Curriculum Guidelines and Help

• Material to be reviewed by a Curriculum Evaluation Committee must reach the appropriate committee level in the curriculum portal on the second Tuesday of a month with a meeting; one week prior to the next meeting date on the third Tuesday of the month.
• The appropriate Curriculum Evaluation Committee chair shall disseminate the agenda of proposals to review to committee members no later than four business days prior to the next meeting.
• Special meetings of a Curriculum Evaluation Committee may be called by the appropriate chair; however, four days notice of matters to be discussed will still be required.
• In order to be entered into an academic catalog, course proposals and proposals to modify/drop existing programs must receive Faculty Senate approval by the end of the first March Faculty Senate meeting (second Tuesday of March). Any proposal not approved by the Faculty Senate by this March meeting will not make the academic catalog for the following summer. To provide sufficient time for review, the deadline for all proposals to reach the appropriate Curriculum Evaluation Committee in the electronic routing system is one week (second Tuesday of February) prior to the committee third Tuesday of February meeting.
• A division or department representative may be asked to attend the appropriate Curriculum Evaluation Committee meeting and / or Faculty Senate to present the proposal.
• Note: Because of the external review requirements, new certificates must be approved by the Faculty Senate in November in order to appear in the next year’s catalog. Other new programs may take two catalog years for inclusion in the WOU catalog; see Proposal Routing.

• Gen Ed and Honors specific course categories may have slightly different deadlines, please watch for campus alerts.

Temporary course proposal routing is: Proposal entered > Department head / Program coordinator > Division chair > Dean > Provost > Registrar

• Current = this academic year (e.g. 2019 – 2020)
• Next/Upcoming = the academic year starting the fall term following the current year (e.g. 2020 – 2021)
• Following = the academic year starting in two fall terms following the current year (e.g. 2021 – 2022)

^* Initial routing: Initial routing: See Proposal Routing.

^† University level curriculum review. See Curriculum evaluation (reviewing) committees under Proposal Routing

^‡ See the Faculty Senate Bylaws to determine which proposals must go through the New Business and Old Business voting cycle at Faculty Senate.

^§ External routing includes the Provost’s Council, the HECC and the Northwest Commission. See Proposal Routing.

Approved proposal activation

• The catalog year is Summer – Spring (e.g. the 2018-19 catalog year runs Summer 2018 thru Spring 2019).
• All curriculum course and program proposals fully approved by the established deadline for that catalog year are enacted (included in the catalog and Banner) at the start of the following catalog year (summer term).
• If you are proposing a new course that you wish to offer during the current catalog year, or you are past the curriculum deadline for the current year, use the temporary course approval option. See Courses.

Activating a prerequisite reduction for student access

• Departments/programs may directly request the Registrar to activate prerequisite reductions from a fully approved course proposal.
• Once a course modification proposal to reduce a prerequisite is fully approved, department heads/program coordinators or division chairs may send the following information to the Registrar (catalogandscheduling@wou.edu), with a request to immediately activate the prerequisite reduction.
  • The fully approved course proposal reference number (e.g. C4242)
  • The prefix and number of the course
  • The change in prerequisite information (TO and FROM)
  • The CRN(s) of sections to be adjusted; include CRNs of all sections for the remainder of the current academic year (winter, spring)
• The catalog will not reflect the prerequisite reduction until following catalog year.
• This immediate activation request option does not apply to prerequisite increases, nor to other approved course modifications. Such changes will be active the following catalog year per the usual approved proposal activation.