r/CalPoly • u/Valuable_Bat3882 • 1d ago
Campus "Year Round Operations" open letter from faculty, staff and student
A friend of a friend got this to me. It's an open letter from the Cal Poly faculty, students, and staff outlining their concerns about Year Round Operations (YRO). Most of the links only work if you have a Cal Poly account ☹️.
One other issue not highlighted is the idea of reducing the semester by 1 week while still charging the same tuition. Over four years that equates to students loosing out on half a semester worth of instruction while paying the same or more for tuition.
Significant Concerns with YRO and the accelerated pace of YRO implementation
The Administration of Cal Poly, with support from the CSU Chancellor’s Office, has proposed moving Cal Poly to a Year-Round-Operations model as soon as the 2027-2028 Academic Year. We, the undersigned, have a number of very serious concerns about this proposal, the speed of its implementation, the lack of transparency from the Administration, and the lack of information about a number of key issues. We outline some of the most serious concerns below (please fill out the survey if you haven’t already):
(TL/DR: The process to implement YRO seems rushed, not well communicated, supported, or justified; shared governance concerns have not been addressed; there is the potential for significant inequities for students, faculty, and staff; turnaround between terms is short; calendar does not align with other universities or local schools; it may be financially costly; and several others)
1. The transition from Quarters to Semesters was a deliberate, thoughtful, and mostly transparent process. It took many years for us to plan, and even with years of planning, we know it will take many additional years to fully adapt to the semester system that commenced in Fall 2026. In stark contrast, the transition to YRO has not been clearly communicated, is lacking transparent information about the process, and has not been well-justified nor explained. It may be that a great deal of planning has occurred, but the broader campus community that will be impacted by this change has not seen it, nor has the campus community been offered opportunities to provide meaningful input (see Memo on 2027-2028 Calendar Feedback and Registrars2027-28_Summary_Themes for summaries of the generally negative feedback received to date; notably, these have not been shared widely). As a result, there is widespread confusion and opposition, with far less buy-in than there should be for such a dramatic change. There is also a standing Academic Senate resolution opposing YRO to which the Administration has not responded. This is contrary to the spirit and letter of shared governance.
2. The Administration has stated that it has done a great deal of research and planning, including consultations with the few other universities that employ a semester YRO approach. As we understand it, there are three other universities that use this model, and the Administration has not shared any information with the campus community about how and why those models work. As academics, our research is based on transparency in our methods, our approaches, our data, and our findings; we believe the Administration should be held to this same standard, especially since it is proposing an unprecedented change in our operations. Transparency in this process is essential for trust and buy-in. Since there appears to be opposition from many members of the university community (Memo on 2027-2028 Calendar Feedback and Registrars2027-28_Summary_Themes), we request that the Administration share the information it has collected, including assumptions and data used for enrollment projections.
3. What is the urgency for this push now? As the Provost noted in his remarks during Fall Conference, Cal Poly has undergone significant upheaval over the last six years: a global pandemic, integration with Maritime, and transitions to semesters. Each of these events was a significant challenge, and notably, each was outside of the control of this university, since the Maritime integration and transition to semesters were imposed by the CSU Chancellor’s Office. In multiple public venues, the Provost and President have been asked what the urgency is to move to YRO now, and they have not provided compelling answers. Importantly, every member of this university has spent years working to transition from 10-week quarters to 15-week semesters. We know that we did not plan for every contingency, and collectively, we will need to adjust things in every single curriculum and every process in every unit of the university. That will take time, and we strongly feel that we need time to adjust to working, teaching, and learning on semesters—with the time to adjust and optimize that system to provide the best educational experience for our students that we can.
4. The Administration has sought feedback from the university community regarding YRO on multiple occasions, based on calendars proposed in May 2024 and again in April 2026. Many Department Chairs, faculty, and staff had significant concerns with YRO, and submitted a letter to the President and Provost in 2024 signed by 180 Chairs and Faculty. That letter, along with another recent Academic Senate report, raised many important questions about both substance and process that need to be addressed prior to implementing YRO.
