The Curriculum Process at NKU Richard Fox Chair, UCC Department of Computer Science

Changing The Curriculum at NKU The curriculum process involves changes to the curriculum of programs, classes, the general education program, and curriculum policy changes Curriculum changes are new courses, course changes, course deletions program (majors, minors, certificates) changes, deletions changes to program admissions new programs note: the “Focus” is not a specified curriculum so there is no need to explicitly create or change a Focus for a student general education program changes

Curriculum Process Parties involved in the process are Departmental faculty (original proposer(s), department curriculum committee if any, program director if necessary, full department, department chair) usually a department votes in its entirety on curriculum changes rather than having a separate curriculum committee Library (for new courses only) TEC (if applicable) College curriculum committee Dean’s office (usually the associate dean) Graduate Council (if applicable) UCC Faculty Senate (new programs, substantive program changes, gen ed program changes) Provost’s office (via the Vice Provost) CPE and Board (new programs only) Registrar (non-voting)

Some Current Curriculum Policies Program-level A major is a degree conferring program it must consist of a minimum of 30 credit hours it must exist within a department (or a college in some rare cases), cross disciplinary degrees are permissible but it must still be housed somewhere A minor consists of at least 18 hours, usually 21 A focus consists of 12 upper level hours within one discipline (note: a focus is selected by the student) all undergraduate students are required to complete a major and either a second major, a minor, or a focus, plus 45 advanced hours of coursework and the general education program to graduate A certificate program consists of a collection of 12-18 hours (usually) and can be undergrad (100-400) or grad (500+) All advanced courses (300+) require prerequisites

Special Course Numbers Some course numbers are reserved for special types of courses X91 for thesis coursework X92 for research courses X93 for seminar courses X94 for topics courses X95 for study abroad topics courses X96 for practicum X97 for portfolio/presentation courses X99 for independent studies/directed readings X90 and X98 are reserved for future use Options: repeatable for credit when topics vary, restrict number of credits earned toward a degree, secondary title (for some of these categories)

The General Education Program All general education (GE) courses must fit into a category by fulfilling all of the student learning outcomes (SLO) for that category A GE course can fit into two categories if one of those categories is Global Perspectives All GE courses are to be assessed New GE courses must be approved both as new courses and new GE courses by UCC, Gen Ed committee and Faculty Senate Existing courses that are being proposed for GE only require approval as new GE courses but must be approved by UCC, Gen Ed and Faculty Senate Changes to the GE program require approval by UCC, Gen Ed and Faculty Senate

Exceptions to the Curriculum Process The following require approval by only the department chair and UCC chair X99 course creation and course changes Course term change SAP type change Creation of honors section of existing course (Gen Ed honors courses require approval of Gen Ed committee) Changes to the departmental or college portion of the catalog (i.e., the narrative sections) do not require approval through the curriculum process Course deletions are not voted on by UCC Unclear whether they need approval by college, dean, grad council, etc

Curriculog Starting this fall, we are using Curriculog as our UCC software Interfaced through your web browser (nku.curriculog.com) Forms for different types of operations course change new course course deletion gen ed course re-certification gen ed program change new gen ed course (course being added to gen ed whether it’s a new course or not, if new course then need new course form as well) program change (major/minor/certificate) new program track/concentration or new minor program (or track) deletion (major/minor/certificate) mass course change new program (two forms: full proposal, NOI/preproposal) All forms include text boxes for justification

Curriculog Continued Change forms for programs and courses retrieve current information from Acalog to populate the form The proposer need only edit the content to be changed Members of various committees and in administrative roles will be part of the approval process Approve Reject Send back to originator for changes All members of the university committee will have access to read proposals, track a proposal’s progress and leave comments You will be alerted if an item is waiting for your approval Different levels have the ability to edit a proposal, but only when the proposal is awaiting their approval

Impact Reports and MOU Curriculog has a convenient feature to determine the impact of a change You can obtain a list of all courses and programs impacted by a program or course change Include the results of the impact report in your form (if any) Notify all impacted departments (department chair, program director, UCC rep) of the changes you are proposing place a copy of that email as an attachment in the form(s) you are submitting as a memorandum of understanding failure to include the MOU will cause the proposal to be held at the UCC (or lower level) until this is taken care of

Curriculog Starting Page

Login Page Curriculog will use our authentication page (same as logging in to email, use the same account information)

Main Portal Don’t forget to log out when done

The Proposal Types (forms)

Course Change Form

Importing from a Catalog

Approving or Deleting a Proposal

Running a Report Reports are emailed to you

An Impact Report

The Timeline Faculty are free to submit UCC forms at any time but they should first be approved by the department or department curriculum committee After chair approval, items go to TEC or their college, college meetings vary CoAS – every 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month CoEHS – every 2nd Wednesday (in conjunction with TEC) CoB, CoHP, CoI – meet as needed Graduate items go to Grad Council (2nd Thursday) UCC meets 1st and 3rd Thursdays (4th Thursday in March, no 3rd Thursday in Dec or 1st Thurs in Jan) Faculty Senate meets 3rd or 4th Monday The timeline to make it through the process varies by type of submission Graduate items, items for TEC, take more time New programs take a lot more time

Keeping Track of Items The time it takes to make it through the process can be as little as 2-3 weeks or as much as 7 months (new graduate program from CoAS) Items can also be held at any level and take weeks to get through someone should keep track of the submission to make sure it is progressing: the original proposer, the department’s UCC rep or the program director Any level could potentially kick an item back to the proposer for changes anyone can comment on a proposal, original proposers should review these as the item progresses items are not final until they are approved by the Vice Provost (or the Board for new programs)

Deadlines Until we moved to Acalog this past year, our deadlines for next fall’s catalog were that items had to be approved through the UCC by December We are moving the deadline ahead to end of March UCC last meets week 3 of March, items must be approved by the UCC by that date to be in next fall’s catalog Graduate items must be approved by grad council by their February meeting (GC and UCC meet on the same Thursday in March after spring break) New programs and changes to GE require Senate approval so must be approved by the March meeting

Two Comments Its preferable for curricular items to be submitted as early as possible to ensure that they make it through in time don’t wait until January to discuss possible curriculum changes for the next academic year! Start early in the fall Items can be approved and implemented in SAP even if they are not going to appear that way in the catalog for 1-2 semesters e.g., you change a course title in SAP for spring 2017 even though it will not appear that way in the catalog until fall 2017 such changes need to be approved early in a semester to give the registrar time to implement them in SAP prior to the next semester’s schedule of classes being released, once students are enrolling for a course, its very difficult to make changes such as changing a prereq

Questions? About the curriculum process, curriculog or a curriculum issue: Richard Fox (foxr@nku.edu, 5334) About mistakes found in SAP: Beth Vasquez (vasqueze1@nku.edu, 5159) About acalog or erroneous content in the catalog: Bethany Smith (smithb76@nku.edu, 6432) For the Registrar: Alan Cole (colew1@nku.edu, 5225) About CPE, SACS or undergraduate policy issues: Ande Durojaiye (durojaiyea1@nku.edu, 5379) About program review and assessment: Abdou Ndoye (ndoyea2@nku.edu, 5379) About graduate policy issues: Samantha Langley (langleys1@nku.edu, 7567) About curriculog issues or access: Connie Kiskaden (kiskadenc@nku.edu, 6567)