Upcoming Updates to Lecture Rooms & Assignment Process

Sent: April 15, 2025

From: Vincent J. Del Casino, Jr., Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to update you on our division’s classroom utilization and assignment process. For years, SJSU has underperformed other CSU’s when it comes to both using and documenting the use of teaching spaces. In practical terms, SJSU has fallen short of the standard for both hours scheduled and seat fill rates.

The legislated standard for a classroom’s use is 53 hours per week with a 66% station occupancy. Until we start to demonstrate our ability to utilize our classrooms sufficiently, it will remain difficult to secure funding for renovations or new buildings. Simply put, we cannot schedule as we have done in the past and expect a different result.

In order to secure priority for needed infrastructure funding, we have an obligation to meet a much higher use standard for our classroom spaces. The process to assign lecture rooms to classes has been reassigned from the academic colleges to Academic Scheduling and Space Management. For Fall 2025, this team used the Ad Astra Space tool to assign 1,500+ unassigned classes to 150+ lecture rooms.

I know lecture room assignments may be different. As we continue to improve how to best match pedagogical needs to prioritize lecture room assignments, we appreciate your patience and feedback. Department chairs have been asked to collect faculty feedback to share with college leadership. Through the various teams and workgroups, we will continue to move toward improving this process for future terms.

Thank you to the Academic Strategic Scheduling, Space and Enrollment Team and the Academic Scheduling Advisory Workgroup. For the last couple of years, these groups have been deeply engaged and facilitated feedback around many of these topics and more to collaboratively improve our academic operations.

Sincerely,
Vin