Final exams schedule set according to system

To all of those students who have wondered why they get stuck with a final on the last day of… To all of those students who have wondered why they get stuck with a final on the last day of finals week: It’s not random.

According to Daniel Stump, Pitt’s manager of course and class scheduling, the University schedule works around a rotation-based formula organized by the Office of the University Registrar, which focuses on staggering exams throughout finals week for each department.

Patti Mathay, the associate registrar, said the University registrar begins constructing the finals schedule four weeks prior to the end of a previous term, so her office is already working on the schedule for Pitt’s spring term finals.

“Over the course of a few weeks, a draft of the schedule is created, reviewed and then revised as necessary,” she said. “Our goal is to have it available on our website before the start of the term.”

After the start of a new term, the room scheduling for final exams begins, and classroom waiver forms and special requests are processed before classrooms get assigned.

Mathay said the goal is for classroom assignments to be completed six to eight weeks into the new term.

This is done so the University registrar can prevent the same finals from being at 8 a.m. or on Saturday every term.

Some instructors prefer to nix the entire final exam scheduling process and instead plan to have a final examination on the last lecture day. One such instructor is Daniel Tirone.

Tirone, doctoral candidate in the political science department, traditionally does this in his World Politics course, saying he usually gives the final exam during the last scheduled class before finals week.

Colleen Riley, a junior majoring in political science and history who is enrolled in Tirone’s course, said she appreciates the change in scheduling, because it means her final will not fall on Saturday, which was the examination’s originally scheduled date.

“I never would want a Saturday final,” she said. “It’s nicer to have it on a weekday, and you can get it all out of the way earlier.”

Riley currently has two papers and a final performance to prepare for during finals week.

Students with more than two exams on a single day during finals week can fill out a Final Examination Conflict Accommodation Request form with the University registrar’s office.

The student must then approach instructors for each of the courses and request a change in exam time.

If instructors will not provide a more accommodating exam time, the instructor of the course in the middle time slot between the other two examinations must reschedule this exam for the student, unless it is a departmental exam, in which case the instructor of the course with the lowest enrollment must provide an alternate exam time.

Exceptions aside, the University’s Final Exam Conflict Accommodation Guideline specifies this: “The final examination in a course must be given as scheduled by the Registrar’s Office and not at other times, even if the faculty member and all students in a course agree to such a change.”

According to Stump, departments not using final exam facilities for the scheduled time slots must fill out Classroom Waiver Forms. Beyond this, the University registrar does not follow up on why a room is not used.

So instructors like Tirone get the approval of their departments and forge ahead with an alternative to the traditional exam scheduling, opting for examinations at new times as agreed upon with students in advance.