BY BARBARA LEWIS, Staff Reporter

Following a national trend, Central is beginning to consider switching from the quarter-based system to semesters.

According to Edventures Research and Consulting, 32 colleges and universities have converted or are in the process of converting to the semester-based calendar.

“Roughly 85 percent of [U.S.] universities are on the semester system,” Bryan Elliott, BOD president, said.

Central’s Faculty Senate is currently conducting a study on the feasibility of switching from a quarter-based system to a semester-based system.

The study is comprehensive, and includes input from the following departments: student success, admissions, registration, student voices, academics and curriculum, centers and finance.

According to Kelsie Miller, vice president for academic affairs, all but two of Washington’s public universities are quarter-based.

Washington State University and Eastern University are the exceptions, and Central may be next to make the switch.

There are also undesirable consequences of switching to a semester-based system.

“The only time students can transfer is at winter, because that’s when the semesters line up,” Roslyn Moes, international student adviser, said.

Many students like having quarters, because they get to take a wider variety of courses and also have more time to make up for having a bad quarter.

“I feel like the flexibility is greater when you have a quarter system because each term is only a third of the school year,” Valry Hensel, BOD administrative assistant, said.

The BOD is in charge of gauging and representing students’ opinions.

“This is going to be the last significant opportunity for students to express their opinions on whether they want Central to convert from a quarter to a semester-based system or not,” Elliott said.

Emails will be sent to students containing a survey that students have until Oct. 27 to submit.

Before administering the survey, the BOD will be providing unbiased information regarding the effects of each system.

“We were just asked to do a pros and cons list. We felt that we could do more though. We could ask students and get raw student data,” Miller said. “We wanted to get a greater student impact and make people aware at the same time.”

The BOD will present their findings to the Faculty Senate, along with the other six departments participating in the study.

The Faculty Senate will then give their findings to Central President James Gaudino and the Board of Trustees

The BOT will then make the final decision whether Central will make the conversion to a semester-based system.

Amy McCoy, Central student trustee, said the BOT would also be gathering input from both the City Council and the Rodeo Board.

If school started earlier, the rodeo and Wildcat Welcome Weekend could possibly overlap, which could cause a lot of congestion in Ellensburg.

“It would be disastrous if they both occurred at the same time,” McCoy said.

If the BOT decides in favor of a semester-based system, the conversion would not be expected to go into effect right away.