Sacramento State President Donald Gerth didn’t wake up last month deciding to create a furor by forcing schedule changes for fall 2002, despite how things may seem to his most ardent critics.

While Gerth’s Oct. 1 mandate of a “prime time” Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule next year outrages many students and more than a few faculty members, the overcrowding problems his plan attempts ? and some say fails ? to solve is a problem 10 years in the making.

During that decade student enrollment rose, fell and rose again. That?s when faculty started worrying about their jobs. That?s when students got a Thursday night social life. And that’s when administrators closed their eyes, according to critics.

In 1991, a recession hit California and punctured eight straight years of rising student enrollment at Sac State. The school’s schedule at the time was traditional. Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes ran 50 minutes, while the Tuesday-Thursday classes and some Monday-Wednesday offerings were 75 minutes long.

But by 1994, Sac State was in the fourth of five straight years of shrinking student enrollment, going from more than 26,000 in 1990 to 22,726 in 1995.

Classrooms sat empty. Faculty and staff faced lay-offs.

According to Gerald Helland, an analyst in Sac State?s Office of Institutional Research, the recession and falling student enrollment were linked.

“If you look at the California State University and nationwide enrollment during any economic downturn, the trend lines are very clear ? enrollment drops,” Helland said. “And when things are good, enrollment goes up.”

Faced with a 15 percent student population plunge ? and the decreased state funding that went with it ? administrators reacted.

According to retired mathematics professor Richard Cleveland, former Vice President of Academic Affairs and Provost Jolene Koester went to the Academic Senate in the fall of 1994 with an idea: Find a way to permit “flexible scheduling” that might attract students back to school and prop up enrollment. Koester, who became the president of CSU Northridge in 1999, was second only to Gerth in the administration.

Two committees examined Koester’s idea. The first failed to make a proposal, but the second, chaired by Cleveland, soon submitted a solution: Make all classes start either on the hour or the half hour.

The committee reasoned that their proposal allowed both 75-minute and 50-minute classes to run at the same time on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and offer flexibility to students. Some classes would meet three days, others two, on Mondays and Wednesdays or Wednesdays and Fridays. Still others once would meet every Friday for two-and-a-half hours.

Cleveland’s committee believed the idea would raise graduation rates by allowing students greater schedule flexibility, making work and school easier to reconcile.

“If a student could keep a job throughout academic life, that student would be more likely to graduate,” Cleveland said.

The committee tested the idea using a computer model and then, backed by the administration, forwarded the plan to the faculty. “It was enthusiastically supported by the administration, especially Vice President Koester,” Cleveland said.

But several faculty members did not like the idea.

“There was considerable opposition from some members of the faculty,” Cleveland said. “The proposal was heavily debated in the Senate.”

Opposition came from faculty members who didn’t like a trend that started in the School of Business and slowly spread to other departments. Professors in that department proved a four-day schedule would help part-time workers.

However, it was professors who benefited, not students.

Later this week:

Part Two: The shadow schedule takes hold and Gerth feels the heat.