University to remove dead days after spring 2016
Winter break at all quarter-system University of California (UC) campuses, with the exceptions of UC San Diego and UC Santa Cruz, will be exactly four weeks long during the upcoming 2016-17 school year, rather than the usual three weeks.
The break will run from Dec. 9, 2016 to Jan. 9, 2017. UC San Diego will start break a day later on Dec. 10 while UC Santa Cruz will begin on Dec. 8. Both universities will end break on the same date as other quarter-system UCs.
Because New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day fall on a Saturday and a Sunday and will be observed on work weekdays, Winter Quarter will start one week later than usual.
“This year, the New Year’s holidays fall on a Saturday and a Sunday, and as a result, these academic and administrative holidays will be observed on Friday, Dec. 30, and Monday, Jan. 2,” said Ali Marie Cordone, interim associate registrar via email. “With the Winter Quarter always beginning on a Monday, the observance of the holidays pushes the start of the winter quarter out to Monday, Jan. 8, 2017, giving students an additional week before starting classes.”
Daniel Kotlyar, a third-year mechanical engineering major, plans to use this time to travel and explore.
“I think it’s great [having four weeks for break] because it provides enough time for somebody to travel abroad for at least three weeks,” Kotlyar said. “That’s what I’m planning to do for this winter break coming up, so I’m glad.”
Thoughts of family and time back home were brought up by Cathy Quach, a second-year biochemistry and molecular biology major.
“It will be nicer for us to have a longer break where we can just spend time with family and for international students to go home and enjoy their time home more,” Quach said. “[The longer break will] give us more time to reflect on everything that has happened. Three weeks, it seems like a lot, but it goes by really quickly.”
In addition to the winter break extension, a few permanent changes have been made to the academic calendar. After the 2015-16 school year, there will no longer be any final examinations on Saturdays.
“This Spring Quarter will be the last regular academic quarter to have a dead day between the end of instruction on Thursday and the beginning of exams on Saturday. The dead days were eliminated to end Saturday exams,” Cordone said. “Students had been advocating for an end to Saturday exams. Campus leadership worked with representatives of the Associated Students of UC Davis to do just that. About a year ago, UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi forwarded their recommendation to the UC Office of the President, and it was approved.”
Along with the elimination of the dead days starting next year, future Winter and Spring Quarters will be shortened from 50 to 48 days long while Fall Quarter will remain 50 days long.
The longer break is not a one-time occurrence: it will happen again during the 2022-23 school year. However, between 2017 and 2022 winter breaks will remain the usual three-week length.
“The 2017 winter break will only have 23 days between the end of the Fall Quarter and the beginning of the Winter Quarter classes, which is more typical,” Cordone said. “But we will see a 30-day winter break again in 2022-23.”
Written by: Kenton Goldsby – campus@theaggie.org
