Ever wonder why Colorado Mesa University (CMU) student-faculty and staff do not have labor day off? Well, it has to do with a lot of math.
At CMU, the semester calendar for each spring, fall, summer, and J-term is decided by a higher administration committee of staff, faculty, and the ASG president. They determine how many days off we receive and when a semester starts.
“Essentially, the calendar committee is a group that gets together and looks at what we currently have on our calendar and what we did last year. We looked at what other schools do. We came up with various options,” said Chair of the calendar committee Holly Teal.
Teal has been a part of the calendar committee for many years, working on making a calendar everyone can be happy.
When asked if or how CMU can receive more days off, Teal responded, “That’d be so amazing. But it boils down to meeting CDHE policy, which is part of the Department of Higher Ed, and we need to have a certain amount of meeting minutes for courses.”
Essentially the breakdown between credit hours and the amount of class time needed to please CDHE only allows for six days off each semester.
“For example, if you take a three-credit class, and we’re going to multiply that by 750 minutes per class, that gives us a total for the semester. It has to meet 2250 minutes. Then there are different rules for different types of classes. So another example is when you take a 50-minute class, and you take three days a week, that gives you 150 minutes, it means that we have 15 weeks worth of classes that we have to have, and that’s just the way the numbers work with it.” said Teal.
Hence why CMU only receives six days off during each semester.
“If we push it we can have six days off because if we include the finals week, that will give you that extra day, and we all love our Thanksgiving break,” said Teal.
The committee has tried to make only six days seem longer in the past. The calendar looked slightly different ten years ago, with three days off for thanksgiving break and more holidays during the semester.
“Almost say at least ten years ago, might have been a smidge longer than Thanksgiving break was only three days; it was only Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And then fall break was a two-day break…But we found that students didn’t attend classes, and there was a lot of whether it’s faculty, staff or students, just the amount of travel that takes place during Thanksgiving week,” said Teal.
So next time school is still in session on Labor Day, think about how long Thanksgiving break is.
