Say hello to the month of August.  Starting next year, classes won’t begin until after Labor Day.

When Joe Stowell took his role as president, he was eager to look for changes to improve the school.  One such change was extending students’ summer break until after Labor Day.  So a task force was assembled of various faculty members, division chairs, cabinet members and a representative from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary to make it become a feasible reality. 

This committee met several times with various departments on campus, including Spiritual Formation, faculty groups, division chairs, enrollment management and campus services in order to work through various issues until a workable schedule was established.

According to Timothy Detwiler, associate provost for traditional programming, there were several reasons the later start was desired.

“This will allow students to work longer in the summer,” Detwiler said. 

This past year, incoming freshman arrived on August 9 for Leadership Journey.  For student leaders, such as resident assistants, it was August 2, “which is way too early,” Detwiler said.

In order for the later start to work, a few changes had to be implemented.  Classes that meet on Monday, Wednesday and Friday will now be a full hour, rather than 50 minutes.  Similarly, classes on Tuesday and Thursday will meet for an hour and a half, rather than an hour and 15 minutes.  Furthermore, the times that classes meet will change as well, with Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes starting at 7:40 am and Tuesday, Thursday classes starting at 8:20 am.

Brent Rudin, associate vice president for university communications, doesn’t think that this will prove to be an issue with students.

“I don’t know that adding 10 minutes to a class will be horrible,” said Rudin.  “It will just take some getting used to.”

Another change is that Christmas break will be a week shorter than it has been in the past.  And Rudin thinks that students will actually prefer this.

“We have found that students who don’t do J-term are ready to come back before classes begin,” Rudin said.

However, these, essentially, will be the only changes due to the post Labor Day start.  More importantly than the changes, there were several key features of the current calendar that the task force was adamant about maintaining.

“We wanted to protect fall break,” said Detwiler.  In addition, the committee wanted to keep the “three-day Thanksgiving break.”

It was also important that the seat minutes for students were not affected.

“For every hour a student gets credit, they have to be in their seat in class for a certain amount of time,” said Detwiler.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle for the task force to overcome was the classroom utilization needs.  The schedule had to ensure that there were enough classrooms where classes could be held.

“It’s a huge puzzle piece to put together,” said Rudin.

It was also important that extra pressure was not added to administration offices.  Rudin said that offices such as financial aid has “specific deadlines” they have to meet, and the new schedule could not interfere with those.

Also, according to Detwiler there were “Cornerstone University variables that were unique” to making the schedule work, mainly the Leadership Journey program.

“We find [Leadership Journey] to be a very important part of a freshman’s experience,” Detwiler said. 

With the new scheduled start of classes, the Leadership Journey program allows freshman to maintain nearly the entire month of August for their summer break before arriving on campus.

And Cornerstone isn’t the only school implementing the later start.

“The governor, maybe two years ago said ‘all public schools are going to start after Labor Day,’” said Rudin.  “We’re following suit now.”