It has come to our attention that some confusion may exist concerning the timeline for the Pathways process, specifically, with the timeline for submitting courses within the CSI Pathways framework that was submitted to Executive Vice Chancellor Logue on June 12 2012. We are writing to provide some clarity to the timeline and the logic behind it.
The timeline is dictated by the need to schedule Pathways courses as of the Fall 2013 semester. In order to be scheduled these courses must be on the January 2013 Chancellor’s University Report. The Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor originally indicated that Common Core courses needed to be submitted for approval by December 2012, with a request to submit these as soon as possible. In her more recent communication and now on the CUNY Pathways Website.
EVC Logue has indicated that all Common Core Pathways courses must be submitted by September 2012. The reason for pushing up the deadline to September is to allow the faculty committees time to review the thousands of courses that will be submitted. If these courses are all submitted at the last minute, the faculty review committees will simply not be able to handle the volume.
With the above in mind, we have asked the College of Staten Island faculty to begin submitting their Common Core courses over the summer. Our vision is that these courses will be submitted in the format specified by CUNY, as they are prepared. Associate Provost Vess will provide detailed instructions on the process of preparing the Common Core courses for submission. This will enable CSI to fulfill its responsibility to forward them for preliminary review by the central faculty committees to ascertain whether they satisfy the requirements of various disciplinary areas.
Our original thought was that the faculty would want to begin the process of curricular review electronically during the summer to minimize the backlog during the Fall semester. A number of departments indicated reservations about conducting curricular review when their full-time faculty are not all present on the campus. These departments asked to initiate the course review process at the start of the Fall semester. However, even if a department chooses this course of action, we cannot delay submitting courses to the Pathways committees for review and pre-approval until the Fall semester commences. The University is asking for evidence that course preparation is actually taking place. Therefore, we ask all departments to forward their Pathways courses electronically to Deborah Vess as soon as they are put into the CUNY templates.
We are both committed to faculty development of course curricula as specified in our governance, but as the responsible parties we must ensure that CSI meets required CUNY deadlines. The purpose of the preliminary review by the faculty committees is to ratify that our Common Core Pathways submissions are in compliance with the Pathways guidelines. These courses will need to be put in a format that allows the CUNY faculty committees to determine whether they meet the learning outcomes for the intended area. As early as possible in the fall semester, courses will be reviewed on campus through the CSI governance structure. We hope that many courses submitted for Pathways preapproval will be currently existing courses that are already three hours/three credits, with goals that are consistent with Pathways. These will not require modification or further action by departmental curriculum, Undergraduate Curriculum, or General Education committees. Courses that require modification to meet Pathways standards must go through the usual campus review process. We ask that you and your departments schedule such review meetings no later than the end of August. If, during our campus review, there is objection to Pathways courses that have been approved by CUNY, we can either adapt the courses or decide not to schedule them for the Fall 2013 semester. However, it is very important that we ensure that a sufficient number of courses are offered by CSI in each area of the Common Core and the College Option. We thank you in advance for your involvement and cooperation in this process.