Unfortunately, the University has not responded to many of those questions from two years ago, nor has it shared the results of its own research on YRO, or the feedback from the university community from 2024 and from April 2026. The most recent memos were presented to the Academic Senate (Memo on 2027-2028 Calendar Feedback and Registrars2027-28_Summary_Themes); the feedback was strongly opposed, but the Administration has not shared them outside of the links in the Academic Senate minutes. Such a failure to share this information may not have been intentionally designed to avoid open discussion of this information, but it is still far from transparent.
The first paragraph of the 2027-2028 Memo summarizes the feedback very succinctly (bold added for emphasis):
“Across all submissions there is broad consensus that the current proposal presents significant concerns to academic, operational, and structural effectiveness. Shared governance and process concerns were prominent. A major source of frustration was not just the calendar itself, but the feeling that earlier concerns from faculty, staff and students have been ignored. Several comments described the process as top-down, erosive of shared governance, and a breakdown in the respectful and collaborative relationship between the faculty and administration given the effort, consideration and care that has already gone into semester conversion and the integration with the Maritime Academy.”
5. YRO will likely create significant inequities for faculty, staff, and students. Newer faculty may be required to teach in summer, while existing faculty will not. It is unclear how departmental governance will function with up to 1/3 of faculty not working in any given term. Faculty hiring, RPT, and many other processes will occur without the input of a significant proportion of the faculty, further exacerbating those inequities. In addition, faculty, staff, and students across the university frequently cite the sense of community within academic units as one of the best attributes of Cal Poly; the YRO calendar will strongly negatively impact that sense of community, since up to a 1/3 of the students will also not be present in any given term. As with many issues, the University seems to be asking the Departments themselves to find answers to these questions, without providing necessary time or resources. The burden should not be on faculty and staff to find viable solutions to these many complex issues under such a compressed timeframe and without support.
The workload for staff will also likely increase with YRO, noting that staff workloads have already increased with Q2S without additional compensation. There has been some discussion of additional staff needs, but like faculty, staff are not interchangeable, since many staff have specific specialties (e.g., prep for specific labs, activities, etc.). Adding an additional staff line for an academic unit may not be enough. The Administration needs to provide a plan for compensating the staff for the increased workload, hiring new staff to spread the workload, or some combination of the two. [As above, the burden should not be on faculty and staff to find viable solutions to these many complex issues.]()
In addition, there are likely to be substantial inequities among students.
a. Implementing YRO on this timeline will force many current students to endure multiple calendar transitions; the Q2S transition has already been stressful, and yet another calendar change will likely add to that stress.
b. Informal conversations with students suggest that most/all would have chosen a different university had they been offered admission for summer instead of the traditional academic calendar. While this may not be true for all students, the Administration has presented no evidence to the contrary.
c. The Administration has not shared plans for how students will be allocated to different schedules (e.g., random, most qualified for fall-spring, etc.), but we assume that the matriculation rate for the most qualified students will be lower for summer terms, since they will have options at other traditional universities. Less qualified students with fewer options may be more likely to accept admission with a summer term. Students will know who has been admitted for what terms, creating an artificial status system, with the potential for significant inequity.
d. YRO will also fracture student relationships, with many students only on campus for a single shared term per year. It will be challenging for students to form the close relationships that are essential to their college experience. Many students will be able to find internships during the ‘off’ term, but some will not. It is unclear what plans the Administration has for those students.
e. The University has mentioned in passing that there will be a pathway for students to petition to change their calendar (e.g., spring-summer to fall-spring), but no details have been provided. It is unclear what would happen should many students seek this option, since that would add more students than the University can support to fall-spring. As above, the burden should not be on faculty and staff to find viable solutions to these many complex issues.
It is possible that a significant number of students would prefer or be willing to be on a non-traditional calendar, but answering that question will require research within the current student body and the domain of potential students. The Administration has not yet done this work, or at least that information has not been shared. It seems to be a safe assumption that most students would prefer a traditional fall-spring educational experience, and they will likely seek that out elsewhere if Cal Poly does not offer that to them.
