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Room scheduling

The registrar schedules General-Purpose Classrooms, or GPCs, for campus units. Our GPC lists include room capacities and available media.

Overview.

The registrar serves as a convenient central scheduling unit for about three-fourths of the classrooms on campus. These rooms are called general-purpose classrooms, or GPCs, and are designated as such by explicit agreements between the academic deans, the provost, and our office. There is a legislative mandate that classes come first in our rooms, so after registration is complete we reserve rooms for Credit-by-Exam and then process other requests in the order they are received.

Besides the 25,000+ classes scheduled annually, we schedule another 30,000 events in these rooms every year supporting such things as review sessions, mid-term and final exams, University Extension courses, Texas Union Informal Classes, UIL, commencement, and many, many other events pursuant to the University’s mission statement. Requests for rooms may be submitted as early as the user can identify them (to the e-mail address at the bottom of this page), but they are only processed within a couple of weeks of the beginning of a semester in order to allow for maximum flexibility in offering courses (as required by the legislative mandate).

In addition to maintaining the system and the reservations in it, we also communicate with Custodial Services, Utilities, Facilities Management, and other offices to open the rooms, air-condition (or heat) them, and coordinate construction and maintenance in the rooms.

Final exams.

When scheduling final exams, we consider the rooms' exam capacity, usually about half the normal capacity, to allow for double-seating -- an empty seat between each student. Because seating configurations vary, exam capacity may not be exactly half of the total number of seats. Due to the demand on exam rooms, we are not always able to provide double-seating in all exam periods.

Our lists don’t include departmental rooms, those controlled by other campus units. We will only assign departmental rooms for final exams upon an explicit request by the department (since we neither know nor control the availability of these rooms). We also don’t schedule rooms with seminar tables, marked SMNR in our lists, for final exams except upon request. » Get our current GPC exam capacity list (54K PDF).

Faculty and staff use.

Faculty and staff may find rooms via our room scheduling system, and may then call to make university-related reservations of general-purpose classrooms. To gain access to our system, attend a one-hour training session by signing up for TXClass RG 400. Call our office for more information at 475-7600, Mon thru Fri from 830a to 12n, and 1 to 430p. If you have already attended training you may refresh your memory with the RG 400 class handout (475K PDF).

Student use.

To use campus facilities, registered student organizations must contact the Dean of Students’ Student Activities and Leadership Development (or SALD) (previously known as Campus and Community Involvement). Groups which are not currently registered may not make reservations. Students wishing to reserve rooms for study sessions must do so through staff or faculty in their academic unit.

Off-campus individuals or groups.

Requests to sponsor:

• individuals who are not UT students, faculty, or staff;
• groups that are not registered UT student, faculty, or staff organizations;
• or associations or corporations

to use University property or buildings (including General-Purpose Classrooms) must be approved by the Provost prior to an invitation being extended to the external party. See Regents’ Rules and Regulations, Rule 80105 for more information. In order to obtain this approval, please fill out our Request to sponsor off-campus individuals or groups (RG 750) and forward it as instructed on the form.

General information about media contacts.

Reservations through our office are for classroom space only; requests for media or other types of support should be directed as follows:

Life safety code and help with opening rooms.

Provisions in the Life Safety Code prohibit the occupancy of any classroom in excess of the designated seating capacity. Responsibility for assuring compliance with the safety code rests with the user of the room who may be cited for violations.

In our normal processes we notify Custodial Services of all reservations and they unlock our classrooms 24/7 based on reservations in our online system. If your room is not open, contact Custodial Services at 471-5072, Mon thru Fri, 8a-5p, or call the Utilities Trouble Call line at 471-2020 on evenings or weekends. Please note that these offices are only authorized to open rooms that have been properly reserved through our system.

Resolving scheduling conflicts.

Occasionally there are scheduling conflicts in classrooms, however, 99% of these are because someone has simply gone to the wrong room or they have reserved the room, but on a different day. In light of this, being polite and courteous while resolving the conflict goes a long way.

If you find someone else in “your” room, the best practice is to politely gather information about the identity of the other person or group so that we can research the problem afterwards and then you or the other party should locate a nearby available room and use it. Afterwards, please call or e-mail us with the details at your earliest convenience. Since the vast majority of perceived scheduling conflicts are in fact simple mistakes, it is generally impossible for us to research what happened without having the name of the other party.

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