The music department makes minor changes to their rehearsal times in order to work with next year’s schedule changes.

Tim McMillin, director of choral activities and associate professor of music, sees the time change as an idea that can be beneficial.

“In terms of the actual academic course work, like everyone on campus, it means an extra 10 minutes which it can be a wonderful thing in rehearsal as well,” McMillin said. “It will mean a little more contact time to reflect the four credits opposed to three credits. So I am not opposed to that idea, as a matter of fact I think it can be very useful.”

One of the changes that will be made in the music department next year is within the choral department to make rehearsal times more convenient for the students, McMillin said.

“Next year we would be looking at having to bump everything back about a half hour or so if we just left our schedule as it was,” McMillin said. “So as a department we decided to move the choral rehearsals earlier in the day and it will rehearse late morning. And I think in many ways that will solve our problem in terms of in some ways making it easier.”

McMillin said with the change of the choral rehearsals to late morning it will give students a little time to eat and relax before they have to attend their evening music engagements.

Besides the choral department, the music department doesn’t see the time change affecting their normal routine much for next year, according to Mike Eckerty, assistant professor of music and director of band.

“I mean the time change is not really going to affect the student lessons because those have already been kind of set up as an arrangement between teacher and the student,” Eckerty said. “So students will still have open time that we can fill.”

The only challenge that Eckery sees with the new class times is that it may take away class opportunities for some students.

“I think the greatest challenge with the time change is not so much the fact that it’s going to change how we teach; it takes away certain options for classes to be scheduled against other classes” Eckerty said.

Senior Danielle Aldach thinks that the new schedule could be a positive change for the music department.

“That will actually help a lot,” Aldach said. “That’s probably for the better I mean especially for rehearsals. It’s quite uncommon that a student is in choir and band, but it does happen. I am one of them, and I think that will be a huge help. I mean I walk in usually right on time to band, which the director hates because you have to set up. A lot of music classes involve setting up and especially rehearsals like choir and band. I think next year’s classes will be at an advantage for that.”

The teachers will also be at a benefit with the extra 10 minutes next year, said Aldach.

“I think adding on those 10 minutes actually for a lot of teachers will mean a lot because there are a lot of professors that go over by ten minutes and especially in a lot of the theory courses,” Aldach said. “I’ve had classes where they basically keep you late almost every day because there is just that much more to talk about.”

The music department sees the time change as way to reevaluate the times that they offer their current courses.

“I think it is an inevitable change that the campus decided as a community to undertake and so we’re going to try and make our program work within it,” McMillin said. “It gave us an opportunity to reexamine when we offer some of our courses. So we are moving some things around to try and avoid problems that would have been caused.”