RIIT Group Blog

At Midnight on June 7, the priority scheduling period for Spring Semester 2012 courses came to a close.  This is approximately a 2-3 week period of time, for each semester, during which the Smeal staff work together to optimize the privilege of advance course scheduling for the Business Building, officially known as “Priority Scheduling.”  Departmental staff submit requests via Footprints for all courses and events they hope to hold in the Business Building for the designated future semester.  Teri Jones, in the RIIT Group, then develops room assignments using a scheduling optimization tool called ASTRA, followed by numerous manual adjustments requiring assistance from the Departmental Staff to ensure the maximum number of Smeal Courses possible are held in the Business Building.

We are pleased to report that even amidst new requirements to adhere to the standard sequence meeting times, and a total elimination of all roll-over courses, we were able to schedule 97% of the 255 course sections requested for the Business Building for Spring 2012, the highest percentage since the opening of the Business Building in 2005.  After all the course requests had been addressed, the scheduling staff were notified of available rooms and as a result, we were able to add 8 additional sections.  Course scheduling is a tremendous undertaking and involves the cooperation and assistance of all the scheduling staff, as well as the flexibility of our faculty.  Special thanks goes out to Nicole Force, Stephanie Ironside, Lara Jackson, Janie Jones, Tina Jones, Debbie Lissenden, Cindy Lorenzo, Holly Packard, and Cindi Satterfield.  Without their cooperation and assistance, this project could never have been as successful.