Students have much to prepare for when another semester is just around the corner—buying books and supplies, getting a new work schedule from their boss and setting up a class schedule that works with school and the life outside of school.
However, the classes do not just magically set themselves. Believe it or not, there are actually people who work hard on deciding what classes are offered, how many classes are offered and even planning for semesters a year in advance.
Jared Cutler is the Assistant Provost of Accreditation and Assessment. Jared helps maintain Sinclair’s accreditation with the High Learning Committee. He also helps with registration and enrollment.
Sinclair gets started early working on future semesters. Sinclair already prepared for this spring semester a year ago.
“Preparation for a new semester begins in the late fall/early spring previous. Somewhere around late December or early January we talk about enrollment goals for the upcoming year. Late January or early February is when goals for enrollment will be set for spring, summer and fall semesters,” said Cutler.
Sinclair does not just take into consideration what goes on in Sinclair, but also the world outside of the school.
“Our office of research analytics is reporting our data. We take a look at demographics and trends outside the institution, to see what our best guess is for enrollment. The board of trustees and the president’s office take a look at that and try to set a goal; a stretch goal that is reasonable and obtainable,” said Cutler.
After that, somewhere in February and March, there is talk about what classes are going to be offered for the summer and fall semesters. According to Cutler, historic data is relied on to an extent, but the chairman can also be aware of trends. If the chairman feels like a certain class is going to become popular, he can have more classes set up based on those trends.
Cutler also stated that enrollment was a little bit down this past semester. Going into spring, with that in mind, they set a goal for enrollment. They also set a budget to make sure they meet the demand of those goals.
“When we don’t reach the target, it kind of throws us out of line with the budget. It makes us think ‘where can we make up in enrollments?’” said Cutler.
A lot of Sinclair’s offerings are built around general education that is set by the state and even some of the degree classes are built around state guidelines so not a whole lot can change drastically overnight.
Sinclair takes data, trends, and recent history into considering what classes to offer, how many classes to offer and what they can do in the future to expand on their enrollment goals. Sinclair also takes into consideration the trends on the outside world to help determine what classes to offer for the best results for the students.
Many people at Sinclair work throughout the year preparing for each semester, and without them a Sinclair education would not be possible.
Matt Summers
Reporter