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Kalee Melton | kalee.melton@ttu.edu

Matthew Sullivan | matthew.sullivan@ttu.edu

Braden Vaughan | braden.vaughan@ttu.edu

Tuesday 25 November, 2008

Jan Childress

Associate Vice President for Student Affairs

Enrollment Management Council

Dear Jan,

The following document is a proposal to reduce Texas Tech’s class-week to four days long by removing all Friday classes. We feel that your committee is in a prime position to make a valid and sound argument to the university’s administration.

The main arguments that we make are that Texas Tech’s enrollment would increase to 40,000 (a standing goal of the university), and that the overall university GPA would increase. Included within the proposal are primary and secondary statistics, surveying strategies, and backing for these surveying strategies. There is also an interview with a Ph.D. student that attends a school that has four day class-weeks. All of this information is a great primer to help build a case for removing Friday classes.

Sincerely,

Kalee Melton Matthew J. Sullivan Braden Vaughan

Proposal for Four Day Class-Weeks at Texas Tech

25 November, 2008

Kalee Melton

Matt Sullivan

Braden Vaughan

Texas Tech Undergraduate Students

Submitted to: The Enrollment Management Council

Executive Summary

This proposal’s main goal is to transform Texas Tech University’s class-week from five days to four days by removing Friday as a day that the university offers classes. Even though Friday classes may not seem like much of a problem to the university, we can show that Friday classes are indeed a hindrance to Texas Tech. Texas Tech would be able to reach its full potential by not having any Friday classes.

The expected outcomes of removing Friday classes from Texas Tech are as follows:

• Raise the University’s enrollment

• Raise the University’s overall GPA

• Raise the University’s prestige and name as a result of these two

We will present backing for these claims throughout the rest of this proposal. We will also explain how removing Friday classes will accomplish these points throughout the rest of the proposal.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 5

Introduction 7

Statement or Problem 7

Possible Solution 7

Methods 8

Survey Overview 8

Survey Guidelines 8

Test Survey Problems 8

Final Survey Recommendations 9

Survey Results and Analysis 10

Survey Results 10

Survey Analysis 10

Research Findings and Analysis 11

GPA vs. Attendance Findings and Analysis 11

Four-Day School-Week Findings and Analysis 11

Energy Cost Findings and Analysis 12

Interview Findings and Analysis 13

Recommendation 14

References/Citations 15

Appendices 17

Appendix B 19

Introduction

Statement or Problem

Texas Tech is in the middle of a growth period. The university has stated that it wishes to see an enrollment of 40,000 students by the year 2020 (Young 2007). According to a recent article published by the Daily Toreador, though, “Tech's enrollment increased by 162 students from fall 2007 to fall 2008, but… that number is about 500 students less than the pace necessary to grow to 40,000 students by 2020” (Vanderlann 2008).

Texas Tech is struggling to grow and we have a solution that will help it achieve that goal.

Possible Solution

Texas Tech should offer less Friday classes, or optimally, stop offering them altogether. Our solution is backed by solid research, sample survey data, and primary source data. Some direct results of removing Friday classes would be increased enrollment, higher overall student GPA, and greater class attendance.

Methods

Survey Overview

A survey should be given to gauge whether or not the Texas Tech student body is interested in a four-day class-week. The survey will also provide some key information that will be useful in persuading the Tech administration to reduce the class-week to four days.

We tested an audience of 57 people with the survey that can be found in Appendix A. The results of the sample survey can be found in Appendix B. The audience consisted of the students in two class sections of ENGL 2311 (Technical Writing) and two class sections of ENGL 3365 (Professional Report Writing) here at Texas Tech University.

Survey Guidelines

The survey was written using the following key rules for successful surveys:

• Keep it short and simple (Anonymous 2007). Keeping the survey short will make sure that more of the important questions are answered. People are likely to lose interest in the survey if it takes more than a few minutes to complete.

• Use quantifiable and distinct answer choices. This will ensure that the data can be more easily described.

• Put important questions first (Henderson 2007). This ensures that the questions that need to be answered the most are answered first. Some people may answer only a part of the survey and they will usually start at the beginning. This also means that demographic questions need to come last.

• Keep the survey consistent (Henderson 2007). Do not number answer choices from 1 to 5 with 1 being the best in one part of the survey and 5 being the best in another part of the survey. This could at the very best confuse the person being surveyed, and at the worst change the survey results.

