I'll keep it brief, since I do have a day job. Semesters will improve the quality of life at NU in every way you can imagine. Your faculty will have more time to spread out the course materials and to do things that they otherwise have trouble doing under quarters, such as field trips or simulations. All of this is for the good in terms of teaching and learning. I know from personal experience, since I went to undergrad school under the quarter system but grad school under semesters.
Semesters are better.
Nobody I know among the faculty actually likes quarters, believe me. The only argument was over the difficulty of adjusting everything into a semester system. Fewer transition costs. That is, students won't be spending so much time moving in and moving out, gearing up for another term, worrying about getting scheduled for the next two quarters, etc. The NU shuffle will ease up a lot, since so much of it is rooted in the insanity of our current system.