Course Change Process

To finish the 18/FA schedule in time for registration to begin in March, we need you to enter a complete (i.e. “99% there”) schedule for your department. To accomplish this, we have loaded all information you provided last spring, including any “dummy” courses (signified with an ADM subject prefix) representing sabbaticals, course releases, overloads, etc. and the instructor with which each course is associated. Using this data as a starting point, we now need full offering information such as day/time, section capacity (more on this below), instructor name(s), and information about Honors, writing intensive courses, and waitlist information. The Registrar’s Office will complete final scheduling steps using this information, while updating the Provost’s Office on any staffing questions that remain unresolved, such as under- or over-loaded faculty members, adjunct requests, etc.

In order to keep track of which courses/sections should have the waitlist functionality enabled, you can specify this using a new checkbox option.

For 19/SP, we are only asking for your best guess (i.e. “50% there”) projected schedule for the semester. If you entered this information last semester, we ask that you double check your projections, and then resubmit. This should only include the course and section numbers that you project offering within your department (as well as non-departmental offerings such as FYS 101) along with the name of the instructor who will teach each section. The word “Staff” should be used in cases where the anticipated instructor has yet to be determined, especially if it is unlikely to be covered by a full-time faculty member.

Please note that to correctly predict faculty and departmental load for the total academic year, each full-time faculty member should be slotted with their standard load of course sections on this entry form. Any discrepancies should be noted by use of a dummy course as described in the instructions below. Faculty for whom you anticipate a sabbatical or other leave, a course waiver, an overload (i.e. receiving an additional stipend) or who will be teaching FYS 101 should be listed as such to round out this information. See step 8 below for more information. At the end of this semester’s process, we should be able to answer the question “what is each full-time faculty member teaching to cover their expected load?” This is the main function of the projection from the Provost’s Office perspective. The ancillary benefit (from the Registrar’s Office perspective) is that it eases the amount of work you must do to create the final “99%-there” schedule for each semester.

Remember: there will be one more opportunity to adjust projections before registration for this outlying semester begins, thus we are not asking for day, time, classroom or waitlist information at this time. The Comments field should ONLY be used to discuss staffing concerns; we will share all relevant comments with the Provost and will discard other information. 

1. The Course Change Forms can be found on http://admin.washcoll.edu under the Department Chairs heading. You will need to login, as only department chairs have access to these screens. If you receive an error message and believe you should have access, please contact Molly%20Mears in OIT.

2. The links beneath the Department Chairs heading correlate to each semester for which information is requested.

3. Once you have clicked on one of the Course Change Form links, an index of department areas appears. Clicking on the department for which you are responsible will produce a list of projected courses based on the data you previously supplied last semester, including “dummy” courses representing sabbaticals, leaves, course releases, overloads, departmental faculty teaching a GRW section, etc.

4. There are four checkbox columns at the start of each row. The first should only be checked if you intend to cancel a section. The second, third and fourth checkboxes will be pre-populated with a check mark to designate that the section was previously indicated as W2, Honors or waitlist-enabled course. W2 courses are denoted with a W2 on the schedule, while Honors courses are denoted with a capital “H.” Waitlist-enabled courses allow students to add themselves to the waitlist once the section fills.

- If you want to cancel a course, click the first checkbox on. To reactivate it, click the first checkbox off.

- To designate a section as W2, click the second checkbox on. To remove the W2 designation from a section, click the second checkbox off.

- To designate a section as Honors, click the third checkbox on. To remove an Honors designation from a section, click the third checkbox off.

- To designate a section as waitlist-enabled, click the fourth checkbox on. You may also use the Comments field to explain information about how the waitlist should be used (although this is not necessary if you have already communicated this information to Ashley).

5. To make other changes, for example an instructor change, replace the information in the text box as needed. Note: If you are unable to add data to a form field, try scrolling to the end of the form field and deleting white space to make room for new characters in your entry.

6. If you anticipate offering a section for which an instructor has not been assigned/hired yet, please simply enter “Staff” in the Instructor field and any helpful information for the Provost in the Comments field.

