Course cancellations are up this year, as 106 courses across 30 departments were canceled for this semester - up from 91 courses cancellations last fall, according to Registrar Michael Pesta.
While cancellations have increased, 87 new courses were added after the Course Announcement Bulletin was published, bringing the net loss to only 19 courses. According to the Pesta, 900 courses are being taught this fall, up from last year's 899.
The Department of History had 17 cancellations after the CAB was published, the most of any department.
Canceled courses include HIST 1420: "Twentieth-Century Russia" and HIST 1740: "Civil War and Reconstruction." Seven courses were added, though, including HIST 1973D: "Reading the Soviet Poster" and HIST 1860: "European Women's History." The department also added more seminars to keep class sizes small, according to Kenneth Sacks, professor of history and chair of the department.
The Departments of Modern Culture and Media and East Asian Studies and the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions each saw more than six cancellations.
Department chairs attribute the cancellations to personnel turnover. "We let the (registrar) know as early as we can -- in December, for instance -- that we think we're going to have these courses offered," said East Asian Studies Department Chair and Associate Professor of History Kerry Smith.
While departments declare which courses will be taught far in advance, circumstances can arise that force cancellations.
In the history department, Sacks cited the large number of prestigious fellowships awarded to professors last year as the sole cause of the department's course cancellations, calling it "one of those perfect storms of a year."
"We did our best to replace as many essential courses as we could," he said. "We think we got it pretty well covered this year."
In the Taubman Center, a post-doctoral fellow was supposed to teach two courses but then accepted a tenure-track position, Marion Orr, director of the Taubman Center and professor of political science, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. The Taubman Center had 11 cancellations and added three new courses this fall.
Additional course cancellations may be due to preliminary listings in the CAB. Smith said courses in the bulletin are sometimes place-holders for courses whose subjects have yet to be determined by the department. "We need to let students know that something's coming," Smith said.
In the East Asian Studies department, for instance, EAST 1300: "Monsters and Ghosts" had been taught by a now-departed visiting professor and was listed merely as a place-holder for the courses new Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies Samuel Perry is currently teaching -- a class on Japanese and Korean culture and another on Japanese fiction.
Language courses in the East Asian Studies department were also affected. CHIN 0150: "Advanced Beginning Chinese," an intensive course for students with some familiarity with the language, was canceled when Senior Lecturer in East Asian Studies Meiqing Zhang went on leave this summer, forcing several students into 100 or 300-level courses.
Frederic Lu '11, a Herald copy editor, said he was surprised "because the notification came very late and consisted of just an e-mail." After taking a placement exam, Lu was placed in a 300-level course but decided to take the 100-level "Basic Chinese" to work on his pronunciation.
"I admit that I'm a little disappointed that Chinese 150 was canceled because it was designed to be more suited for Chinese-Americans, but I'm learning a lot from Chinese 100 as well," he said.
Another student found herself in a similar situation. "I can speak and understand colloquial Chinese, and since the class was supposed to be geared for people like me, I regret that circumstances didn't allow for me to take it," LeeAnn Chen '11 wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
"I was extremely looking forward to taking this class."
