Professor John Munro passed away on December 23, 2013. This site is maintained and kept online as an archive. For more infomation please visit the Centre for Medieval Studies

Professor (Emeritus) John H. Munro passed away December 23, 2013


Department of Economics,
University of Toronto
150 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 3G7

My Home Page: freely accessible to everybody.

the ECO 303Y course web page.

Updated on: Friday, 10 September 2010

A NOTE ON LECTURE HOURS IN MY ECONOMIC HISTORY COURSES

Lectures are normally two hours per week -- as has been traditional in this department and faculty during the 20th and early 21st centuries.

But, for the reasons that follow, I now find myself morally obligated to lecture for an additional 30 minutes per lecture, four times, each semester (eight times = two hours, for the entire academic year).

Because the Faculty of Arts and Science has recently (as of the 2009-2010 academic year) reduced the number of weeks of lectures from 13 to 12 per semester, and thus from 26 to 24 weeks for a year course, I have to make up the missing four hours of lectures -- since I refuse to cut any more material from this course.

To make up the missing hours, I will lecture for an extra half hour, to 5:30 pm, four times each semester. Those extra-long lectures will be advertised well ahead of time, on the Notice page.

If I miss any classes because of illness -- and I have missed only two classes in 46 years of teaching -- I would have to use the otherwise unused third hour for this purpose, as well.

I must stress the fact that the University of Toronto's Faculty of Arts, in traditionally offering only two lecture hours per week, instead of the almost universal three-hour format, has long seriously short-changed our students; and reducing the teaching year by two weeks seriously adds to that shortcoming.

The Faculty of Arts could easily have adjusted the schedule for the second semester to ensure that all exams finished by 30 April, to permit students to start work on out of town jobs on 1 May. Why, for example, are we starting the second semester so late in 2011: on 12 January, instead of the 4th??

In any event, students who have to leave at 5:00 pm for jobs, tutorials, etc., may feel free to do so, and will find any lecture materials that they missed available on the posted on-line lectures.

Examples at other universities:

Did any of you notice that your fees were reduced along with the reduction in the semester? I didn't think so.


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