April 6 marked the start of class registration for students and the beginning of class scheduling troubles for the summer and fall semesters.

Due to lack of classroom space, some students have discovered that a number of classes have been cancelled or have increased in capacity.

Academic Scheduling Coordinator Donald Swinson states that there are numerous reasons why a class may be cancelled.

“The department may not be able to locate an instructor for the class; the department may decide to change the class for a different course. There could be a conflict with the instructor’s schedule or not enough students enrolled in the class.  However, it is possible a class could cancel due to lack of space,” Swinson said.

Senior marketing major Meredith Cusack said she had several problems signing up for classes in the college of business because she kept getting error messages.

A statement made by the Space Management said, “UTSA’s level of classroom space utilization ranks first in the State of Texas for institutions of higher learning.  UTSA ranks close to last in all measures of available space, including square feet per student, classrooms per student and seats per student.”

Swinson says the main campus academic classrooms average approximately 50 hours per week of instruction; the state average is 31 hours of instruction per week.

“Occasionally one of our classes will reach the classroom capacity, and we need to try to either find a bigger available room or switch rooms with another section with a larger room but fewer students, this sort of fine-tuning is inevitable, but not that troubling,” mathematics interim chair Dr. Sandy Norman said.

Since class registration is still in an early stage for the fall, major problems in class scheduling may be seen sometime closer to the start of the fall semester.

“Even if we had classes that were not scheduled into a room for fall, we wouldn’t be cancelling them this early,” Norman said.

“Inevitably, some courses will not make and will have to be cancelled due to low-enrollment. Those rooms then would become available for any courses that previously did not have a room,” Norman said.

Currently, other obstacles students are overcoming are registration holds and academic requirements such as prerequisites.

“Students have plenty of problems registering for classes. This is due more to the thousands of registration holds that students accrue or to courses already being filled than to any problem with actually finding a room; at least that seems to be the case with the math department,” Norman said.

“Other registration problems occur when students haven’t fulfilled the prerequisites for a particular course they want to register for or find that a course they need isn’t being offered that semester.”

According to Swinson, the Engineering Building II will provide four additional classrooms for the fall.

“We’re working with other departments in our college to coordinate course offerings at the downtown campus to more effectively serve students taking courses there.  We, along with other departments across the campus, will be publishing course schedule rotations that should help students better plan their programs of study,” Norman said.