Planning Course Offerings

Planning for the following academic year begins quite early:

• Before end-September: It is very important that you consult with your faculty very early in the academic year— before the end of September—in order to meet the required deadlines; you may choose to this by devoting one of your September departmental meetings to the course offerings of the following academic year. You may find, for example, that an important course is usually taught by a professor who will not be available that year and your department needs to decide whether to have someone else teach the course or not to offer it.
• Mid-October: The class schedule form and teaching load form (which lists the course loads of each faculty member for each semester) is due in the Dean’s Office in mid-October. This is to allow time for the College deans to analyze the department’s plan in time for your November meeting with them.
• November: The deans will discuss with you the implications of your proposed course offerings for the following academic year with regard to staffing, budgetary impact, faculty search requests, reappointments, leaves of absence, and other issues. The deans may request modifications to your proposed course offerings and class schedule.
• January: You will need to review the schedule again in January, since your administrative assistant (AA) must finalize changes in early February in order for the correct schedule to appear online for advising and registration in March and April.

While it may seem ideal to offer every course every semester, practical issues (limited number of faculty, limited audience for many courses, etc.) restrict this only to courses with the highest enrollments. For courses with low enrollments, this might require multi-year cycles (e.g., offering a required graduate course once every two years or even once every three years). The CAS/GRS guideline is that most faculty should teach a mix of smaller and larger courses, that undergraduate courses (numbered 0-499) should ordinarily enroll a minimum of 10 students (courses intended for delivery in lecture/discussion format should, of course, be considerably larger), and that courses taken by graduate students (numbered 500 and above) should ordinarily enroll a minimum of 8. The department should monitor actual enrollments and contact the Assistant Dean for Curriculum and Enrollment Services to discuss appropriate action whenever a particular course appears unlikely to reach the threshold enrollment of 10 or 8. The department should offer courses with sufficient frequency that students can complete their degree requirements. But if the enrollments in particular courses tend to be low or lower than desirable, your department may need to examine the curriculum to determine whether there is a more efficient way to organize it.