End-of-Semester Policy

 

The Architectural Department acknowledges that conflicting course schedules and submission deadlines can cause undue stress on the students and impede their ability to manage their time effectively. The department has worked proactively to minimize institutional conditions that interfere with the student’s ability to balance course requirements. Discussions with students and faculty revealed a number of inefficient practices leading to conflicting or overlapping deadlines in required courses, as well as ineffective coordination between faculty members.
The policy acknowledges the equal importance of seminar, lecture and studio-based coursework. The policy establishes specific times for final project submissions in all courses and ensures that students have adequate time to focus on each course and submission. The year-level coordination effort embedded in this policy acknowledges the fact that deadlines in all required courses need to be structured to ensure that students do not have multiple assignments due on, or near, the same date. Year-level coordinators are responsible for communicating with all faculty teaching within a given year -level prior to the start of the semester in order to align deadlines and submission dates.

 

The End of Semester Policy states:
- All non-studio, required courses will refrain from having any assignments or projects due between the end of week 12 of the semester and the final exam period.
- All year-level coordinators will work with faculty in required courses to ensure that the student workload and deadlines are distributed across the semester (Studio Coordinators will also serve as Year-level Coordinators). 
- All studio assignments or any design phases submission will be due no less than 24 hours prior to the start of any review.
- All courses will be held for the entire 14 weeks of the semester.
- In-class presentations may occur during the final 3 weeks of the semester provided that the assigned content, (research, presentation, text, etc), is completed and submitted prior to the end of week12.
- Non-studio courses must utilize the scheduled final exam period for an exam, presentation or project/paper submission. This will decrease congestion during the semester and also allow for the material delivered in lectures after week 12 to be reviewed and tested, thereby encouraging student attendance in the final weeks of the semester.
- All Architectural Students should archiving electronically their design work, assignments, presentations, researches, reports, etc) before the last semester day.