The Murray State Undergraduate and Graduate course catalogues will be combined into one booklet for the 2012-13 semesters.
Planned to go out in July, the course catalogues, or bulletins, have been a part of the University admissions process for 20 years. The bulletins were created to help incoming freshmen and prospective graduate students make a choice as to which classes to take.
The current bulletins, both undergraduate and the graduate, include basic University information, such as the school’s mission statement and the admission requirements. Apart from that, students can find general information about the different class requirements and programs offered.
Currently, both catalogues list separate admission requirements but the new catalogue will list the requirements at the beginning of the booklet and will include general University information, along with academic and class descriptions towards the back.
Bonnie Higginson, vice president of Academic Affairs, said the new combination of both the bulletins would help with more than financial matters.
“We think it will be more efficient to combine the two and have one catalogue,” she said. “It will be more efficient, more cost effective and easier to keep up-to-date.”
Higginson said the bulletin was also a quick and easy way to answer more student questions then years before. She said the University can process larger packages of information than it could in previous years.
Cassandra Radish, freshman from Glasgow, Ky., said the combined bulletin would not have been helpful when she was planning her academic career at the start of the year.
“It definitely would have made it difficult to see what classes to take and what time I would have to take them due to a lot more information being put in there.” said Radish. “I do want to go into athletic training, which does have a lot of difficult courses and it would have been a lot more confusing.”
Katie McNew, sophomore from Shelbyville, Ky., said the combined bulletin would be unnecessary due to the confusion it may cause.
“I think that combining the graduate and undergraduate bulletins will make the process of choosing courses difficult and convoluted, as if it weren’t enough to navigate the undergraduate bulletin on its own in the first place,” McNew said.
McNew said the combined bulletin would be irrelevant to either group due to the information not being needed by some.
“The undergraduate courses are irrelevant to grad students, and the graduate courses are irrelevant to the undergraduates,” McNew said. “I don’t understand how combining the two will benefit either party.