The College of Arts, Education and Sciences (CAES) announced its plan to reduce winter-session courses. Unlike previous winter terms, CAES decided to offer only one course: Professional Writing and Planning. Communications professor Ann Rodriguez will be teaching the course this winter.
The dean of CAES, John Pratte, explained the college started offering winter courses in 2007 to offset the impacts of Hurricane Katrina. At the time, many students needed the courses to meet graduation requirements. CAES began providing more courses until nearly all regular session courses were available in winter sessions.
“These types of courses rarely keep a student from graduating, and very few serve as the only prerequisite for a course required of graduates,” Pratte said.
Pratte stated that ULM officials reviewed the course schedules for both Fall 2024 and Spring 2025. After examining students’ graduation requirements, officials realized that most winter session courses were unnecessary.
“What we found was that none of the students needed the winter session course in order to prevent an overload in the regular session or to serve as a prerequisite for other courses,” Pratte said. “We also discovered that there were more than enough open slots in the same classes during the regular session to handle these enrollments.”
In the last month, ULM officials discovered a group of students who would still need a winter session course in order to graduate on time.
“Advising of students over the past month has uncovered a group of students in one program who need a prerequisite course for a mandatory class that is only offered in Spring Semesters,” Pratte said. “If they are not able to take this course this winter session, then they will not be able to graduate until Spring of 2026 instead of 2025. Therefore, we are putting this course on the schedule.”
During the ULM faculty senate’s regular meeting on Oct. 24, Jeff Anderson, the president of faculty senate, mentioned potential changes to winter-session course offerings. He explained that the administration was managing funding for summer-session and winter-session classes.
According to Anderson, CAES had already announced its plan for the winter session, and other colleges planned to conduct similar evaluations. ULM officials, including the deans of each college, would decide which courses are financially feasible.
“Dr. Arant is still looking at winter [session] trying to determine information about the profitability or lack thereof of winter classes,” Anderson said.
