The course proposal review and approval process is a governance process intended to ensure that:
A course proposal consists of:
All course proposals are subject to at least three levels of review and approval:
Cross-listed courses are owned equally by all cross-list partners and each partner must approve the proposal before it may advance to the next level. Subject owners with courses that may share content with the proposed course are notified of the course proposal but are not required to approve.
Proposals may require an additional approval step for course attributes (e.g., general education, ethnic studies). In this policy, the approving body at each level of review will be referred to generally as a curriculum committee.
At each level of review, the entire proposal is available to the committee. The expectation is that each review committee will review the entire proposal in the context of all relevant departmental, school/college, and university policies. It is understood that the specific nuances of some policies are beyond the scope and purview of the department curriculum committee. At each level of review, a good-faith effort to assess adherence to school/college and university policies is needed. For example, it would be inappropriate for a department curriculum committee to approve a course that requests the graduate course attribute if the course is numbered below 300 because that is not consistent with university policy. The expectation is that with each successive level of review, less attention will need to be focused on the discipline-specific content of the course and more attention will be focused on how the course fulfills the missions of the school/college and university.
The proposer of the course is responsible for completing all required course proposal form components. Help documentation and policy references are hyperlinked to each item in the form. Once the form is submitted, the proposer is responsible for monitoring the progress of the proposal and responding to questions, requests for additional information, and resolving issues. From the time the proposal is initiated, the proposer has six months to submit the proposal for review. A proposal has one year from the time of submission to receive full approval. If not fully approved within one year, the proposal is canceled and removed from the proposal system. The proposer may delegate responsibility for monitoring the progress to others.
Subject listings are owned by departments or department-like units within the schools and colleges. FP&P 5.31 gives the chair of the department responsibility for submitting new courses, major revisions of existing courses, and deletion of courses proposed by the department for action by the school/college and the UCC. The chair may delegate responsibility for course proposal review to a departmental curriculum committee. Regardless of who reviews, course proposals must be thoroughly reviewed by the department that owns the subject(s) that will house the course being proposed.
Approval of a course by a department/subject owner is a commitment by the department to the following:
The responsibility for a particular course rests not only with the proposer but with the department(s) that approves the course. The specific focus of the department review should include:
Approval by the department is an indication that the department or program's faculty, via an appropriate approval body such as a curriculum committee, has approved the course and agrees to support it.
The next level of review is by the school/college. In addition to affirming that the department-level review is complete, the school/college curriculum committee should address:
Approval by the school or college curriculum committee is an indication that the school/college approves the academic merits of the course and of the decision of the department/program faculty to offer it. Generally, courses are offered within existing departmental/program resources, and dedication of new school/college-level resources or assignment of course scheduling preferences are not conveyed by this approval unless specified in the proposal.
A review of course proposals with specific content or attributes may also be required. An example is review by the Ethnic Studies Committee when that course attribute is requested. In cases where such review takes place, the review body is responsible only for the aspects of the proposal that relate to the attribute.
The successive levels of review allow for evaluating broader contexts. As stipulated in FP&P 6.53, the final level of review and approval is by the UCC. A proposal requesting UCC approval is assumed to have been refined during the departmental and school/college review such that it will require few or no corrections.
The UCC will consider only complete course proposals. Proposals with missing information will be returned to the school/college. The UCC will focus on:
The UCC bears the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that courses meet all university policies.
Review and approval by the UCC signals that a course:
The UCC expects that those submitting a course proposal will consult with the subject listing units that offer courses with similar content or learning outcomes. The course proposal form includes a field for indicating those subject owners. The Lumen Course Proposal System automatically notifies the department chair and designees of those units offering the opportunity to review and comment on the proposal (either by contacting the proposer and/or entering a comment on the proposal). If relevant subject listing units are not entered by the proposer the proposal will not be approved by the UCC.
The UCC expects that this process will provide appropriate notification of possible impingement of disciplinary boundaries. Any contentions related to disciplinary boundaries should be resolved by the involved subject listing units and/or among the schools and colleges that house those subject listing units. If resolution at the department or school/college level is not achieved the issue will be considered by the UCC.
09/02/2020
