Penn State Office of the University Registrar

The Office of the University Registrar will be closed on Monday, January 19 in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We will reopen at 8:00 a.m. (ET) on Tuesday, January 20, 2026.

Summer 2021

February 24, 2021

Good afternoon,

With the announcement in Penn State News about Summer and Fall 2021, here is what we would like you to work on with classes and classrooms for Summer 2021. I will be sending a follow-up email about Fall 2021 shortly.

  1. I would suggest that you run the query PE_SR_CLASS_TERM_SUBJECT for your subject for Summer 2021 and save this as of today. Some of you run information for your whole college and if you are one of those people, I would suggest using PE_SR_CLASS_TERM_COLLEGE. This is what your classes look like as of today. You will need this information later to see what rooms you had previously assigned to your classes.
  2. Please update your classes to use the COVID instruction modes. See https://keepteaching.psu.edu/flexible-instructional-modes/ for information on the instructional modes. CP and CM are for classes that want to remain in person. CW and CR will be used for any classes that will be taught remotely. If your class was originally coded with one of the hybrid modes (H2, H5, or H7) or with the web (WB) instruction mode, please do not change their instruction mode.
  3. Move your classes that have an enrollment of 250 or higher to the CR or CW instruction modes. You can also start moving other classes to these instruction modes if your instructor has indicated that they wish to teach remotely. Remember to follow these directions and change your facility ID as directed:
    1. COVID-Web (CW) = courses that were scheduled as in-person, but are shifting to fully online, asynchronous courses due to COVID-19. The Facility ID should be changed to Web and the meeting times/days should be removed.
    2. COVID-Remote (CR) = courses that were scheduled as in-person but are shifting to remote synchronous delivery (at least one synchronous meeting per week) due to COVID-19. The Facility ID should be changed to Zoom and the times for the synchronous portions of the course should be listed.
  4. As a reminder, the Summer 2021 Optimizer was run using the max capacities of the rooms and not the social distancing capacities. The social distancing capacities have been added to 25Live on the Details tab of the room, so you can see if you are going to need to make room adjustments for your classes:
    5. Screenshot of where General Purpose Classroom Social Distancing Capacity information appears on the Details tab in 25Live
  5. You can share these capacities with your instructors and have them determine if they can make the room work given the social distancing capacity. If they are using the CM instruction mode, they could split the class into groups to have a certain group of students attend in person on Monday, a different group on Wednesday, and a different group on Friday or split the class in two if you have a Tuesday/Thursday meeting pattern. If they cannot make the room work, they need to let you know and you will do either step 6 or 7. We ask that you have all the instruction modes changed by March 12th as the schedule of classes will publish on March 17th.
  6. At this time, you can swap GPCs within your unit. Only use a room that one of your classes was previously assigned to. It is important that you do not use a room that was not previously assigned to you as other schedulers will be swapping their rooms around at the same time. The query from step 1 should be saved so that you know what rooms you had and move classes into rooms that are now open because you moved a different class to a remote setting.
  7. If you cannot find a room that will work for your class with social distancing, I ask that you change the facility ID to "NONSTANDRD". I know that nonstandard classes have a negative meaning for most of you, but it is the only flag that I can use in LionPATH for you to indicate to me that you need a room. You will also need to change the "Requested Room Capacity" on the Enrollment Cntrl tab in Maintain Schedule of Classes to the smallest room you need. For example, if your class is going to change to the CM instruction mode and half of your 24-seat class is going to meet on Tuesday and the other half of the class is going to meet on Thursday, you would change the requested room capacity to 12. For a 24-seat class that is going to be split into thirds for a MWF class, you would change your requested room capacity to 8.
  8. Beginning the week of March 15th, I will run a report to see how many classes have the NONSTANDRD facility ID to determine how we will find rooms for these classes. Please try to indicate what classes will need rooms by that date so that I can get the most accurate snapshot of our needs.

Here is a new timeline for Summer 2021:

  • Today - March 12 - Schedulers update classes with COVID instruction modes.
  • Today - March 12 - Schedulers swap rooms with classes they moved to a remote setting to classes that need a room that are remaining in person.
  • March 15 - Registrar's Office reviews classes with "NONSTANDRD" flag
  • March 17 - Schedule of courses is published
  • March 22 - Shopping cart opens
  • March 24 - Priority registration begins
  • March 25 - Regular registration begins

Please email esmail@psu.edu if you have any questions. If we are getting a bunch of the same questions, I will send an email to all of you with further direction. Please watch for another email from me today about Fall 2021.

Take care,

Tryphena