The University Academic Calendar lists when each semester/session starts and ends, plus holidays or special days when classes are not held. View Academic Calendar.
The Important Date web page includes dates and deadlines for students they need to know. Please review this information on a regular basis since dates/deadlines can be subject to update. View Important Dates.
Effective spring 2025, Montclair will implement a new academic calendar as part of a shift to a more uniform year-round schedule.
- Regular Semesters: The length of the standard semester will be reduced from 15 weeks to 14 weeks.
- Partial Semesters: The existing 8-week semesters will be shortened to 7 weeks.
- Summer Terms: During the summer, Montclair will offer one 14-week semester, three 4-week semesters and two 7-week semesters.
- Winter Term: Montclair will continue to offer a 15-school-day winter semester.
- Breaks: Uniform breaks will be provided at the middle of the fall and spring semesters (between two partial week terms) and also an additional one-week break at the end of the summer semester.
This restructured calendar is part of President Jonathan Koppell’s initiative to allow students to take full-length courses across three semesters (fall, spring and summer), enabling them to have year-round educational opportunities.
- Year-Round Access: Implementing a year-round academic calendar aligns with the president’s vision of providing continuous academic instruction throughout the year.
- Partial Terms Flexibility: The calendar will now have six partial terms within the calendar year, accommodating students with varying scheduling needs.
- Inclusion of Winter Session: Incorporating winter session provides opportunities for accelerated learning or remediation.
- Consistent Term Length/Duration: Ensuring that all terms, including partial terms, have an equal number of days or weeks to maintain consistency and meet our labor agreement requirements is imperative.
- Aligned Breaks: Coordinating breaks in such a way that regardless of the type of term, students and faculty can enjoy joint downtime.
- Fall and Spring Semester Breaks: Include breaks at the middle of both the fall and spring semesters for students and faculty.
- End-of-Summer Break: Allocate a minimum of a full week break at the conclusion of the summer session, allowing everyone to recharge.
- Eliminate Partial Term Overlaps: Prohibiting partial terms from overlapping with different full terms prevents scheduling conflicts and violations of federal financial aid guidelines.
- Consistency and Predictability: Developing a standardized calendar that remains consistent year-to-year offers predictability to students, faculty and the campus community for efficient scheduling.
Due to the change in the length of each semester/term, class times needed to be adjusted to maintain the state-mandated teaching time requirements for each course. In addition, this was an opportunity for us to develop a course block schedule that can better accommodate the needs of our faculty and students. By minimizing course overlaps and providing sufficient time for both faculty and students to transition between classes, the schedule promotes an organized and effective educational environment. Generally, with few exceptions, University courses adhere to the available course block options.
- Reduction of Overlapping Class Times: Class times, also called course blocks, are stackable, allowing students to take courses consecutively without long gaps between classes. This promotes efficient scheduling and course availability.
- Adjusted Evening Classes Start Time: Evening classes begin at 5:20 p.m., providing at least two course options of the same course block type (e.g., MW or TTH). This accommodates students who prefer evening classes and offers scheduling flexibility.
- Two Common Hours: There are now two Common Hours on Monday and Wednesday, 2 – 3:30 p.m. This creates dedicated time slots for student engagement and campus-wide activities, enhancing the overall student experience.
- Multiple Class Schedule Options: We are now offering a variety of different class schedule meeting options (once a week, twice a week or three times a week). The new course grid consists of 25 blocks of twice-a-week classes (three and four credits), 39 once-a-week time blocks (three and four credits), and six three-times-a-week time blocks. This gives faculty, students and academic departments additional flexibility in creating personalized course schedules that would best meet their needs.
- Fall Break: Similar to Spring Break, the University calendar now has a fall break separating the two 7-week sessions.
There are many different class schedule options, including the following:
- M/W or T/TH (2 days/week) for 3 credits
- M/W or T/TH (2 days/week) for 4 credits
- M, W, F (3 days/week) for 3 credits
- M, T, W, TH, F, S, or SU (1 day/week) for 3 credits
- M, T, W, TH, or F (1 day/week) for 4 credits
Can I mix two day and three day classes?
Sure – whatever works best with your schedule!