Program and Curriculum Guidance


As outlined in the "Resolution to Establish Processes for Curriculum and Academic Program Proposal Review for Conversion to Semesters" (AS-946-22), departments must submit program and curriculum plan proposals to their college curriculum committees by January 27, 2023. Faculty received templates for these proposals (examples of which can be found here) and this guidance from Rachel Fernflores, Director of Semester Conversion. A Zoom tutorial may also be found here.

Definitions from AS-946-22:

Course Categories and Definitions

Course Category Definition
1. New
  • New course that does not appear in the 2022-2026 Catalog
2. Significantly Revised
  • Course that has modified 50% or more of its course content
  • Course that has significantly modified 50% or more of its Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) or course criteria
  • Course currently has no CLOs and is adding them for the 2026-27 Catalog.
  • Course revised to satisfy General Education (GE) Recertification (AB 928 EO) criteria or adding GE designation
  • Course revised to satisfy United States Cultural Pluralism (USCP) criteria (AS-910-21) or adding USCP designation
  • Course revised to satisfy Graduate Writing Requirement (AS-858-18) or adding GWR designation
  • Course open to non-majors that has changed its mode
  • Changing course from lower- to upper-division or vice versa
  • Adding course prerequisites outside of the college
3. Converted
  • Course that has modified less than 50% of its course content
  • Course that has modified less than 50% of its CLOs or course criteria
  • Course restricted to majors that has changed its mode
  • Changing units with the quarter-unit to semester-unit ratio (e.g., 4 quarter-unit Lecture/Seminar/Discussion to 3 semester units; 1 quarter unit Laboratory to 1 semester unit)
  • Changing course title or description for clarity
  • Removing and adding prerequisites within the college
  • Minimal changes to course title, course description, and descriptions in the Course Delivery and Resources section of the Course Inventory Management
  • Adding or removing modalities
  • Retention of existing articulation for lower-division courses (100-200 level). (Departments that do not want their existing articulation to carry over can request this through the Articulation Officer in the Office of the Registrar.)
4. Deactivated
  • Course will be deactivated at the conclusion of the 2022-2025 Catalog

Program Categories and Definitions

Program Category Definition
1. New
  • New degree program that does not appear in the 2022-2025 Catalog
  • New Minor, Concentration, or Certificate that does not appear in the 2022-2025 Catalog
2. Significantly Revised
  • Significant changes to an undergraduate or graduate degree program, including the following modifications:
    • Restructuring core curriculum or sequence of required courses
    • Adding or removing required courses
    • Adding units to an undergraduate or graduate program
    • Changes to budgetary requirements for the program
    • Undergraduate degree programs that exceed 120 semester units
  • Significant changes to Minor, Concentration, or Certificate, including the following modifications:
    • Restructuring of course curriculum
    • Adding or removing required courses
    • Adding or removing units
3. Converted
  • Minimal changes to a degree program (undergraduate or graduate), Minor, Concentration, or Certificate including the following modifications:
    • Contraction or expansion of course sequences due to the new semester term length
    • Changing course sequences to align more effectively with the semester term length
    • Adding or removing electives
4. Suspended
  • Suspension or degree program (undergraduate or graduate), Minor, Concentration, or Certificate that appears in the 2022-2026 Catalog.

 


 

June 29, 2022

 

Please note that we will be updating this document as we learn more from the Chancellor’s Office (CO) regarding our conversion to semesters. There are issues external to Cal Poly that need to settle before we have definitive answers to all of our questions. For example, according to the CO’s timeline, we will not have certainty about General Education (GE) until spring or summer of 2024. Included below is what we do know about GE and what we are expecting.
 

Draft Academic Program Proposals

The Academic Senate has approved a curricular process including the submission of academic program proposals to college curriculum committees on or by January 27, 2022. The Academic Senate also requires the categorization of courses for semesters. The stipend program is designed to provide some support to faculty who are working on draft academic program proposals and the categorization of courses either in the summer or in the fall. Note that there is an overall curriculum conversion budget from which the stipends come. Additional support will be provided once we progress to the task of converting and/or redesigning courses.

