After months of wrangling, the Curriculum Committee of the University Council has set April 1 as the deadline for completion of the first stage of placing class syllabi online.

“I’m really encouraged to see (the process) moving along and on schedule,” said Sachin Varghese, a senior from Norcross and former Student Government Association president.

In the end, students will be able to visit an online homepage with links to department homepages, said Scott Shaw, a professor of astronomy and member of the Curriculum Committee.

He said students will be able to click on links from the department homepages to access syllabi for individual courses.

“It shouldn’t be too many clicks,” Shaw said.

William Vencil, chair of the curriculum committee and associate professor in the department of Crop and Soil Sciences, said putting syllabi online is designed to help students decide which classes are best suited for them.

“It will reduce the number of people doing add/drop and hopefully will reduce the number of students who drop before the midpoint,” he said.

Vencil said the online syllabi also will aid professors.

“They’ll be able to get going faster instead of waiting for students to drop during the first week,” he said.

Vencil said many departments already have course syllabi on the Web.

Shaw said syllabi for his classes already are posted online.

Although the current plan for putting the syllabi online is predicted to help students immensely, he said it’s only a temporary fix.

“It’s designed to be a temporary fix until there’s time to put together a database that would be searchable,” Vencil said.

He said the database is expected to be compiled within one to two years.

“Anytime we’re helping students, it’s a good thing,” Vencil said.

SGA senators seated on the University Council proposed putting syllabi online in fall of 2002.

After hearing SGA’s argument for the proposal, the Council changed its mind and passed the proposal.

“We basically asked if professors would want students to choose classes based solely on what they see on the key,” said SGA President Latham Saddler, a sophomore from Charlotte, N.C.

“This is something that was one of SGA’s biggest accomplishments in the fall,” he said. “And it will benefit a lot of students.”

– Contributing: staff reports