Test Survey Problems

The survey that we gave yielded mostly useful results. Here were some problems that we encountered:

• Several people (about 10%) surveyed didn’t have any Friday classes. The data gathered from this group could be considered extraneous.

• The survey didn’t have a uniformly distributed sample

o The majority of people surveyed were seniors

o The majority of people surveyed said they had a cumulative GPA of more than 3.0

o A relatively large percentage of the people were HDFS majors (about 16%) or accounting majors (about 14%)

Final Survey Recommendations

These are some things that could be changed to fix these problems as well as improving the survey in general:

• Make the survey online. Students should be required to log in with their eRaider account. The main advantage to this is that demographic information is guaranteed. This is because the university already has access to classification, GPA, major, gender, and class schedule. Another advantage to having an online survey is that paper and money will be saved. Finally, online surveys are often more convenient than paper-based surveys.

• Advertise the survey. The survey needs several hundreds of people (thousands would be better) to be successful. Some ideas of places to advertise are in TechAnnounce and the residence halls, both of which are free. Other good places to advertise are at student living complexes, such as Lynwood and Raider’s Pass. Facebook is also a great place to advertise.

• If possible, give an incentive. (Henderson 2007) People are more likely to do things for you if you do something for them in return.

• Normalize the survey data. If the survey data has a disproportionate representation of sample population to overall population, the data should be weighted accordingly.

Survey Results and Analysis

Survey Results

The sample survey that consisted of 57 people from four different English classes at Texas Tech yielded some good results. Some key points of the survey are that if Texas Tech stopped offering Friday classes:

• About 35% of people surveyed said they would be more likely to attend Texas Tech.

• Most students feel like they would have a higher GPA

• Most people feel like their overall class attendance would be better

• The majority of students said they would enjoy college more

We encountered some problems with the survey. These problems were addressed in “Test Survey Problems” section above. A complete listing of all survey data can be found in Appendix B.

Survey Analysis

Using the data collected, some main arguments can be made for making Texas Tech’s class-week four days long. We can make the assumption that with a larger scale survey, we could make the same arguments. Here they are:

• A considerable amount of people (about 35%) said that they would be more likely to have chosen Texas Tech as their college. 35% of Texas Tech’s current enrollment of about 30,000 students is about 10,500 more students. This would put Texas Tech’s enrollment at right about 40,000, a major goal of the university.

• Most students feel like they would have a higher GPA. Texas Tech is a great university. Having an even higher average GPA would reflect that.

• Most people feel like their overall class attendance would be better. We can directly link better attendance with better grades (See section ‘GPA vs. Attendance Findings’)

Research Findings and Analysis

GPA vs. Attendance Findings and Analysis

The correlation between attendance and grade point average is no surprise. Good attendance leads to a better chance of a high grade point average. This is not to say that some students cannot have a high grade point average and low attendance or vice versa. However, the trend between the two shows that good attendance leads to better grades.

• The article, “Scheduling Alternatives: Options for Student Success,” shows many benefits to having four- day school weeks. Among these, student and teacher attendance improved noticeably by switching to a four-day school week (Anonymous 2001).

• A report from Adel DeSoto Minburn high school gives the grade point average of all students who fall into different attendance ranges. The grade point average of all students at this school is 2.82. The grade point average of students having ten or more absences is 2.07 (Anonymous 1).

• An eight-year Mississippi study shows a full grade point difference in students who attend class regularly and those who have attendance problems (Anonymous 2006).

Implementing a four-day school week at Texas Tech would ultimately boost both GPA and attendance. The research shows that good attendance leads to good grades. It is evident that a four-day school week would increase attendance at Texas Tech.

Having an extra day off each week would give students a chance to rest, study, work, or do other activities that need to be done. Students would be rested up and ready to start back on Monday and prepared to attend all classes for the week. Many high schools and colleges that have switched to a four-day week see improvements among student morale. This idea would bring a change to students’ lives and excite them about coming to school.

Four-Day School-Week Findings and Analysis

More and more universities are offering fewer Friday classes. Other schools have found benefits to switching to mostly four-day school-weeks. Some student’s use their Friday’s off to get ahead in their career field with internships or work. This also gives universities equal class time throughout the week. The standard MWF classes get 10 min less of class time each week.

• Indiana University offers 40 percent fewer classes on Friday (Garrett 2005).

