Approval Process for Category Proposals

*Faculty teaching a First-Year Seminar or a Course in Categories A-D are required to submit assessment material for the required SLOs when requested by the General Education Assessment Committee. Failure to submit assessment material may result in a course being pulled out of the General Education Program.* 

All proposals must be uploaded to the appropriate meeting folder (assignments folder) on the GEC's D2L page by the deadline specified on the GEPAC meetings and minutes webpage. The SLO rubrics are available here.

Category Submission Components

Descriptions for SLOs in each category can be found here.

  • All proposals must go through the college curriculum committee (COB, COE, VPA, or LAS) for evaluation before being considered by the GEPAC.
  • The department should send one original proposal to Brian Meares with a scanned copy to the D2L Assignments folder.
  • There are specific guidelines for the Composition, Writing Elective, Speaking, and Quantitative courses that must be addressed. Please refer to each category’s proposal guideline for more information.
  • Proposals for categories A4, C2, and D should use the summary of the request form linked below and include a first-day handout along with the master syllabus. 
  • While the GEPAC encourages departments to submit courses at various levels, it generally does not approve 300-level classes for use in one of the categories. Exceptions should be requested before submitting a 300-level course.
  • All submissions for categories A2, A3, B, and C1 will require the information below for a complete proposal.
    • A template for the summary of the request sheet can be found here.

Required Submission Components

1. UCC Cover sheet
 Each submission must include a UCC cover sheet with a college routing number and the appropriate General Education box checked. Courses for categories A2 and A3 should also check the box for A4. All other writing courses should only check box A4. This is the only case when more than one box should be checked. 

2. Assessment Agreement
Each proposal must include the following phrase with the appropriate section checked:
"Do you agree to provide the General Education Assessment committee appropriate student work product for assessment? Criteria for each SLO assessment is available on the GEAC website. ______ yes  ______no"

3. Summary of Request
The summary of a request must provide a detailed description of the course, beyond the course description on the master syllabus, and an explanation as to why the course fits into a category based on the description and rubrics for the two required SLOs. Specific instructional time dedicated to elements of the category and SLOs must be noted. If a course currently carries a competency (CD, WI, QL, etc.), it should be noted here or on the UCC cover sheet.

This section must also include specific examples of assignments (classroom activities, assignments, assessments, etc.) that will be used to achieve the required SLOs for the selected category. This should include assessment activities that can be sent to GEPAC when requested. In some cases, one assignment may fulfill both SLOs. Descriptions of the assignments/activities must be included. Multiple assignments may be listed if a course is shared among many department members, such as a CMP 100-level course. Each assignment must be clearly linked to an SLO. The two SLOs should be clearly stated before the assignment(s) (e.g., SLO 5: Demonstrate the ability to retrieve, interpret, and evaluate information). Proposals for the writing portion of Category A4 should include a description of the assignment and the expected minimum word count or length for the writing assignments (excluding rough drafts). The list of writing assignments is provided in the category guidelines

A template for the summary of the request sheet can be found here.

4. Master Syllabus
All proposals must include a master syllabus.  

5. Sample first-day handout
A sample first-day handout is required for all category proposal submissions. The sample first-day handout should include a weekly or daily schedule for the course that shows how the category requirements (description, SLOs, and any guidelines) are being covered during the semester. All writing and speaking courses for Category A4 must show how the writing or speaking instruction is covered in the semester schedule.