Policies & Procedures

Guideline 8.7: Scheduling Guidelines

These guidelines support the Low Enrollment Policy 3.13.

General Course Scheduling Guidelines:

• Academic Programs are responsible for proposing courses to be offered.
• Academic Programs shall coordinate the scheduling of courses with other departments to assure required courses do not conflict and students have access to needed courses.
• Full year draft schedules shall be developed using the previous year’s schedule (fall, spring, summer).
• Academic Dean shall collaborate with faculty, Institutional Research, Admissions, and Registration to determine scheduling data and enrollment trends from previous years. This data will assist in establishing the number of sections to offer for programs.
• Tentative schedules, built into ISRS, are approved by the academic dean working collaboratively with faculty.
• Tentative fall and spring schedules shall be available for students viewing until registration begins.
• The Waitlist function may be added to courses as a way to ascertain course interest and fulfill student need (unless otherwise specified).
• Course schedule modifications will be finalized no later than one week prior to the start of the semester.
• New programs being tested for the first two years will fall outside the low enrollment guidelines.

Considerations for offering courses with low enrollment are as follows:

• Alternative funding source (concurrent)
• Combined offering 
• Start-up initiative (new program) 
• Core program requirement (required for degree) 
• Fill full-time faculty load (on an annual basis)
• Late-Start offering – (numbers likely to increase according to historic trends) 
• Part of an outreach effort 
• Course aligns with scheduling priorities 
• Specialty or advanced course taught in alternate years 
• Adequate enrollment for a meaningful experience

History:

04.2016 Adopted