Classes are changing, but the size of the faculty is not.
At Monday's faculty meeting, several class alterations were announced. First were art history major and minor requirements. Both art history majors and minors have to take one class from European art before the 1500's, European and American art after the 1500's and Asian art.
"The major substance of the change is dividing up the requirements in a different way so they are in these groups based on region and time," said Brian Howard, a computer science professor who heads the Management of Academic Operations committee.
In addition to the new distribution areas needed to cover in order to minor or major in art history, there will be a new course in art history on time, space and memory.
There will also be two new kinesiology courses.
But the change that affects all students the rescheduling of time banks for Monday, Wednesday and Friday classes starting fall 2013. Classes under the current time banks starting at 8:10 a.m. will instead start at 8 a.m. As a result, there will be 10 extra minutes to the lunch hour for students and faculty.
Freshman Dan Burmeister does not agree with the decision to move the time banks.
"I think [the change] is totally unnecessary," he said. "We have more than enough time already."
The final change to classes is that starting next academic year, the students in the School of Music will be taking the same writing-intensive first-year seminars as the students in the College of Liberal Arts. As a result, they will be required to take a class similar to the current School of Music seminars in the spring of their freshman year.
President Casey also announced the newest gift in the series of capital projects that are being funded. $2.5 million was donated to build the Wallace-Stewart Faculty Club in the new Hoover Hall. However, Casey knows that his job is far from done.
"We quite simply have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in endowment over the next couple years," he said.
However, he made a promise to the faculty: "We're going to keep this student size, and we're going to keep this size faculty," he said. "And the university has met that goal on the first part of the promise, as the completed applications are up by approximately 12 percent."
After the 2008 financial crisis, several universities similar to DePauw, such as Wabash, Denison, Oberlin and Wooster had to choose between cutting faculty and raising salaries like they had prior to the crisis, or cutting salaries and hiring new professors.
"We did not reduce the size of this faculty, nor do I think we ought to," Casey said.