,” he added. “Through
the anticipation process, this
would help appreciably bring up
FTE hours and help the students
get their first choice of classes.”
ASUO Pres. Jim Bemau said he
felt the five-hour class should be
reinstalled in the University cur
riculum, along with making a
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