Provost Michael Soto discussed the possibility of adjusting the academic calendar Monday at The Student Government Association’s (SGA) weekly meeting as a guest speaker. 

Typically, the spring semester starts two weeks earlier than other universities, such as on Jan. 6, 2025. However, during spring 2026, the semester will begin a week later than previous years.  

This means that, most years, the spring semester will start the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. According to Soto, there are a number of potential benefits to this change.  

One benefit allows students another week of opportunity to work and bring in income over the winter break. Additionally, the change also allows students to have more credit recovery opportunities.  

“There are various programs across the country where you can transfer credits over a very brief window of time during winter break,” Soto said. “This is really important to maintain financial aid and athletic eligibility in a lot of cases.” 

Also, the later start allows staff to better prepare for the start of the spring semester. With the change, spring break also moves to the beginning of March. Traditionally, spring break happens before the start of the spring season begins. 

“It would be a more reasonable approximation of spring,” Soto said. “[For] most spring breaks here, there is still snow on the ground, so it doesn’t feel like spring if you stick around Pittsburgh.”  

Yet, one drawback from the change means that the summer term starts two days after commencement, which primarily affects faculty members within the school of education.  

There are multiple reasons why the university hasn’t considered the change till now. One reason was because Point Park students could get a leg up on competition with other students when obtaining summer jobs, but that no longer applies, since many students are looking for summer internships months before summer arrives.  

Point Park also used to share the spring commencement cost with the University of Pittsburgh to rent out PPG Paints Arena. However, after the arena was booked by a country singer the day commencement was supposed to take place, the University of Pittsburgh no longer does that. It was Point Park’s responsibility to book the Arena. 

“Thanks to Tim McGraw, we’ve got a divorce from Pitt,” Soto said.  

With the benefits of starting the semester later in mind, Soto plans to send a draft for both a later spring semester start and a class period schedule with a common hour to SGA to be reviewed in the next week.  

Lastly, during its announcements, SGA celebrated the ability to use two meal swipes in Point Cafe. This change will be put into effect immediately, allowing students to use their meal plans to get more than one meal from the Point Cafe a day.  

This change brings the meal swipe program back to what it was during the fall 2022 semester, when the cafe was last renovated, and the Boost mobile ordering app was first implemented.  

Restrictions on the Point Cafe began with the cafe closing on weekends during the last week of the spring 2023 semester and then with the meal swipe limitations starting during the fall 2023 semester. 

The fall 2023 meal swipe restriction was never officially announced, leaving students to only find out through trial and error once they tried to use a meal swipe in the Point Cafe a second time. 

For more information regarding SGA, the final meeting of the semester will be held at 3:15 p.m. on Dec. 9, in the basement of the Student Center.