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 proposal or curricular proposal is understood to signify a carefully considered departmental endorsement after faculty members in the department have had a chance for comments. Departments should discuss any issues of potential overlap or any other areas of strong concern with other departments, schools, or divisions 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. Most well conceived course proposals that have been endorsed by the department can be approved at this stage. Proposals that seem to 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.

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 IU Printing, and are multiple-copy forms that are intended to be filled out using a typewriter. These forms are reviewed at various levels, and the information is then compiled into “Remonstrance Lists” that are circulated monthly (except for summers) so that faculty and staff throughout the IU system can remain aware of curricular changes. Please look at a copy of these forms before reading material below about special course designations. Our hope is that the IU system will move this process to the Web soon.

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.

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 Dean of Faculties. Course forms then continue to the Chancellor/Vice-President 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.

Course Catalog

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. Currently efforts are being made to clarify the ways that course numbers are used on different campuses, with the intent of giving students clearer information as they consider transferring from one campus to another. With this in mind, departments should be very careful as they change courses that might be in use on other campuses. Sometimes it will be better to propose a new course number to describe a course that will be changed in very significant ways. 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.

Course Departmental Prefix and Number

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-S 100) or Elementary Spanish I (HISP-S 100). 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 by contacting Maryann Iaria in Student Enrollment Services.

Please do not "recycle" course numbers. Degree audit systems are tremendously helpful to students and advisors as they sort through courses and requirements at a large institution such as IU. These systems work best, however, when course designations remain relatively stable.

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 which 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.

Special Course Designations

The course forms mentioned above are university-wide forms and do not have sections for such unit-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 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 List A (CSA) or List B (CSB) credit
• 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-E 251 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 jointlisted courses and special course designations Since some course numbers (such as EALC-E 251 in the last example) will always "carry" the special designations that have been assigned to them, faculty and scheduling officers must be careful when jointlisting courses. Courses cannot be jointlisted if they carry incompatible designations (for example, if one course is designated A & H and another course is designated S & H, then these courses cannot be used as a jointlist pair). If necessary, a jointlist is possible if one course carries a special designation but the other course does not. Such arrangements—to give "temporary special designations" to the second course—should be rare and must be worked out with the College prior to scheduling. Contact June Hacker, who will forward requests to Assistant Dean Michael Lundell. Also note that courses cannot be jointlisted if one course is at the 100/200 level and the other course is at the 300/400 level.

This principle should be kept in mind for all jointlist pairs: students who sit in the same classroom and do the same work should receive the same general education requirement "credit" (Distribution, Culture Studies, Intensive Writing, lower/upper level).

Contact June Hacker in advance of submitting paperwork for the jointlist to the Registrar's scheduling office with any questions about jointlisting undergraduate College courses or to work out any special arrangement.