• Arizona State University and the University of California, Irvine offer 50 percent fewer classes on Friday (Garrett 2005).

• According to the National Center for Educations Statistics about 50 percent of undergraduates hold part-time jobs, and many use Friday for work, internships or community service (Hafner 2005).

• Texas State University also moved to a four-day school week. They offer labs on Friday’s but the majority of classes are Monday through Thursday.

• Southern Mississippi says, “By changing the schedule format to offer Monday and Wednesday classes identical to the popular Tuesday and Thursday classes, students may have gas-saving benefits depending on the arrangement of their course schedules” (Anonymous b 2008).

There are many logical reasons to reduce Friday classes at Texas Tech University. The majority of students could use the opportunity of not having Friday classes to do community service, work part time, or devote to internships. Also, by devoting Friday to weekend classes, or once a week classes, this makes schedules easier on students.

Energy Cost Findings and Analysis

One of the main reasons schools are moving to four-day school weeks is to cut back on energy costs. In today’s struggle with high utility prices and a push for more conservation a four-day school week is making more and more sense.

• Brevard Community College in Cocoa, Florida has saved 267,000 dollars in the last year from switching to a four-day school-week. Absenteeism is down 44% and staff applications are up 50%. The money saved has been used to fill ten new teaching positions (Zarrella 2008).

• Oklahoma State University is looking into switching to a four-day workweek through their summer sessions. Fall and spring semesters would still have five-day workweeks. An energy conservation plan already in place at the college has already resulted in 1.4 million dollars in savings (Anonymous a 2008).

Moving to a four-day school week at Texas Tech would cut back on energy costs tremendously. Savings would be seen on all levels of the university. The campus itself would be able to close certain buildings Friday Through Sunday. The Library, Student Union, dorms, and other essential buildings would need to stay open. Faculty and students would also save money on gas for that extra trip to campus. It would be a benefit to the university as a whole. It would be valuable to Texas Tech by showing sensitivity of conserving energy and caring about the issues that are important to the country at this time. Savings from energy cost would help hire more professors needed to manage the increase in enrollment Texas Tech is trying to achieve.

Interview Findings and Analysis

In an interview with Chelsea Stowe, a professor/doctoral student at Denver University, Chelsea stated that the majority of Denver University does not have Friday classes. Administration decided to get rid of classes because students would go skiing on the weekends, and miss class a lot. Denver still has some Friday classes, but they are mostly labs for science classes or class discussions that extend beyond the standard class (Stowe 2008).

Chelsea also said that Denver has done a lot of research on the effects of not having Friday classes. They had mostly positive findings. They found that by getting rid of most Friday classes, attendance went up dramatically, and student’s grades were better as well (Stowe 2008).

By getting rid of or reducing Friday classes, more students (and faculty) would be able to enjoy a longer weekend. This gives students a reasonable amount of time to travel home to visit families, or to away sporting events, etc. However, they still have enough time to study and get all of their homework done.

Also, because Denver University has seen increase in attendance and GPA, it is very possible that Texas Tech University will have the same desirable affects. By GPA increasing, this makes Texas Tech a more attractive school to new incoming students.

Recommendation

Texas Tech should offer fewer classes on Friday. In an optimal situation, the university would offer no classes on Fridays. Although Friday classes seemingly pose no problem to the university, we can come to the conclusion that they do. Texas Tech hasn’t yet reached its full potential as the great university that it is. Reducing the class-week to four days would help set Tech on the right path to achieving more greatness.

It is evident that Texas Tech would see numerous benefits from offering the majority of its classes on Monday through Thursday. Two of the major benefits are that the university’s overall GPA would be higher and enrollment would increase. As a result of this, Texas Tech’s prestige and name would be raised. The Enrollment Management Council would be fulfilling one of its prime duties to both SGA and the university.

References/Citations

Anonymous1. “ADM High Attendance Guide”. No publish date. Adel Desoto Minburn Community School District website. . Last viewed: 11/23/08.

Anoynmous a. “OSU considering temporary move to four-day work week.” Published: 06/04/08. The Associated Press State & Local Wire. Lexis Nexis. Last viewed: 11/16/08.

Anonymous b. “UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI GULF COAST TO PILOT NEW CLASS SCHEDULE FORMAT FOR STUDENTS”. Issue Date: 10/06/08. Targeted News Service. Lexus-Nexis. Last Viewed: 11/12/08.

