Responsibilties for members of CLAS Committee on Curricula &Courses

Welcome to the CLAS CC&C. This committee serves the important function of examining and, if necessary, editing all but the most minor proposals for additions and changes to the CLAS curriculum. We also monitor and occasionally modify CLAS policy on broader issues such as General Education.

Resources: Our committee website is one of our major resources. Materials on this site continue to be extensively updated, including new versions of all forms needed for proposals, and detailed instructions for how and when to submit. Please spend some time exploring this website so that you are familiar with these resources: http://aurora.clas.uconn.edu/clasccc/

Our members are our other major resource. Three of us (Leibowitz, Henning, and Terry) have chaired this committee previously for 2-3 year terms. Several of you have served on the committee previously, in some cases for a good many years. So we have some experienced hands, and a collective memory to draw on when needed. Our greatest resource is our collective experiences with academia, and our ability to work together to maintain and enrich the high standards of the college curriculum.

Responsibilities:

As your department’s representative to this committee, it is your responsibility to keep your department informed of any issues arising in our committee that may affect its members. Some members of our committee regularly send e-mail to members of their department after any meeting at which proposals from that department are approved, modified, or rejected, or when issues of general interest are presented in our meetings. This is good practice.

In order to make our meetings efficient and productive, here are some additional recommendations:

(1) Prepare for meetings: I will normally post agenda and proposals for each meeting one week prior to the coming meeting, and I will notify you all when this is done by e-mail. Please download and print these documents once they are available (secretaries with laser printers can be a big help here!) Please read the documents before the meeting to familiarize yourself with the upcoming proposals. This preparation will make our meetings more effective and shorter.

NOTE: If there are proposals from your department on the agenda, it is especially important that you, or someone from your department who is familiar with the proposals, plan to attend the meeting. If questions arise and there is no one to answer them, we will typically return the proposal to the department and ask that these questions be addressed.

(2) During meetings: As proposals come up for discussion, it is customary for the dept. representative, or someone familiar with the proposal, to introduce it by stating, very briefly, what the proposal entails. This short overview, and a quick review of the printed proposal to check that the proposal is in good order, will often provide enough information for the committee to act promptly. If questions or suggestions for modification arise, these are usually dealt with fairly speedily.

Minutes of this committee are an important record that is consulted by catalog editors and the registrar. Most committee members will serve as ad hoc secretary once during the academic year. If it is your turn, please take careful notes, process them into digital text, and send them to the chair not later than one week after the meeting – sooner if possible! Use minutes from a recent earlier meeting as a style guide.

(3) After meetings: If proposals from your department were approved, it is the responsibility of your department to fill out a separate form (different from the one submitted to our committee) to notify either the registrar’s office (for undergraduate proposals) or the graduate catalog (for graduate proposals). Each office has its own forms for this purpose -- these are linked from our committee website forms page. All information needed to fill out these forms is usually in your department’s proposal, so the process can be handled by a competent secretary, as long as an informed faculty member, such as yourself, proofs the final copy. You will need to supply the date of the approving minutes, which will be posted on our committee website approximately a week after the approving meeting.

(4) Subcommittees: on occasion, issues will arise which is best dealt with by appointing a subcommittee of 3-5 individuals. Subcommittees can examine the issue at greater length than our regular meetings allow. Subcommittees typically present a short written report to the whole committee, with recommendations as to how we may best proceed.

This year, I am asking that every member serve on a subcommittee (see separate handout) in order to speed up the process of handling catalog revisions relative to the new General Education system. Catalog copy for every major needs to be revised slightly to indicate how competencies in the major will be satisfied. Catalog language describing CLAS requirements needs to be substantially revised to integrate our requirements with those of the new General Education system.

(5) Meeting Schedule 2004-05
All meetings are in Dodd Center, room 162, unless otherwise noted.
Meetings start promptly at 3:30 p.m., and may run as late as 5:30 p.m. Meetings are normally on the second Tuesday of the month, except this Sept. and March meetings will be on the third Tuesday, and in October I have scheduled 3 meetings in anticipation of the usually high volume of proposals before catalog deadline of Nov. 10.

CLAS Committee on Curricula & Courses