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Academic Calendar, Holidays and Religious Observance - AA101

Last Reviewed: May 2016

Intent

The academic and administrative calendars for the University are established by the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs. The institutional calendars are referenced by the campuses’ chancellors and conveyed to and employed by the academic and administrative leadership throughout the University. By fixing the calendar centrally, the transferability of students and faculty for guest attendance at other campuses can be accomplished without disruption. By addressing a centrally coordinated calendar, UCLA Extension’s
program necessarily harmonizes with UCLA’s allocation and use of resource such as classroom space and parking services.

To inform UCLA Extension’s planning process and to ensure its compatibility with campus services, the Extension Registrar will publish an internal academic and administrative calendar at least two years and as many as four years into the future that fully reconciles to the institutional calendar. The purpose of this policy is to declare this practice, and to provide further direction with respect to practices unique to the administration of UCLA Extension’s calendar.Definitions

 

University Holidays and Energy Conservation

The University of California officially observes the following holidays. UCLA Extension schedules no instruction or events on these days. Offices and instructional facilities will be closed to the public, without exception:

  • The First of January. (New Years’ Day or an announced equivalent if it falls on a weekend)
  • Third Monday in January (Martin Luther King Day)
  • Third Monday in February (Presidents’ Day)
  • Last Friday in March (Cesar Chavez Day)
  • Last Monday in May (Memorial Day)
  • The Fourth of July (Independence Day, or an announced equivalent)
  • First Monday in September (Labor Day)
  • The Eleventh of November (Veteran’s Day, or an announced equivalent)
  • Fourth Thursday in November (Thanksgiving Day)
  • Friday following Thanksgiving Day
  • The Twenty-fourth of December (or an announced equivalent)
  • The Twenty-fifth of December (or an announced equivalent)
  • The Thirty-first of December (or an announced equivalent) 

The Facilities Director will provide a reminder to staff announcing all closures related to official University holidays. To conserve energy, the scheduling coordinator will to the greatest degree possible concentrate Saturday and Sunday programming in the fewest possible venues to enable closures of instructional and administrative spaces on these days. To conserve energy, the Chancellor may elect to close UCLA to business operations and instruction for additional days between the end of the Fall Quarter term and the beginning of the subsequent Winter Quarter term.

 

Religious Practice and Non-Discrimination

UCLA Extension classes are scheduled with the following factors taken into consideration:

  • The University of California is a secular institution and as such does not observe days defined as sacred by any faith-based tradition.
  • UCLA Extension is pragmatic in its administration, and therefore does not typically schedule instruction on days such as Sundays or Friday evenings when a significant number of prospective students would likely not attend due to cultural or societal norms.
  • The University, in accordance with applicable Federal and State laws and University policy, does not discriminate based on religion.

No student shall be academically compromised for the exercise or expression of his or her religion. For credit-bearing courses, when any single scheduled class session presents material that will be subject to examination, or when there is an exam, and a student chooses as a matter of conscience to observe a generally known and verifiable religious exercise precluding their attendance for the day, the student will be exempt from the exercise or provided a makeup session, a make-up exam, a compensating tutorial or benefit from the work of a note-taker. Similarly, for any non-credit course where attendance is employed as a criterion for the award of continuing education units (CEU), or is required or expected as a test for fulfillment of other requirements, attendance will nevertheless be excused.

Conversely, UCLA Extension reserves the right to anticipate the religious affiliations of its student and instructor populations and to limit its exposure to costs for academic accommodations by electing not to schedule class meetings on days of religious significance. To facilitate advanced planning, the Dean’s Office will list on UCLA Extension’s academic calendar known days of religious significance that would likely impact attendance. Departments will take this information into consideration and plan classes not to begin or to meet on the days or at times so listed. Catalogs will list, as appropriate, no- meeting dates and staff responding to public inquiries about such no-meeting dates will describe them as just that and nothing more – not that the University is observing a holiday or a religious holiday. The only holidays observed by the University are those listed above.

 

Calendar Constraints and Emergencies

With some academic terms, the number of meeting opportunities may be severely limited either due to calendar constraints or emergencies that impact the normal schedule. (For example, Winter terms are constrained at start and finish, sometimes require a late start, and span multiple federal holidays impacting our ability to deliver courses over twelve consecutive Mondays. Natural disasters can severely impact the academic calendar of any term.)

Under unusual or emergency conditions, the Dean may approve, as an alternative to the scheduling of make-up sections, an off-setting technique whereby unit valuation can be preserved by shifting a reasonable portion of the course load off contact hours and directly to students with additional compensating work to be accomplished outside of class. Approval for this elective off-setting technique will be for a particular academic term, and be subject to approval by program department directors course by course to ensure that learning outcomes remain the same. Because this technique can greatly affect instructors’ course plans, it is typically employed only in consultation with affected instructors.

 

The Academic Calendar and Attribution of Services by Term

The academic and administrative (fiscal) calendars at UCLA Extension are divided into four quarters by academic session, beginning with the summer term
at the first of July. The official, published start dates of Extension’s academic quarters will align to the first Monday- of- Instruction of the comparable regular-session terms, except for Fall, where Extension’s start will align to the official start of the Fall term (thus preceding its first Monday- of- Instruction).

For UCLA Extension, all 365/6 days of the year will be mapped to an academic quarter, with the end of one academic term (and accounting period) defined as the day immediately preceding the start of the next. This ensures that a UCLA Extension class can be held on any given day of the year (other than University holidays), including those days that for the regular session would fall between academic terms.

For consistent financial reporting, program department staff using planning systems will attribute each class to an academic/fiscal quarter/year value. They
will select a value corresponding to the term in which its first or only meeting date falls, except, if the first or only meeting is scheduled on the Saturday or Sunday immediately preceding the official start of a quarter, program department staff will classify the activity as belonging to the quarter/year about to begin. This practice has significant value for twelve- week courses held on Saturdays, particularly those designed around school teachers’ schedules.

In the exceptional cases where classes end in a different academic term, advisors, registration assistants and program department personnel will make a concerted effort to inform students of special considerations such as the compromised utility or value of parking permits, or the need to be mindful of changes in classroom assignment.

To ensure marketing relevance, department personnel can enable the display of classes with late start dates both in the catalog for its quarter/year, and in the next-quarter’s edition should it have a more proximate and relevant publication date. Thus a single class can be listed in more than one edition of the catalog. UCLA Evening and Weekend parking permits will be produced for resale employing valid dates defined by the registrar, and which expire no later than the day before the official start of the subsequent quarter.

 

References and Listing

This policy will be publicly listed. Questions and comments are welcomed by the Office of the Dean, Continuing Education and UCLA Extension, (310) 825- 2362; DeansOffice@uclaextension.edu.

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