Midterms have begun, and many students who have taken exams in the past two weeks have experienced unusually long delays in receiving their scores.

These delays were due to a problem in one of the servers at the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence (formerly University Testing Services), said Renata Engel, the institute's associate vice provost.

"The server that sends out the scores [via e-mail] had a problem on Wednesday," she said. "There was a backlog and it jammed up, so we had to shut it for 20 to 30 minutes to get the process back and reset all the servers."

After the temporary shutdown, the server attempted to send out all the backlogged e-mail, as well as the e-mail messages that had accumulated during the shutdown, she said.

"At one point we had 17,000 e-mails queued up to go out," she said.

But she added that this is not unusual during peak testing times.

"During finals week, it can be as high as 75,000 e-mails," she said.

She said the server problem and the high volume of test scores have recently left students waiting up to a week to receive their grades, instead of the usual 24 to 48 hours.

Most of the students in Biology 341 (Biology of Sex) had to wait six days after taking their midterm Friday, Sept. 26., and some waited even longer. David Heinke (senior-crime law and justice) said he finally received his score Thursday.

"It was annoying," he said. "But I guess all the professors are trying to get scores in [at once] so it just got backlogged."

He said he was unaware there had been a problem in the server as well.

Engel said the institute has been telling instructors to let their students know that a problem had occurred and had been fixed, and that services have more or less returned to normal.

"We have been monitoring the system very closely to make sure it doesn't back up again, and we have been alerting faculty so they can alert the students," she said.

On Friday, she said all the e-mail messages for test scores that had been received on Wednesday and Thursday were sent out.

Sharon Shriver, the instructor of Biology 341, said she contacted the institute several times when she realized her students were concerned about not receiving their scores within a few days after taking the exam.

"They were very nice and gave me good advice," she said.

She said they informed her about the server problem and told her to let her students know that operations had been slowed but were returning to normal.

"They perform a valuable service and we [faculty] appreciate it," she added. "It was just a difficult time. These things happen."

Engel said a problem like this has only occurred one other time in the past four years.

"We pride ourselves on being able to get feedback to people as quickly as possible," she said.