The Course Scheduling process begins about nine months before the start of each semester when the primary Course Scheduler sends a first draft based on the courses taught in the previous year.  All changes to the schedule should be completed during Chair Proof Phase (often referred to as the Chair Phase or Chair Proof), about four months before the start of each semester.

The Production Calendar for Course Schedulers is broken into 3 distinct phases:

• Original Phase — This is when the “rollover data” from the previous matching semester is available and able to be edited. Also, when departments can start requesting the use of General Purpose Classrooms (space that is managed by the Registrar and not the department).

• Chair Proof Phase — This is whn departments are locking in proposals to the schedule. The bulk of the schedule should be finished at this point.

• Advanced Copy — This is when uniques are finalized, edits require approval from the chair and dean’s office and classes are published to the course schedule that students will use to find classes.

The Course Inventory process opens in January and will stay open until September to submit changes but they will be processed through the University Legislative Cycle. This is when new courses can be created or existing courses can be edited (though repeatability and title of a course can NEVER be changed).

Course Scheduling

Studio Art

Area Heads and Graduate Advisor

The base schedule from the previous corresponding semester will be provided by the Course Scheduler for you to edit and return.

• Ensure that during the Original Phase planning there are only as many courses provided as faculty available.

• Ensure that classes are evenly distributed amongst faculty.

  • Expectation that each faculty teach a minimum of 2 days.

  • Faculty should teach at least 1 laboratory course a semester.

  • Chair should be looped in if faculty is wanting to teach outside the department or college for that semester.

• Graduate Advisor should connect with Area Heads about faculty teaching organized graduate classes.

• Provide information to Assistant Chair on if/why/how many lecturers are needed.

• Fill out Assistant Director of Admin and Ops' form requesting lecturer if approved.

• Classes must follow departmental/university timeline: 8-11; 11-2; 2-5; 5-8.

• Assistant Chair and Chair should be contacted if an instructor asks to teach for an outside department; approvals must be secured before the schedule reaches the Course Scheduler.

• Instructors teaching for outside departments should provide a minimum of 2 days/time and room preferences.

  • The instructor should connect the Course Scheduler for AAH with the Course Scheduler for the outside department and let them know that this information will be finalized at the end of Chair Phase. The department will NOT confirm rooms/days/times for outside departments until all departmental classes have been scheduled.

Assistant Chair

The Assistant Chair will be cc:ed on communications with the Area Heads.

• Work with Area Heads to verify:

  • All instructors have a fair and balanced workload.

  • Ensure that faculty members carry their required teaching load (2-2 or 3-3 for professional track) or have an explanation for why they are not (e.g., service role, extra-departmental teaching).

  • No instructors are set to only teach one day a week.

• Schedule faculty for course that do not fall under specific areas, including 350 and 350P.

• Ensure that the St. Elmo Fellow has a lab class to teach in the Spring.

• Connect with Chair and Assistant Director of Admin and Ops to request approval of need of lecturers for all areas.

• Ensure that Course Scheduler is aware of any faculty that have been approved to teach for other departments.

• Ensure that Course Scheduler is aware of approved leaves.

Art History

Assistant Chair

Work with Undergraduate Advisor and Course Scheduler on how many service classes are needed for the semester

• Ensure that all faculty have a rotation through teaching service courses

• Identify need of lecturers and connect with Chair and Assistant Director of Admin and Ops to get approval

  • If lecturers approved will fill out Assistant Director of Admin and Ops' form requesting lecturer

• Ensuring that Course Scheduler is aware of approved leaves

Faculty

• Fill out document sent to them in a timely manner about classes they will teach

  • Undergraduate vs Graduate

  • Provide all information requested

  • Classes that meet once per week will have to follow the Department timeline:

    • 8-11; 11-2; 2-5; 5-8

  • Assistant Chair and Chair should be contacted if an instructor is requesting to teach for an outside department - approvals must be secured before the schedule reaches the Course Scheduler

  • Instructors teaching for outside departments should provide a minimum of 2 days/time and room preferences

    • The instructor should connect the Course Scheduler for AAH with the Course Scheduler for the outside department and let them know that this information will be finalized at the end of Chair Phase. The department will NOT confirm rooms/days/times for outside departments until all departmental classes have been scheduled.

Art Education

Assistant Chair

• Will provide the course scheduler with the Area’s schedule and the classes being offered under the EDC field of study.

  • Will ensure that there is a fair workload amongst faculty

  • Will connect with Chair and Assistant Director of Admin and Ops to request approval of need for lecturers

    • Fill out Assistant Director of Admin and Ops' form requesting lecturer if approved

Course Inventory

Official Publications has a Sharepoint site that is open to everyone.

What are the different Course Editing Cycles?

The time where edits can be made to course inventory is split between two Course Inventory Access Periods: the Fall and the Spring. The Fall access period allows for more editing as changes that require reporting to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) need to be completed during this cycle in order to be submitted on time. The Spring access period offers a more limited period of change as only changes that do not go through the THECB can be made. This also means that the Fall access period is the last opportunity for course inventory changes to appear on upcoming catalog(s) excluding exceptions allowed due to demonstrated academic need.

What edits can be made in each cycle?

Fall only

• Create a new Department or Field of Study

• Retire a Department or Field of Study

• Create a Standalone course

• Create a Base Topics course

• Retire a Standalone course

• Retire a Base Topics course

• Change Contact Hours

• Change Meeting Statement

• Add Hour Variants to a course

• Remove Hour Variants from a course

Fall and Spring

• Change the Relationships with Other Courses (RwOC) Statement

• Change Grading Method

• Change Prerequisite

• Change Restrictive Statement

• Change Subject-Matter Description (see below for details)

• Create a Numbered Topic

• Retire a Numbered Topic

• Create a Same-As Relationship (In the spring, this can only be done with existing courses and/or new numbered topics)

• Break a Same-As Relationship

Never

• Change Repeatability

• Change Title

Editing the Subject-Matter Description

The Subject-Matter Description (SMD) can be edited in both the Fall and the Spring Course Inventory Editing Cycles; however, there are some nuances between the semesters. Regardless of when the SMD is being edited, there cannot be any substantial changes to what the course is offering. This would result in the need for a new course. The difference between the editing cycles regarding SMDs comes from how Official Publications handles these situations as they occur. During their review of course inventory, if they see a course with substantive changes to an SMD, they will always offer to revert those changes or allow the department to make clarifying edits that do not overly change what the course offers. However, they will offer additional options depending on which editing cycle the changes are occurring during:

Fall — They will offer to create a new standalone or numbered topic course with the new SMD for the department. If necessary, they will also retire the old course to fully replace it (this is recommended if the department is not planning to offer both courses).

Spring — If the course being edited is a numbered topic, they will offer to create a new numbered topic course with the new SMD for the department if they can find a suitable base topics course. If the edited course is a standalone or base topics course, they will tell the department to hold on creating the new course until fall so they can retire and replace the original course

Items to be aware of when creating a course

• Numbered topics cannot carry a CORE code (ie VAPA)

• Numbered topics cannot have an Inventory Same-As Relationship with other courses

• If you are wanting a relationship with a COLA course

  • Must provide Expected Learning Outcomes

  • Grading option must be Student Option

• Repeatability cannot ever be changed - be sure what you want that set to

• Course Description should be broad so anyone can teach this class

• Course Title can be 144 characters including spaces but the Title that will show in the Course Schedule can only be 30 characters, again including spaces - please see the University Standards document if you need to abbreviate

• If you are wanting to request a CORE on a course, please let the course scheduler know so they can give you a course number to provide to the CORE office

Submit Form to Course Scheduler with information on the creation of class.