Because of $6.6 million in one-time federal stimulus funds received earlier this semester, Sacramento State will restore 303 courses for the spring.

The one-time funding came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was intended to create additional jobs and encourage spending.

“The additional courses are being opened to be responsive to new students coming next semester, second-semester students who were admitted in fall 2010, and continuing seniors and juniors who are experiencing bottlenecks in some of their required courses in their majors,” said Lakshmi Malroutu, special assistant to Provost Joseph Sheley, in an e-mail to The State Hornet. “Our goal is to bring in 3,000 additional students for the spring, but we have to wait until December to see if that target can be achieved.”

Of the General Education restorations, 109 will be from the lower division and 51 will be from the upper division. For majors throughout the campus, 143 courses will be restored. Six restored classes will be online.

“The 300 additional courses being added to the spring 2011 schedule will help in ameliorating (improving) the student-faculty ratio,” Malroutu said. “If at the end of the admission cycle we find that there is still unmet demand then Academic Affairs is willing to open additional course sections.”

Thirty-three courses will be restored in the kinesiology and health science department, which endured cuts over the past year, said Joan Neide, interim chair of the program. An additional 133 kinesiology majors and 91 health science majors will also be enrolled, she said.

However, Neide said she is unsure if the department will have the resources to sustain the incoming courses and majors after spring 2011. She said although every department is working to give students a quality education, the lack of courses has been a huge obstacle.

“Right now we have only been given the directive that this is a one-time funding of those classes that we have added back into the schedule because our budget has not been released on what we will be doing for next fall,” Neide said. “It will ease the enrollment, but I don’t think it will be a cure. It will definitely help our enrollment for the spring, but with 3,000 students coming in, what do we do with them in fall? We just don’t know at this time, but we are hoping to be able to meet the needs of all of our students, but it all depends on what the state allocates to the university.”

At the very least, the one-time funding will significantly help in the spring, Neide said. The funding will also allow for some of the laid off part-time kinesiology instructors to return to campus.

“It helps out a lot,” Neide said. “Some of these people have been working for us for years and lost their job as of last spring, so it’s great news, but again, this is a one-time stimulus funding. The rest is unknown at this point. I wish I knew.”

Micah Stevenson can be reached at [email protected].