Jasmine Zogheib, a third-year mechanical engineering student, is busy stocking up on snacks and ordering her textbooks to get ready for the upcoming semester. Zogheib said she likes to order her textbooks in early August because they take a while to arrive.

Zogheib is not the only one ordering her textbooks.

Incoming freshman, Madeline Curtis, is busy looking into the different ways to buy textbooks to save the most money. She said she is also preparing to start the school year by catching up on sleep and enjoying the remainder of the summer.

Meanwhile, no smoking signs are starting to appear throughout campus as a result of a new no smoking policy.

As students are busy preparing for the fall semester, The University of Akron is busy implementing new policies that students should be aware of. The no smoking policy, which prohibits the use of tobacco products on all University grounds and facilities, is just one of many new changes coming to the University.

Other changes include a revised General Education Program and a new refund policy.

The revised General Education Program will not affect established students, but it will affect incoming freshman, such as Curtis.

The new General Education Program consists of three tiers. Tier I and Tier II are similar to the old General Education Program; they consist of basic academic foundations and disciplinary areas such as writing, speaking and natural sciences.

What is different about the first two tiers is that they offer students more flexibility than the old General Education Program, Dr. Janet Bean, the coordinator of general education, said. This means that students can take multiple classes in the same area. If a student really likes biology, they can take two or more biology classes, Dr. Bean said.

The third tier is the Critical Thinking and Responsible Citizenship tier. The courses in Tier III, called tagged courses, can align with a student’s major, or allow them to get a minor.

Students can go two ways. They can use the tagged courses to get a minor along with their major or they can take tagged courses within their major to be more efficient, Dr. Bean said.

Incoming freshmen are most affected by the new program. Students who are not too far along in their degree can also switch to the new General Education Program, Dr. Bean said.

Another big change to the University is the new refund policy for tuition, housing and dining. This policy will affect all students.

The new refund policy for tuition retires the partial refund policy, and replaces it with a single refund deadline that coincides with the last day to drop a course without having a withdrawal appear on a student’s academic record.

With the new refund policy, students will have 14 days to drop a class to receive a full refund. Previously, students only had seven days to drop a class to receive a full refund.

This gives students one more week to decide if they want to drop a class and still receive a full refund. However, students will not receive a refund if they drop a class after the 14th day of the class.

Nathan Mortimer, the vice president of finance and administration and chief financial officer, said with the added week that the new refund policy gives students to drop a class, it allows students to become more comfortable with a class before they make a decision to drop it.

This encourages students to take a course and stay with the course, he said.

It’s also going to be much more simple for students to understand, Mortimer said. “The old refund policy was more cumbersome and complicated because it wasn’t tied to anything. Now it mirrors the withdrawal policy so students only need to know one date,” Mortimer said.

The new refund policy also affects housing and dining.

For housing, students will receive a partial refund based on the number of occupancy days from the first day of occupancy to the 28th day. After the 28th day, students will not receive a refund.

Dining refunds are similar. Students may receive refunds for dining up until the 28th day of the semester. After the 28th day, students are ineligible for a refund.

Students can read more about the new refund policy at https://www.uakron.edu/student-accounts/refunds/new-policy.

As the semester begins, make sure to be aware of these new changes at the University. Welcome back to fall, and have a safe and productive semester.