7. To add a new section of any course, scroll to the bottom of the page and type in the new section information on the first blank row. You may add up to nine new course sections using this entry form. Remember that sections of GRW 101 that you project will be taught by your department’s faculty should be added at this stage as well.

8. As with last semester’s projection request, the Registrar’s Office will continue tracking sabbaticals, course releases and overloads using the same database as we use to build the semester schedule. Please update existing information and/or enter new information for your department’s faculty using the blank rows at the bottom of the form entry. For example, to specify that an instructor will be on a sabbatical in a given term, please simply enter “Sabbatical” in the Title field and the instructor’s name in the Instructor field. If you project that a faculty member will teach an overload, please specify this by  entering “Overload – [course number]” in the Title field.

9. If you need to add more course sections beyond the nine blank rows, please email Ashley with the required information (preferably in an Excel spreadsheet) and we will add these manually.

10. When you have completed your changes, click the “Check my entries” button at the bottom of the form. This will bring up a results page, listing any changed data with a strike-through (—-) and the new information printed immediately below. The new course sections are listed below any changes you have made to the existing section data. If the results page is correct, and you are finished, click the “Submit” button. If you are not finished, click the “Save” button and you will be able to return to your work at a later time.

11. Once you have submitted your entries, a message will come up showing the URLs to the changes you made and the completed (static) page. The Registrar’s Office will begin to process these changes as soon as you submit your entries. Although you may edit your data and submit them more than once, please be aware that we will receive an email each time you do this, and may have already begun making your changes as soon as the first submission was received. Thus, if you need to correct anything after your initial submission, we ask that you contact us IMMEDIATELY so that we can take stock of which changes have already been applied.

12. Any specific room requests may be entered directly into the Comments field. Also, recognizing that certain recitation periods are more in demand than others, once the schedule has been published to the campus community, we ask that you and your department’s faculty make room change requests as soon as possible prior to the start of the semester.

The comment field has been added primarily so that department chairs can offer a brief rationale for overload courses and adjunct hiring (e.g., enrollment pressures, parental or sabbatical leave from a full-time faculty member, multiple SCE or chair releases, and so on). Because adjunct hiring must be approved by the Provost’s Office, early communication about departmental adjunct staffing needs will help facilitate this process.

Below are examples of the kinds of comments/rationale that would be most helpful.

• Adjunct needed because [x] will be taking an SCE course release, and this course regularly enrolls 20 students.
• Adjunct needed to cover [y]’s parental leave.
• Adjunct needed to cover [z] who is taking two course releases (one for being chair of a complex department). Department can absorb the loss of one of these courses, but not both.
• Adjunct needed because our department is contributing two GRW courses

Further Notes:

• When an existing section’s instructor is unknown, enter “Staff” in the Instructor field and enter more information in the Comments field, e.g. “Proposed adjunct hire” or “New tenure-line hire.” Please remember to communicate the instructor’s name directly with the Registrar’s Office once it is known, so the name can be added to the schedule seen by students.
• When an existing section’s instructor is known but has not been hired officially, enter that person’s name in the Instructor field and enter more information in the Comments field, e.g. “Adjunct hire pending” or “Previously employed adjunct” or “New tenure-line hire.”
• When adding a new Sabbatical dummy section, include the instructor’s name and a comment about whether it has been “approved” or is “projected.”
• When adding a new Course Release dummy section, include the instructor’s name and a comment about the rationale for the release, e.g. “SCE waiver” or “Chair Release.”

Due to browser caching (archiving), it often appears that your work was not saved when you return to the course change entry screen. This does NOT mean your work is gone. It occurs when your browser attempts to load a version of the page that it previously cached. Browsers do this in an effort to speed up the load time of pages across the web. The fix is simple: just hit the F5 button, or type Ctrl-R (Command-R on a Mac), or click on the Refresh button within the browser. You should find that the page immediately updates to a new version that includes your edits. If not, please contact us and we can almost always find your missing entries.