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

2. Changing The Curriculum at NKU
The curriculum process involves changes to the curriculum of individual programs, general education, 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 (majors, minors, certificates)
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

3. Curriculum Process Parties involved in the process are
Departmental faculty (original proposal, 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, new gen ed courses, gen ed changes)
Provost’s office (via the Vice Provost)
CPE and Board (new programs only, which also must have 2 readings at monthly CAO meetings)
Registrar (non-voting)

4. 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 hours (usually) and can be undergrad ( ) or grad (500+)
All advanced courses (300+) require prerequisites

5. 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
Departments may restrict the number of such credits earned toward a degree, number of hours of repeatability for such courses
e.g., no more than 6 hours of x99 credit can count toward a major, course may be retaken as topics vary

6. 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
A course new to GE must be approved as such by both the Gen Ed committee and UCC
If the course is brand new, it also requires approval by the UCC as a new course
Course changes for Gen Ed courses require approval by the Gen Ed committee and UCC
Changes to the GE program require approval by the Gen Ed committee, UCC, and Faculty Senate

7. 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)
Moving a program on-line requires approval of the dept chair, dean, UCC chair and Provost’s office
Changes to the departmental or college portion of the catalog (i.e., the narrative sections) do not require approval through the curriculum process
Course that haven’t been taught in 5 years will be enumerated by the registrar and provided to the departments and UCC for mass deletion (any course that a department wants to retain will be removed from this list)

8. Curriculog
Starting last fall, we moved to Curriculog as our UCC software
Interface through Curriculog through your web browser
There are forms for different types of operations
Course change
New course
Course deletion
Gen ed course re-certification
Gen ed program change
Program change (major/minor/certificate)
Program deletion (major/minor/certificate)
Mass course change
New program
New minor
Moving existing program online
All forms will include text boxes for justification

9. Curriculog Continued
Change forms for programs and courses retrieves the 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
All university faculty and staff have access to post a proposal, read posted proposals, track a proposal’s progress and leave comments
You will be alerted if an item is waiting for your approval via the Curriculog dashboard and by
When an item is waiting for your decision, you can edit it – thus if you find mistakes, you can make the updates yourself
All updates can be tracked to see who made the udpate

10. Curriculum Change 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
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

11. 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 12 months (new programs)
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)

12. Deadlines
For the fall catalog, the deadline is to have items approved through the UCC by end of March
Except for new programs, these require UCC approval by end of February so that they can be sent to Senate, Board and CPE for final approval
To determine the time that an item must be submitted to meet the deadline, work backwards
Its based on which approval levels are required and when those bodies meet
Keep in mind that if a proposal is delayed, for instance in the college dean’s office, it will take more time
Its best to start work by mid fall on any changes for next fall
New programs should already be in the pipeline for next fall as they require a LOI, 2 readings of the chief academic officers and a pre-proposal which is posted on CPE’s website for 30 days

13. More on the Timeline Items do not need to be approved for next fall
If you have items to update for spring or summer, submit them soon
Our deadline for new courses and course/program changes for the spring is mid October (this deadline is not as firm, it depends on the registrar and when the schedule of classes will be published)
Items for summer can similarly be posted this fall
once students have started to enroll in a course, we will not allow course changes for that semester
this would require removing the students, changing SAP, and reinserting the students
If something is not correct in SAP and/or the catalog, you can also issue waivers for the current semester
if something is incorrect in SAP but was approved through the UCC and appears correctly in the catalog, contact the UCC chair and the registrar’s office to get it fixed in SAP immediately (this is change we will make at any time of the year)

14. Curriculum Workshop
I (UCC chair) will offer a curriculum workshop over two days in September (date and time TBD)
The workshop will cover what we’ve covered here but in more detail including a full demo of Curriculog
Any new UCC representative should attend
Any new program director should attend
The workshop is open to any faculty or staff interested

15. Questions?
About the curriculum process, curriculog or a curriculum issue: contact Richard Fox 5334)
About what is currently stored in SAP or a mistake found in SAP: contact Beth Vasquez 5159)
About acalog or erroneous content in the catalog: contact Brett Mueller 6619)
For the Registrar: contact Alan Cole 5225)
About CPE, SACS or other undergraduate policy issues: contact Abdou Ndoye 5379)
About graduate policy issues: contact Christian Gamm 6364) or Samantha Langley 7567)
About curriculog or acalog access or curriculog errors or issues: Connie Kiskaden 6567)