McGovern College faculty:

The Office of the University Registrar (OUR) completed the massive and complex reengineering of the fall schedule last week. The schedule will be visible to students tomorrow, with a re-enrollment period commencing Wednesday, July 15. I want to thank you for responding to multiple requests to identify your preferred fall instruction modes. Your participation was vital to the success of this project. I also want to thank Carrie Young and the McGovern Academic Affairs team for converting over 700 face-to-face classes to new modes of instruction in fewer than three days.

When OUR releases the new schedule this week, some classes will be designated as Hyflex. Please note that a single Hyflex class is actually a combination of two sections: one online, and another face-to-face. Both sections are listed in the schedule, and therefore you will see two sections for your course listed in the online schedule. By defaut, the online section will initially contain all the students who enrolled for that course prior to July 5. The face-to-face section is a newly created section into which students may opt in by transferring their enrollment. Students will be able to make these transfers once the re-enrollment period opens.

I want to alert you that this process opens up the possibility that seats in either section of a Hyflex course may temporarily become available, even if that course was previously full before July 5, as a result of the time gap between when currently enrolled students drop one section of the course and enroll for the other. New students who were not previously enrolled for the course and who meet the course prerequisites may have the opportunity to enroll in one of those open seats during that time gap. If all of the students who were enrolled for the course prior to July 5 remain enrolled for one of the sections, and if new students also add the course, this means that the total course enrollment may exceed the course’s original enrollment cap.

The maximum increase in a course’s enrollment would be limited by the enrollment cap of the face-to-face section, which is the COVID capacity of the room in which the class will be taught.

This possibility of enrollments exceeding the original caps may be a non-issue; we simply cannot yet know how students will reorient their fall schedules. In any event, the increases, if any, are likely to be relatively small. But it is important to understand the issue nevertheless. Keep in mind that the goal of the new schedule---and the approach of the university to the fall semester in general---is to provide everyone on campus, faculty and students alike, with flexibility and choice. As with any new system, there is a learning curve for us all.

Please let me or Associate Dean Beckham Dossett know if you have any questions. I thank you again for the tremendous amount of work you are doing to prepare for the fall.

Andrew Davis
Dean