Department chairs/heads shall provide a list of stipend faculty who develop the draft proposals to their Associate Deans. Note that these are draft proposals – departments will come together in the fall and discuss what they like and do not like about the drafts.

We have developed three templates faculty should use to draft their academic program proposals. The templates are available on a SharePoint site we have established. Faculty will need to authenticate to get to the templates. We used the CSU new program proposal form to identify the areas that need to be completed for the draft proposals. Note that none of us are at this time using CourseLeaf – that comes later. For now, please use the templates we are providing, which include:

  • A Word document for each program with the following categories that we ask you to complete:
    • Contact information
    • Program Identification
    • Program Overview
    • Program Mission, Vision, and Learning Objectives/Outcomes
    • Program Changes
    • Course Changes
    • Curriculum Flowchart (Note that we can hold off for now on actually producing flowcharts. We anticipate that next year we will be able to make flowcharts in CourseLeaf, so we will wait until we have that capacity, rather than make our flowcharts in Excel.)
    • Transfer Articulation
    • Support Resources
  • A spreadsheet for each program:
    • We have pre-filled the quarter side of the spreadsheet. All you need to do is fill the semester side of the spreadsheet. Please read the program definitions on the first page of the spreadsheet before filling in the second sheet on the semester side.
  • A spreadsheet that includes all of your courses in your department:
    • We have pre-filled the quarter side of the spreadsheet. Please fill in the semester side of the spreadsheet. Please read the instructions on the first page of the spreadsheet before you fill in the semester side of the spreadsheet.

By fall we plan to have additional tools for semester conversion.
 

Semester Courses

Note that a 3-unit semester course has 45 contact hours. A 4-unit semester course has 60 contact hours. The Academic Senate has recommended a 15-week semester with one week of final exams. They have also recommended two 7 and ½ week terms back-to-back within each semester, and a January intersession. For now, please focus on the 15-week semester with one week of finals. We do not know our capacity yet to provide the shorter terms during the first year on semesters.
 

General Education

The CO has provided some guidance regarding GE and units. Here is our summary of their guidance:

  • Any department can require of its majors that the majors take a specific (or some specific) 4-unit GE course(s). Consequently, faculty can develop 4-unit courses in any area of GE, which will make sense if those 4-unit courses are required by some majors. However, unless a student is required by her major to take a specific (or some specific) 4-unit GE course(s), that student must be able to take a 3-unit alternative to the 4-unit GE course. For any department developing 4-unit GE courses, we recommend that they also develop 3-unit alternatives to those 4-unit GE courses.
  • Within the GE template, we expect the default number of units will be 3 units per GE course with the understanding that 3 units is the minimum for each GE course and the additional expectation that there are likely to be some 4-unit courses that some majors require.
  • In either case, a student must be able to complete an 11 course, 33-semester-unit (or 34 with a required laboratory), lower-division GE program if the major course of study does not require otherwise. The shape of upper-division GE has not yet been determined, but it would also employ a three-unit course model.

In response to AB928, a bill that calls for a singular GE pathway for transfer students destined for either the CSU or the UC, a committee called the Intersegmental Committee of Academic Senates (ICAS) was formed a few months ago. ICAS was charged with recommending a singular pathway. ICAS has recommended 11 lower division GE courses, which are:

  1. English Composition (1 course, 3 units)
  2. Critical Thinking (1 course, 3 units)
  3. Oral Communication (1 course, 3 units)
  4. Mathematical Concepts and Quantitative Reasoning (1 course, 3 units)
  5. Arts and Humanities (2 courses, 6 units)
  6. Social and Behavioral Sciences (2 courses, 6 units)
  7. Physical Science (1 course, 3 units)
  8. Biological Science (1 course, 3 units)
  9. Laboratory (1 unit)
  10. Ethnic Studies (1 course, 3 units)

While we do not know with certainty that the above list will constitute lower division GE in the CSU by spring or summer of 2024, there is a very strong likelihood that it will. So, moving forward, and until we learn otherwise, we will plan with the above listed courses in mind. Note that until now, GE breadth was 13 lower-division courses, not 11. Consequently, there will be 6 fewer semester units to plan for in GE. This is a GE reduction in units for all majors. There seems to be a CO expectation that high-unit majors will be able to use the 6-semester unit reduction to get closer to the 120- semester unit limit.

