A revised academic calendar proposal was approved by the Board of Trustees in January 2017 and BYU–Hawaii will be implementing this new calendar for the 2017-18 academic year.
The new calendar starts in September and goes through June. It features 15-week fall and winter semesters and a compressed 9-week spring semester in which students will take 8 credits to be full-time. With the 2017 academic calendar model, students will be on a four-year graduation plan rather than the more compressed 9 Semesters in the Residence model. Classes will return to 50-minute time slots and begin on the hour.
Background for the 2017 Calendar Proposal
To meet the challenge from the Board of the Church Education System to serve more students and use resources more effectively, Brigham Young University–Hawaii has been working through an evolving process of calendar change since 2007.
In 2009, two 14-week semesters with one-hour classes were implemented along with three terms in summer. Many faculty and students began teaching and studying for two semesters and two terms. The middle term was used very lightly and matched the local school system summer break.
In 2012, the calendar evolved to three 14-week semesters to allow more classes that needed a longer instruction period to be scheduled during the summer. This Summer semester contained within it a five-week break to accommodate the local school system summer break.
In 2015, the three 14-semester calendar was adjusted to shift the start date of the academic year to August and ended in early June, giving a seven-week break before fall.
All of these efforts to find a way to have three full semesters each year have emphasized efficiency, but the shift with the 2017 calendar marks an effort to balance use of resources with student academic experience and closer alignment with the broader Church Education System academic calendars.
View projections of future years of the new calendar: 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20
Click here to view the current academic calendar.
Click here to view FAQs for the new academic calendar.
Click here for the Newsroom story on the new academic calendar.
