Chairs of two Faculty Senate subcommittees presented senators with reports on admissions at SMU and the academic calendar at their Wednesday afternoon meeting.

Both reports highlighted the successes and various challenges in each subject.

Christine Buchanan, chair of the Subcommittee on Admission and Financial Aid, had both good and news for Faculty Senate.

One good thing: Admissions currently has 3,428 more applications than last year, although many of those are not fully complete. Buchanan also reported that there is a lot of new energy in Enrollment Services from changes in the office.

SMU’s goal is to increase applications and attract more exceptional students. But this increase in applications isn’t necessarily translating to a higher quality of students, Buchanan said. It just means there are more applicants.

Another problem is getting applicants who will actually come to SMU, not just apply.

“Even if we get all these great applicants, can we yield them?” Buchanan said. “It’s going to be a challenge.”

SMU’s first-year retention rate hasn’t dramatically improved, Buchanan said, with this year’s rate standing at 88.6 percent. The first-year retention rate shows how many first-time students return to the University the next fall. Last year’s retention stood at 88 percent.

Buchanan cited the economy as a major player for students not returning to SMU. She noted that many Hunt and President’s Scholars who might be unhappy at SMU stay because it’s better for them cost-wise.

“Students are shopping around for the best price,” she said, and there’s “no question that we’re competing with other schools.”

Doug Reinelt, the chair of the academic calendar subcommittee, told Faculty Senate that the big challenge this year was putting more reading days into the 2012-13 calendar, particularly for the spring semester.

Many students, including Student Body President Jake Torres, had bemoaned the lack of reading days in the upcoming academic years (none in Spring 2011, one in Fall 2011 and none in Spring 2012). Some faculty and administrators had also wanted to have more reading days.

The problem for the calendar subcommittee, Reinelt said, was whether they should add days to the schedule or take out days from existing breaks.

“We didn’t really want to cut days,” he said. Reinelt also said the committee didn’t want to shorten the time between the end of classes and May graduation because that would have brought up the issues of diplomas at May graduation.

To solve the problem, the committee decided to start the Spring 2013 term on the Friday before Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This means that students will start on Friday and then have a 3-day weekend, as MLK Day is a holiday.

Regarding Torres and the rest of the student body who had fought to add more reading days to the calendar, Reinelt noted the irony that many of them would no longer be at SMU when the change took place.

The 3-day weekend may cause problems for the SMU Police Department, Reinelt cautioned, but the committee felt that adding a reading day was the bigger issue. Reinelt also noted that the upcoming calendar wouldn’t have any “weird” days, such as Fridays with a Monday schedule.

The committee also added days for first-year early intervention grading and sophomore/junior midterm grading.