We do not have any news about upper division GE. We anticipate that it will continue to be three upper-division courses of 3 units (minimum unit count per course) each. For now, we should work on our upper-division GE courses as if it will stay the same. If we need to pivot once we learn more from the CO in a year or more, we will.
 

CO Review of Our Redesigned and High-Unit Programs

Semester programs are capped at 120 units. The CO has indicated that it will need to review “significantly redesigned” programs and high-unit programs. We will negotiate a timeframe with them so that their review does not impede our ability to begin semesters in fall 2026. Significantly redesigned programs are programs in which there is more than a 50% change.

Based on recent communications from the CO, they will also want to review programs in which there are “changes … to a program learning outcomes.” Specifically, the CO says that in the event that there are changes to program learning outcomes, they will want to see the new outcomes and updated assessment plans. Academic Programs and Planning will work with the CO to learn if there is some flexibility on the matter of revised program learning objectives. In the meantime, please review your program learning objectives and consider whether they still capture what your students should have learned and what they should be able to do as a result of completing your programs. If they do not, change them and indicate those changes clearly in the Word document for your programs.
 

Course Conversion and Numbering

There are several types of decisions we can make in converting our courses. They include (there is a drop-down box in your course spreadsheet with these choices):

  • One to one conversion
  • One to many conversion
  • Many to one conversion
  • New for semester
  • Deactivate for semester

The registrar has provided guidance for course numbering. Our semester courses will have 4, not 3 numbers. For converted courses, please add a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 to the beginning of the 3-digit quarter course. If the course is a first-year course, add a “1”; for a second-year course, add a “2”; for a third-year course, add a “3”; for a fourth-year course add a “4”; and for a graduate-level course, add a “5."

Examples:

  • Quarter course PHIL 231 becomes Semester course PHIL 2231
  • Quarter course PHIL 101 becomes Semester course PHIL 1101
  • Quarter course advanced special topics PHIL 470 becomes PHIL 4470
  • Quarter courses: Math 141, Math 142, Math 143 becomes Semester courses: Math 1141 and Math 1142

New courses will need new course numbers, which we can get from the registrar. Just leave the course number blank for new courses in your course spreadsheets.
 

Flowcharts

The CO has provided some guidance for our flowcharts that will help us become a more transfer friendly university, which we have been told to do independent of converting to semesters. Their preferences:

  • include all lower-division GE courses in the first two years of our flowcharts
  • any major courses in the first two years of our flow charts be articulable with community college courses
  • we do not include 300-level courses in the first two years of our program flowcharts. The language of “preference” here may become somewhat stronger as we learn more.
     

Articulation Agreements and Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT)

You will notice in your undergraduate program spreadsheet there is a question about ADTs. An ADT is a degree earned in the community college system that is not more than 60 units and includes lower division GE and major specific courses. A student who earns an ADT in, for example, philosophy, is guaranteed a spot in a philosophy program in the CSU (not necessarily the campus of choice though). We have only 7 programs with ADTs out of a possible 36 or 37. Here is a link with some information: https://www.ccccurriculum.net/associate-degrees-fortransfer/.

As you think about your lower-division courses, please keep in mind existing articulation agreements. In addition, if your program has an ADT, please try to retain it. Later in the summer and into the fall, we will provide some ADT training and some additional articulation training (we had a session on the latter in April and are planning more).
 

Bridge and Cap Courses

Some majors may require bridge and cap courses during our first year of semesters. Where we can avoid them, we should. These are courses we will need to offer for some students in some majors, usually for accreditation purposes, beginning spring quarter 2026 and through the first year of semesters. Bridge and cap courses may be necessary for some series of required courses in a major. Consider the following examples:

Quarters Semesters
Courses BIC 101 BIC 102 BIC 103 BIC 1100 BIC 1110
Student 1 Completed Not Completed Not Completed Needs last 5 weeks Needs all 15 weeks
Student 2 Completed Completed Not Completed Does not need Needs last 10 weeks

For student 1, who has taken only the first course in the series, a "bridge" to the second semester course is needed:

For student 2, who has taken only the first and second course in the series, a "cap" course is needed:

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