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S.99-9

0 ?

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

OFFICE OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT, ACADEMIC

From: ?

Senate Committee on Academic Planning

Subject:

Temporary Course Withdrawal

(SCUS Reference: SCUS 98-25)

(SCAP Reference: SCAP 98-68)

Date: ?

December 11, 1998

Action undertaken by the Senate Committee on Undergraduate Studies and the

Senate Committee on Academic Planning gives rise to the following motion:

Motion:

"that Senate approve, as set forth in S.99 - 9 , the proposal to

create a "Temporarily Withdrawn" category for courses not

offered."

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

Off ice of the Dean, Faculty of Arts

MEMORANDUM

To: ?

SCUS

From:

Roger Blackman

Associate Dean of Arts

Subject: Temporary Course Withdrawal Date:

October 2, 1998

Each year the Registrar lists courses that have not been taught for at

least 6 semesters, and asks whether each course should be retained or deleted.

I wish to propose a third option: temporary course withdrawal.

Sometimes, resource limitations prevent departments for several

semesters from offering courses that they do not wish to delete. We often

accommodate their needs by agreeing to retain courses until the necessary

resources are once again available. That may take years, during which time the

course continues to be listed in the Calendar. This makes the Calendar much

less helpful as a description of departmental curricula, and renders it vulnerable

to criticisms of "false advertising". However, this situation is unlikely to change

so long as it remains onerous to reintroduce a deleted course.

We need a provision for dropping the calendar entry for a course

without deleting it from the approved curriculum. This can be achieved by

establishing a new course status: temporary withdrawal (TW). The FACC is

supportive of this idea, and advice from its members leads me to propose the

following policy and procedure.

Preamble:

Listing a course in the Calendar implies a commitment to offer that

course within a reasonable time. If the period during which a course is not

offered is too long, students may complete their degrees without ever having had

an opportunity to take the course. To the extent this occurs, it weakens the

Calendar as a reliable description of the curriculum. The Registrar's practice of

requiring programs to defend or delete seldom-offered courses limits this

problem. However, it is a blunt instrument that fails to accommodate the needs

of a program that does not want to abandon a course but lacks the resources to

offer it for an extended period of time. This may occur when the regular course

instructor is granted a reduced teaching load or is otherwise unavailable for a

number of years. The program could delete the course and plan to reintroduce it

later. However, reintroduction would require full "new" course approval. The

following provision for temporary delisting of courses that cannot regularly be

offered minimizes this problem without subjecting programs to onerous

procedures for reinstating courses.

Policy: ?

If, after not offering an approved course for 6 consecutive semesters,

a teaching program temporarily lacks the resources needed to mount that course

in the following 2 years, it may request to have the course temporarily withdrawn

from the Calendar until the necessary resources are available.

Procedures:

The Registrar will continue annual identification of courses that have

not been offered for at least 6 consecutive semesters. Through their respective

Faculties, programs will be asked to assign each course to one of three

categories:

Retain: This will normally be allowed only if the program specifically commits

to offering the course in one of the following 6 semesters.

Delete: This option will be selected when a department no longer intends to

offer the course.

Tem poraril y

Withdraw: If the program does not want to delete the course, but

has a short-term lack of the resources needed to offer it, the course will be

withdrawn from the Calendar until further notice.

Each year that a department has a course in the 1W category, it will

be asked to a) reaffirm this status, or b) change the status to retain or delete.

No course may remain in the 1W category for more than 4 years.

Failing a specific commitment to offer the course, after 4 years as TW a course

will be deleted.

The responsibility for maintaining records of 1W courses lies with

Faculties. Faculties shall query their programs' TW courses at the time they deal

with the Registrar's annual list of courses not taught for 6 semesters. The

Faculty responses to SCUS shall include an updated list of TW courses.

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