Introduction

Any faculty member wishing to teach a new course, a course which has been changed in content or level, or a course which has not been taught at Columbia in the past three years, must first have the course approved by the Committee(s) on Instruction of the relevant Arts and Sciences school(s).

Complete course approval requests for Columbia College contain the following:

1. Course syllabus, including:
   1. Rationale
   2. Course Description
   3. Reading List
   4. Weekly syllabus
2. Curriculum Vitae of the instructor only if the course is taught by adjunct faculty or a visiting faculty member;
3. Course approval form, completed by both the course instructor and the faculty representative of the department;
4. Statement on the place of the course in the undergraduate curriculum provided by the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

If you wish your course to be open to undergraduates from Columbia College, this document will assist you in preparing your course for Committee on Instruction (COI) review.

Course approval requests should be submitted to the COI no later than the March prior to the academic year in which the proposed course will be taught.

If you have questions about course approval requests, please contact Mia Mendicino, Coordinator for Academic Affairs, Columbia College: mm313@columbia.edu; 854-2442.

Constructing the Course Syllabus

In addition to the Course Approval Form (see attached), complete submissions of course approval requests include a course syllabus which contains the following information:

Rationale

Includes not only the rationale for offering the course, but also the role the course will play in the overall curriculum of the department.

Course Description

Provides a detailed description of the content and goals of the course.

Reading List and Weekly Outline

Provides a week-by-week outline of the readings (including numbers of pages to be read each week) and discussion topics for the course. Please remember that an undergraduate lecture course should normally require a minimum of 150 pages of reading per week. If the course will be using films, a separate film list should also be submitted (though films may not be shown during class time).

Statement on Academic Integrity

Many faculty include in their syllabi a statement on academic integrity. Following is the Columbia College Faculty Statement on Academic Integrity and two specific examples from current syllabi, all of which can serve as a guideline in developing a statement for your syllabus.

Faculty Statement on Academic Integrity

The intellectual venture in which we are all engaged requires of faculty and students alike the highest level of personal and academic integrity. As members of an academic community, each one of us bears the responsibility to participate in scholarly discourse and research in a manner characterized by intellectual honesty and scholarly integrity.

Scholarship, by its very nature, is an iterative process, with ideas and insights building one upon the other. Collaborative scholarship requires the study of other scholars' work, the free discussion of such work, and the explicit acknowledgement of those ideas in any work that inform our own. This exchange of ideas relies upon a mutual trust that sources, opinions, facts, and insights will be properly noted and carefully credited.

In practical terms, this means that, as students, you must be responsible for the full citations of others' ideas in all of your research papers and projects; you must be scrupulously honest when taking your examinations; you must always submit your own work and not that of another student, scholar, or internet agent.

Any breach of this intellectual responsibility is a breach of faith with the rest of our academic community. It undermines our shared intellectual culture, and it cannot be tolerated. Students failing to meet these responsibilities should anticipate being asked to leave Columbia.

Example 1:

In this class, we will be analyzing the thoughts, arguments and evidence of others. This work will be critical in helping you to develop your own ideas. Plagiarism occurs when you present someone else's ideas, arguments, or evidence as your own without attribution or acknowledgement. Plagiarism occurs in (but is not limited to) the following instances: copying or paraphrasing someone else's writing without acknowledgement; using someone else's facts or ideas without acknowledgement; handing in someone else's work, or work that you have submitted for another course.

Example 2:

Plagiarism, which is commonly understood as using another's words or ideas as one's own, will be rewarded with an 'F' and will be reported to the Dean of Student Affairs in charge of academic integrity.

Completing the Course Approval Request Form (see attached)

Section to be completed by the instructor

The instructor of the course completes the first section of the Course Approval Request Form. In addition to basic information about the department and course, instructors provide the following:

Designator and Course Number (typically determined in conjunction with the Department and the Registrar's Office)

The following designators are the most common at Columbia College.

C -	those courses designed for and generally open only to Columbia College students except by permission or an arrangement with Columbia College (i.e. Contemporary Civilization and Literature Humanities).
W -	interschool courses which normally are taught by Arts and Sciences faculty
V -	courses which can be taught by Barnard College faculty
G -	Graduate School courses which are open to advanced undergraduates (4000-level only)

C and V courses may have course numbers as high as 3999. Only W courses may have numbers through the 4000-level. Only a few departments offer G 4000-level courses, which are normally open to advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students.

Type of Activity

Lecture:	Meets twice a week for a total of 150 minutes. It is expected that lecture courses will have a midterm and final exam as minimum written requirements, and will require at least 150 pages of reading per week. Lecture classes are usually taken for 3 points of Columbia College credit.
Seminar:	Meets once a week for a total of 110 minutes. It is expected that seminars will require a final paper of approximately 25-40 pages in length. Seminars are usually taken for 4 points of Columbia College credit.
Colloquium:	Meets once a week for a total of 110 minutes. It is expected that colloquia will require a final paper of approximately 20-30 pages in length. Typically a colloquium includes more faculty presentation than a seminar. Colloquia are usually taken for 4 points of Columbia College credit.
Laboratory:	Varies
Studio:	Varies

 

If the course has a required discussion or recitation section, please ensure that it is scheduled with the registrar prior to registration.

Days and Hours

Designators, numbers, and type of activity all play a part in determining the days and hours a course may be offered.

Any course classified as a lecture meets twice a week for a total of 150 minutes, regardless of status as a C, V, or W course.

Seminars meet once a week for a total of 110 minutes.

W4000-level courses are lectures only, and meet twice a week. G4000-level courses meet as seminars.

Courses must be taught in one of the day/time slots on the Master University Day/Time Schedule. There are some exceptions, such as a few of the courses offered at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

The Committee on Instruction and the Registrar urge faculty to observe these approved times in order to make maximum use of space, as well as to ensure that students will be able to take full advantage of the curriculum.

Note on films: Films may not be shown in class. Instructors must arrange a separate film viewing time. Courses which are predominately film courses may be taught once a week for four hours.

Section to be competed by the department

Every course submitted for approval by the COI must have the signature of the appropriate faculty member who represents the department. For courses open to undergraduates, this is normally the Director of Undergraduate Studies. For graduate level courses, this representative is usually the Director of Graduate Studies. The department chair or program director can also serve as the signatory.

Central Teaching Requirements

The department's faculty representative should indicate if the course fulfills any of the department's central teaching requirements (CTR), as outlined by the Arts and Sciences.

In addition to the above, the COI has asked for every new course submitted a statement from the Director of Undergraduate Studies on the specific role of the course in the undergraduate program; the population of students the department hopes to reach with this course; and the course's relationship to any specific major, concentration, specialization, or degree program.

Attachment	Size
Course Approval Form (PDF)	24.34 KB