Faculty & Staff Home
Course Proposals
Proposals for new courses and course changes should be examined and approved by the department or program before they are submitted to the College. Most departments have a faculty committee responsible for overseeing departmental curricular matters. The Chair’s signature on a course or curricular proposal is understood to signify a carefully considered departmental endorsement after faculty members in the department have had a chance for comments. Also, departments need to ascertain if their proposed course offerings conflict or overlap with those of another part of the university. Departments must discuss any issues of potential overlap or areas of concern with other departments, schools, and divisions (and address these issues in their proposals) before sending a new course or course change proposal to the College.
Course forms with accompanying materials should be sent to June Hacker, Undergraduate Curriculum Coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences. The Assistant Dean and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education will review requests in consultation (if necessary) with appropriate members of the Committee for Undergraduate Education (CUE). Most well conceived course proposals that have been endorsed by the department can be approved at this stage. Proposals that raise significant questions of policy or pedagogy, however, may be brought before the full committee, which may ask the department to clarify and justify their recommendations. Once a course has been approved by CUE, other units and campuses then have an opportunity to review it (see “Remonstrance Procedure” below.)
Course forms
Each department should have available “New Course Request” and “Course Change Request” forms. These forms are used throughout the IU system, are available from University Printing Services, and are multiple-copy forms that are intended to be filled out using a typewriter. Our hope is that the IU system will soon move this process to the Web.
Remonstrance Procedure
Once a course has been approved at the College level, it is placed on a “Remonstrance List” and circulated to other units and other campuses. Faculty have thirty days in which to remonstrate if they have questions or concerns about a proposed new course or change. When the College receives a remonstrance, faculty who proposed the new course or course change will be asked to confer with faculty who have concerns to resolve the issue. The resolution of the issue should be reported back to the College since the course or course change will be on hold until the issue is resolved. The Undergraduate Division of the College does not send out remonstrance lists over the summer.
If no concerns have been raised (or when all concerns are satisfied), the course listing is added to the upcoming Bulletin or Supplement and the course form is forwarded to the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education. Course forms then continue to the Provost level and, finally, to the University Registrar. Since it can take 6–12 months for a new course or course change to go through all necessary levels of approval, faculty should plan course proposals well in advance. Interim approval can be granted in some circumstances. Note that courses cannot be included in the College of Arts and Sciences Bulletin without College approval.
Choosing and Changing Course Numbers
Once a course is approved through all levels, it is entered on the IU system-wide Course Catalog and is available for adoption by any campus in the university system. Efforts are being made to clarify the ways that course numbers are used on different campuses, with the intent of giving students clearer information when they consider transferring from one campus to another. With this in mind, departments should be careful when they modify courses that might be in use on other campuses. Sometimes it is better to propose a new course number to describe a course that is being changed in significant ways. Also, please do not “recycle” course numbers. Using an “old” course number to refer to a new course often confuses students and advisors. Before submitting a new course proposal or a course change proposal, departments should discuss the changes and potential overlaps with other units that might be affected.
Student Enrollment Services has developed a Course Catalog Web site which contains instructions for ordering new course request and course change request forms, as well as instructions for completing them. Under the “Reports” link on this site are examples that illustrate how to run queries by specific academic subject code (i.e., ENG-L or POLS-Y) in the IUIE against the Course Catalog. Your department can generate a report that shows which departmental course numbers are in use on other campuses; this information can help you choose available course numbers to use for new course proposals.
Within a department, where the context is clear, most people will refer to a course using the short form (letter + number), such as “S100.” Please remember, however, that the complete reference, including departmental or program letter prefix, is needed when discussing a course outside the department. For example, “S100” could mean Introduction to Sociology (SOC-S100) or Elementary Spanish I (HISP-S100). A proposal by another campus to change “L390” might or might not be relevant to your department depending on the rest of the course’s official listing in the Course Catalog. Be sure to reserve a course number for a new course in writing by contacting Student Enrollment Services (email: SES-CourseCatalog@exchange.iu.edu).
Special Course Designations
The course forms mentioned above are university-wide forms and do not have sections for such College-specific designations as Distribution credit or Intensive Writing credit. Please use the guidelines and forms below to request College of Arts and Sciences special designations for new or existing courses. These forms may be attached to a new course request form, or they may be sent to request designation for a course that already exists. Your department’s request for review by the College of whether a course qualifies for special designation can also be made in the form of a memo from the Chair or Director, provided that the same information is included.
Always attach a copy of a syllabus when requesting special designations.
Possible special course designations are the following:
- Distribution credit (A & H, S & H, or N & M)
- Culture Studies credit: List A (CSA) or List B (CSB)
- Intensive Writing credit (IW)
- Topics credit (TFR)
Only College of Arts and Sciences courses can be considered for any of these special course designations. A course can “carry” more than one kind of special designation when appropriate (for example, EALC-E251 Traditional East Asian Civilization carries Social and Historical Studies credit and also Culture Studies credit on List A). A course cannot, however, be classified in more than one distribution area.
Note about joint-listed courses and special course designations:
Students who sit in the same classroom and do the same work should receive the same “credit” (Distribution, Culture Studies, Intensive Writing, lower/upper level). Since course numbers (such as EALC-E251 in the last example) always “carry” the special designations that have been assigned to them, faculty and scheduling officers must be careful when joint-listing courses. Courses cannot be joint-listed if they carry incompatible designations (for example, if one course is designated A & H and another course is designated S & H, these courses cannot be used as a joint-list pair). However, a course that does not carry any special designations can, with the prior approval of the Office of Undergraduate Academic Affairs, be joint-listed with a course that has special designations. To obtain prior approval, contact jhacker @ indiana.edu (June Hacker) prior to scheduling. Please note, however, that courses can never be joint-listed if one course is at the 100/200 level and the other course is at the 300/400 level.
