The weather is slowly beginning to improve, and most students have just made it through their midterms. Spring quarter is creeping up and for students that aren’t graduating, it’s almost time to sign up for next quarter’s classes.

As many might notice when signing up for classes, the majority of classes seem to be between the hours of 9 a.m. and noon, peaking around 10 a.m. Un-coincidentally, EvCC’s notoriously bad student parking is at it’s worst between the hours of 9 a.m. and noon. Traffic in and out of the parking lots gets clogged and finding an open parking space is next to impossible.  This correlates with a high concentration of classes scheduled in this time period. Obviously more classes mean more students on campus, which in turn would mean more cars in the parking lot. But why are so many classes scheduled in this time slot, and could spreading classes out help alleviate EvCC’s parking crisis?

There are many different factors that go into determining class scheduling. The Executive Assistant to the Vice President of Student Instruction, Sarah Damp took the time to explain. First, the previous year’s schedule for that quarter is used as a basis, then the department chairs use data from last year’s enrollment to determine what, if any changes will be made. As Damp explained, “data regarding last year’s enrollment can be used to determine if some classes are getting low enrollment, or if there was unmet wait list demand at a certain time.” According to Damp, faculty also play a role in class scheduling, “faculty are contacted about their availability regarding number and type of classes they can teach for the upcoming quarter.” Some other factors that have an effect on scheduling is that the college generally tries to offer class series at the same time slot from quarter to quarter and that afternoon classes as well as classes with Friday meet times usually have lower enrollment.

Essentially, student demand drives class scheduling. If students are signing up for classes at a specific time the college will take note and try to offer more classes at that time in the future. So what times are preferred by students? Well when asked what time they preferred to take their classes responses varied, but the general consensus seemed to lead more towards the morning.

EvCC student Lea Adepoju said, “I prefer my classes early in the morning to get them out of the way.” Fellow students Kaytlin Chavez and Chenier Williams expressed similar sentiment. “I prefer them in the morning and afternoon, like around ten,” said Chavez. And Williams said, “I prefer taking earlier classes so like a class that starts at 8 something and I like to have my last class at 12 something, so then I have the rest of the day to do other stuff.” EvCC student Sahej Oberoi expressed his preferences as well as explained why he doesn’t like evening classes, “I prefer to take classes after 10:30, then I have enough time to get ready… however I don’t like classes after 5, at that point I feel like I focus less.”

It would appear student demand is behind class scheduling after all. Most students seem to want to take their classes earlier to free up the rest of the day for other activities, so the college will offer more classes in the morning and parking will be worst when the most classes are scheduled. It seems that the best way to avoid the horrible traffic jams and clogged parking lots is to simply take classes later in the day.