SU makes impromptu changes to teaching schedule

Since the first day of classes here at Southern University, there have been many last minute changes. While these beginning of the semester changes have become the norm for many students, this time around, changes have even caught professors off guard. Many instructors have been assigned to courses that aren’t even in their normal tract of teaching. This has been the case for many professors as well as many departments on campus. Many students have either seen the name of an individual slated to instruct a specific class or no name at all on the class schedules. When they arrived for those first couple of days, the professor was either a different person or nowhere to be found. This can all be traced back to an issue that has both positive and negative effects; increase in student enrollment.
Due to a most recent spike in the number of students present on campus, the university has had to actually create more classes to accommodate the enlarged student body. Both general course and advanced course instructors have been mainly influenced. According to advisors on campus, many of the instructors who were poised to teach a specific class were either given more classes within that additional range of subject or were just moved to teach a course at a different extreme. Areas affected include the Department of Art & Humanities, the Department of Computer Science, the Nelson Mandela Building of Public Policy and General Biology courses.
I can give a personal account to this issue. From a student’s perspective, 80 percent of my classes have had different teachers come in and instruct the class, as a result of the slated professor being moved to a different class time or another course section. All teachers that were moved on to the schedule all had the same response when I asked them about their transition. On the first day of school they were informed of the recent changes. I found it to be really strange that the university took action at the last minute on the issue.
Unfortunately for many students, they will have to continue classes with a professor that they may have had problems with in past or are very unfamiliar with the teaching style of that instructor assigned to that course; especially if the teacher speaks in a manner or language that is difficult for students to understanding what is verbally being taught.
As of now, there seems to be no further problems with further accommodating students and regulating class sizes. The only question that remains in the air now is will the university be prepared to combat the problem if it were ever to happen again? Before we know it, the new semester will arrive, then the new academic year. Will we take the same approach to going about the problem if there was to be another spike in student enrollment? It’s been a while since we’ve seen a problem like this, hopefully we will have the right tools to combat this problem when it reproaches.