Anonymous. “New Mississippi State University Survey: Class Attendance, Behavior Predict Grades. Published: 01/26/06. US States News. Lexis Nexis. Last viewed: 11/17/08.

Anonymous . “Scheduling Alternatives: Options for Student Success”. Date Published: 09/19/01. Northwest Regional Educational Library. . Last viewed: 11/19/08.

Anonymous. “SPSS Survey Tips”. Copyright: 2004. SPSS, a Predicative Analysis Company. . Last viewed 11/17/08.

Anonymous. “Survey Design”. Copyright: 2007-2008. Creative Research Systems, survey compant. . Last viewed 11/19/08.

Garrett, Amanda. “Universities offering fewer Friday courses”. Issue Date: 11/29/05. Kent State University News. . Last viewed:11/12/08.

Hafner, Katie. “How Thursday Became the New Friday”. Issue Date: 11/06/05. New York Times. Lexus-Nexis. Last Viewed: 11/12/08.

Henderson, Brian. “12 Tips for Conducting Effective Surveys”. Date published: 03/20/07. Prezza Tech, surveying company. . Last viewed: 11/14/08.

Stowe, Chelsea. Denver University professor/doctoral student. Phone Interview, November 8, 2008.

Vanderlann, Jon. “Enrollment increases Numbers not on pace with push to 40,000. Published: 9/24/08 daily toreador article. Last viewed: 11/24/08.

Young, Adam. “Faculty concerned but optimistic about push to 40,000”. Article published: 11/12/07. Daily Toreador article. Last viewed 11/24/08.

Zarrella, John. “Four-day workweek gets A+ at college”. Published: 08/12/08. CNN’s American Morning. . Last viewed: 11/14/08.

Appendices

Appendix A: Survey that we conducted

Appendix B: All results gathered from this survey

Appendix A

How many times per semester do you miss Friday classes? 0-3 4-7 7-10 11-14

If Texas Tech didn’t have classes on Fridays:

Do you think you would enjoy college more? Yes / No

Do you think your overall class attendance would be better? Yes / No

Do you think your GPA would be affected in a positive way? Yes / No

Would your decision to attend Texas Tech have been easier? Yes / No

Cumulative GPA 0-2.0 2.0-2.5 2.5-3.0 3.0-3.5 3.5-4.0

Expected GPA 0-2.0 2.0-2.5 2.5-3.0 3.0-3.5 3.5-4.0

for this semester

Classification Freshman Sophomore Junior Senior

Sex M F

Major

Appendix B

Majors Surveyed (29): Accounting, Advertising, Agribusiness, Agricultural Economics, Arts & Sciences Undecided, Biology, Computer Science, Dance, Early Childhood Education, Energy Commerce, English, Exercise & Sport Sciences, Food Science, General Studies, History, Horticulture, Human Development & Family Studies, Interior Design, Mathematics, Music, Political Science, Pre-Occupational Therapy, Psychology, Public Relations, Secondary Education, Sociology, Special Education, Speech Language Pathology, Undecided, University Studies

Answers to How many times per semester do you miss Friday classes?

No Answer: 5

0-3: 39

4-7: 9

7-10: 3

11-14: 1

Answers to If Texas Tech didn’t have classes on Fridays do you think you would enjoy college more?

No Answer: 1

Yes: 46

No: 10

Answers to If Texas Tech didn’t have classes on Fridays do you think your overall class attendance would be better?

No Answer: 0

Yes: 38

No: 19

Answers to If Texas Tech didn’t have classes on Fridays do you think your GPA would be affected in a positive way?

No Answer: 1

Yes: 38

No: 18

Answers to If Texas Tech didn’t have classes on Fridays would your decision to attend Texas Tech have been easier?

No Answer: 1

Yes: 20

No: 36

Answers to Cumulative GPA

No Answer: 0

0-2.0: 0

2.0-2.5: 2

2.5-3.0: 18

3.0-3.5: 20

3.5-4.0: 17

Answers to Expected GPA for this semester

No Answer: 0

0-2.0: 0

2.0-2.5: 1

2.5-3.0: 10

3.0-3.5: 26

3.5-4.0: 20

Answers to Classification

No Answer: 0

Freshman: 0

Sophomore: 11

Junior: 14

Senior: 32

Answers to Sex

No Answer: 0

M: 26

F: 31

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