Scheduling Frustrates Students with Q2S Glitch

The transition, known as Q2S, is a mandate made by the Governor and the Ohio Board of Regents requiring all universities in Ohio to convert to the semester system by fall of 2012. OU, Ohio State, Wright State and the University of Cincinnati are the last public universities to make the switch.

The transition, which is costing OU about 2 million dollars, has been frustrating for some students.

Amanda Norris, a sophomore journalism major, referred to her Q2S scheduling as “a bit of a nightmare.”

Unable to register for any journalism classes that she needed, she was told that she needed to get a pink slip for each of these classes, though they were all open and required no permission to register. As a result, she was closed out of a journalism class that she needed and waited in line for 40 minutes at Chubb Hall to turn in pink slips for non-permission classes.

“It was disheartening, to say the least,” Norris said.

Kate Steven, an academic advisor at the Allen Student Help Center, says that this issue is most common among students who have come to the Center for scheduling advice.

“The only problem has been that some departments haven’t put pre-requisite classes into the Q2S system so students have to manually get a pink slip for these classes until the issue is fixed,” she said.

Jeff Giesey, the co-director of Q2S, admitted that the pink slip problem is a glitch, but his office is doing all they can to expedite the process. When they are alerted to a class on the semester system that doesn’t recognize a quarter-system pre-requisite that has already been taken, they send a note to the registrar, which will encode the class in the system.

“From then on, students can get in there automatically,” Giesey said.

Norris is not as optimistic about the process.  She believes there have been a fair amount of obstacles in the transition.

“Considering the fact that they’ve been planning this transition since before we even thought about applying here, the transition is not near as smooth as it should have been. I feel like pre-requisites are a basic problem that should have been worked out in the planning stages,” she said.

Once all of the bumps of the system have been evened out, Giesey says that transitioning to semesters will be extremely beneficial to students. For example, most summer internships begin early in accordance with students on semesters being let out in early May. Now, OU students will be able to get those summer internships.

In addition, it will be easier to switch class credits from other universities within Ohio, since all colleges will now be on the semester system.

Steven says the entire process has been much smoother than she or anyone else in her office could have anticipated.

“I think that’s due to the fact that we had a majority of students complete the Transitional Degree Completion Plan, that’s made things a lot easier for most students scheduling classes,” she said.

“Even when we’ve had things that we didn’t anticipate, like this pre-requisite issue, we’ve been able to work very hard and we’ve had systems in place to go ahead and get those things fixed up,” Giesey said.

“Everyone’s been pretty good natured and understanding. We understand that everything won’t be just right, but I think we’ve come through with things in good shape.”