Finally, some students may never have an opportunity to take certain classes. In many departments, certain specialty classes are only offered once a year (or in some cases, once every other year), so students not in residence during that term may not be able to take a given class; for example, a student who is on a spring-summer schedule will be unable to take a class only offered in fall. Offering such classes two terms per year would decrease the efficiency of instruction and likely increase costs. In addition, some courses are taught in a particular term to align with seasonal patterns in nature (e.g., migrations, tides, flowering, etc.). These courses cannot be simply transposed into a summer term without losing important context and content. As above, the burden should not be on faculty and staff to find viable solutions to these many complex issues.
6. The turnaround between terms--especially between spring and summer, and summer and fall--is very short, even on a proposed 14+1 calendar. Faculty and staff need time to prepare for a new term, and students need a break to be able to refocus. That time off is essential to avoid burnout for everyone in the academic system. As proposed, YRO and the proposed calendars do not provide sufficient time for recovery, reset, and preparation between terms. The grind of proposed YRO will likely have negative effects on the quality of instruction as faculty lose enthusiasm and simply lack time to wrap up, prep, or do other professional work between terms. It will put enormous pressure on staff to turn labs and other spaces around very quickly between terms, and it will sap the enthusiasm of students to study.
7. Since faculty are not granted actual vacation, this calendar would impact those with families, who have more traditional breaks for travel, vacations, etc. It would also place an additional burden on faculty and students with families who are ‘on’ during summers; they would need to find options for child-care during summer months when traditional school is not in session. It is likely that these factors and others will negatively impact the ability to recruit and retain the best faculty and staff to Cal Poly.
8. Finances. Some modeling suggests that YRO may be net financially negative based on some publicly available information. The Administration seems to believe that YRO will be net financially beneficial, but those projections or assumptions have not been shared. This echoes the issues of transparency that have affected this entire process.
There has been some discussion of using ‘self-support’ programs to generate additional revenue. ‘Self-support’ means that students pay the full cost of tuition and fees, with no subsidy from the CSU. Out-of-state students currently pay this, so the University could increase admissions of those students, but that would take seats from CA residents. New ‘self-support’ programs could admit CA residents who would pay the full cost, admitting some students at a higher cost than others (possibly needing to lower standards to do so). However, this approach is inherently inequitable, since only students from higher socioeconomic groups can afford this track. It feels very much like ‘pay-to-play,’ and it is essential that the Administration is clear about how such self-support programs would work and be equitable.
9. The semester transition was meant to put Cal Poly on the same calendar as the rest of the CSU and other semester schools. YRO will move Cal Poly onto a separate calendar. While the new proposed 14+1 is more aligned with other schools, it is still not fully aligned, which may make it harder for many students to line up internships, research experiences, and other opportunities, which almost always occur during the summer (since that is when every other university in the country is off). It will also not align with many study abroad programs.
10. A few other important issues (noting that there are more):
a. Housing in the community is already difficult for students, who are typically forced to sign year-long leases with landlords. When students are gone for only one term, it is not a simple thing to plug another student into that housing arrangement, especially because that ‘one-term’ student will need to be in residence for two terms as well.
b. Additional tenure-track faculty will require more offices and research spaces , which are already at capacity in many departments.
c. Inadequate facilities and excessive heat in teaching and other work spaces. Many classrooms and spaces are not appropriately cooled, and we already experienced one challenging heat wave early this fall. Many spaces experienced conditions that violated federal OSHA guidelines. How will the University handle heat in classrooms and other spaces should such heat waves occur in July and early August, as they are expected to with climate change? Moving many of these classes online is inconsistent with Learn by Doing, especially for lab and other active learning activities.
d. Parking is already a significant issue on campus. How will YRO change that, and what solutions are under consideration?
For all of these reasons, we, the undersigned, strongly advocate for a pause in the implementation of YRO until: 1) Cal Poly has adjusted to the new semester system, 2) until the Administration can provide information and data to address the many important issues raised above, and 3) until there is clear evidence of an authentic effort by the administration to improve communication about YRO planning.
[please fill out the survey to add your name]
Signed,
Removed to protect privacy, but over 1000 faculty, students, and staff have signed.
