Proposals for New Courses and for Changes in Existing Courses
The DUS makes proposals for new courses and for course changes on the online Course Proposal Form (CPF). The first part of the form may be completed by an instructor, a department registrar, or any other person with a Yale NetID and password. As DUS, you are responsible for verifying that the details of the course are accurately described on the form, for completing the DUS Review section of the form, and for electronically submitting the proposal to the Course of Study Committee. After it is submitted, the form is usually included on the agenda of the next meeting of the committee.
Course proposals must be submitted in time for the Yale College Faculty to vote on them. (The Yale College Faculty meets on the first Thursday of each month during term-time, except in September and January.) In the fall term the last meeting of the Course of Study Committee before the December faculty meeting is usually the Thursday before Thanksgiving. Therefore, forms for courses being proposed for the spring term must be submitted to the committee by the middle of November. New courses being proposed for the following academic year should be submitted before the last committee meeting of the year, which generally falls in early May. New courses submitted after that date will probably arrive too late for inclusion in the YCPS.
The online Course Proposal Form is largely self-explanatory. It should be used whenever a department proposes a new course or makes substantial changes (see below) in one already approved. Most helpful to the committee in understanding the nature of a proposed course are (1) the title and a brief description of the course suitable for publication in the YCPS; (2) an expanded description of the subject matter and purposes of the course, including the level of the course and examples of the bibliography, and any other material that might help the committee understand the nature of the course; (3) the name and rank of the proposed instructor; (4) a brief but specific indication of the nature and amount of work required of the student. This last is important in the committee's consideration of all courses, but it is especially so in its consideration of courses to be taught by new, part-time, or visiting faculty members. Anyone teaching in Yale College for the first time is asked to attach a curriculum vitae and a provisional syllabus for the proposed course to the Course Proposal Form.
The Course of Study Committee will no longer accept paper Course Proposal Forms.
As you plan new courses, you might find it especially helpful to share with colleagues the information about lecture and seminar course formats and the standard time patterns for class meetings. [Information about standard time patterns is available on line.] Also of importance is the Course Proposal Form's section on the nature and amount of work required for a course. The Course of Study Committee has expressed the strong feeling that students in almost every type of course deserve to have, wherever possible, some review of their work and standing in the course by midterm. Such feedback can be provided, for example, by a midterm test, by a paper due by midterm, by the evaluation of an oral presentation during the term, or by some other similar arrangement.
In 2007 a question was added to the Course Proposal Form regarding academic integrity. The question is designed to ensure that instructors are prepared to address issues of academic integrity within the context of the proposed course. Information about teaching these matters is available on the Writing Center Web site.
The key to the success of the committee's work is the care and clarity with which directors of undergraduate studies propose new courses. Obviously the members of the committee cannot be experts in all fields of instruction; they must place great trust in the thoroughness and diligence of the DUS, whose approval is taken as representing the considered judgment of the department or program. Therefore, in the event that the DUS is the instructor of the proposed course, the chair of the department or program should submit the Course Proposal Form (and, conversely, the DUS should submit the form if the chair is the instructor). The committee's responsibility is to ask such questions as: "Is this an appropriate subject of instruction for credit in Yale College?"; "Does the work required represent roughly one-thirty-sixth of what a student ought to do to earn a bachelor's degree?"; and "Are the title and description sufficiently clear to give a student, particularly one from outside the major, a reasonably good sense of what the course is about?" Sometimes the secretary or the chair of the committee will return a course proposal to you asking for a clarification or a revision. In such a case, you are asked to exercise patience and toleration in the face of what might sometimes appear to be the committee's ignorance or overscrupulousness.
Besides new courses, any already existing course that undergoes a significant change must be submitted on a Course Proposal Form. The committee's rule is that it must approve all courses in which any two of the following three components have changed: (1) title; (2) instructor; (3) description. This means that each new independent seminar offered within such categories as AMST 400–482, ECON 450–489, etc., must be submitted to the committee before it enters the curriculum. A change in course format is also considered a "significant change." For example, a course that had originally entered the curriculum as a lecture course (with a three-hour time pattern and required work appropriate for a lecture course) that is changed to a seminar course (with limited enrollment, a two-hour meeting time, and a different pattern of work expected of the students) must be resubmitted to the committee. Conversely, a seminar becoming a lecture course must also be resubmitted. Previously taught courses returning to the curriculum after an absence of more than seven years must be resubmitted for review. Finally, courses being submitted as undergraduate/graduate courses must be accompanied by an explanation of the reasons for their dual level. For an explanation of an undergraduate/graduate course, see "Undergraduate/Graduate Courses" under the heading "Yale College Programs of Study (YCPS) and Related Publications."
The Course of Study Committee and the editor of the YCPS have within their charge the editing of titles of courses, as well as the editing of course descriptions, to conform to a consistent standard. The title of a course should be both descriptive and succinct. Course titles need to make evident the focus or method of the course, whether to students searching online databases for keywords, to colleagues in other departments serving as advisers, or to graduate admission committees, fellowship commissions, or potential employers seeking to establish the nature of the student's program of study. Titles with two parts joined by a colon are strongly discouraged. Instructors sometimes propose titles with an ornamental or metaphorical initial phrase followed by a colon and an explanatory second half; the Course of Study Committee generally discards the first half of such a title before it approves the course. Titles longer than thirty characters, including spaces, must be abbreviated to fit in online course information displays and on transcripts. A recent sample of appropriately descriptive titles of thirty or fewer characters includes the following: The Art of Chu China; Ethics and the Media; French New Wave Cinema; General Ecology; History of Japan to 1868; Human Evolution; Local Flora; Royal Maya Cities; Shakespeare's Political Plays; Stars and Their Evolution; and Theoretical Fluid Dynamics.
