POLICY STATEMENT

NUMBER: 79-28

FILE: General Education

SUBJECT: GENERAL EDUCATION COURSE LIST APPEAL PROCEDURE

  Obsolete Policy

The following policy statement, recommended by the Academic Senate at its meeting of November 8, 1979, and approved by the President on November 16, 1979, is as follows:

GENERAL EDUCATION COURSE LIST APPEAL PROCEDURE

1. A department (or School) may appeal a decision, either positive or negative, regarding placement of a course on the G.E. list. The Department (or School) does this by requesting reconsideration and submitting further information about the course to show why the original decision was not correct. This information must be in writing; the G.E. Governing Committee will not hold "hearings" at which oral arguments are presented.

A. The Committee's "disapproval" actions usually have been because of one or more of the following reasons:

(1) From the information provided, the course appeared inappropriate for the Category proposed.

(2) From the information provided, the course appeared too narrow in content and approach to be suitable for General Education breadth.

(3) From the information provided, the course appeared to presuppose substantial previous experience in the subject or discipline (even though specific prerequisites may not have been mentioned). (In general, the Committee tends to consider senior level courses populated mostly by majors in the department or closely related departments to be in this category. It is unlikely that students who have never had a course in the area would feel able to compete on equal terms with students who have considerable experience in related courses.)

In addition to such major difficulties as those listed above, the Committee sometimes has had difficulty reconciling the G.E. justification with the Catalog statement for the course.

B. The Committee's "approval" decisions resulted from its judgment that, from the information provided, the course appeared to meet both the General University General Education criteria and the criteria for the specific Category proposed. An appeal of a decision to place a given course on the G.E. list should seek to demonstrate that this judgment of the Committee's was incorrect.

C. If a Department discovers that one of its courses is approved for General Education under a specific Category and the course is not appropriate, it should request that the course be deleted from the approved list.

2.  If, after the appeal referred to in #1 above, a School still disagrees with the judgment of the G.E. Governing Committee, it may appeal to the full P.E:P Council. If this is done, the Committee will prepare for the Council a statement of the reasons for its decision. The School will furnish the members of the Council copies of the course justification and the additional materials provided for the Committee. All materials shall be distributed to Council members prior to the meeting at which the matter is to be considered. Oral presentations may also be made at the P.E.P. Council meeting, if the School wishes.

The judgment of the P.E.P. Council on appeals will be final.

Effective: Immediately