There are instances in which cross-listing of courses would strengthen the curriculum. Cross-listing courses either within or between schools would have the primary function of promoting interdisciplinary education at the college.
PROCEDURES FOR CROSS-LISTING COURSES
When would a program consider cross-listing courses?
There must be a clear curricular benefit for a course to be cross-listed; this benefit should be determined at the level of the programs considering cross-listing, and may take many different forms. For instance, an interdisciplinary program that includes disciplinary courses in its lists of courses that satisfy major category requirements may wish to cross-list certain disciplinary courses that meet a criteria of interdisciplinarity; the program could then require students to take a set number of courses that are either listed or cross-listed with its own course ID prefix, improving the interdisciplinary quality of the major.
Additional factors and requirements for cross-listed courses
- A course may be cross-listed between or among programs in the same school or in different schools and could occur within either undergraduate or graduate programs.
- A cross-listed course must have a primary home in one program which will be responsible for scheduling, staffing, and assessing the course. A cross-listed course cannot be offered without approval of the program in which it is primarily housed.
- If a cross-listed course is a requirement for its secondary program then that program must be notified of any modifications to the course so that it can determine if cross-listing should continue.
- A cross-listed course may be taught in multiple sections as long as the course content and learning outcomes for all sections are the same.
- All pre-requisites for a course remain in place for all students taking that course when it is cross-listed.
- The subject codes for the course ID numbers should reflect the course content.
- A student will receive credit only once for taking a cross-listed course and cannot switch from one course ID to the other after the add/drop period has ended.
- An independent study or “Topics” course cannot be cross-listed.
Procedure
- For a course to be cross-listed (or to be un-crosslisted) it must be reviewed and approved as follows:
- The convening group of each program concerned, in agreement with all instructors of the course, reviews and approves the cross-listing.
- The dean of each unit concerned reviews and approves the cross-listing and monitors procedural issues as capacity, compensation, etc.
- The catalog description for each cross-listed “section” will include a statement identifying the course as cross-listed, and providing the course identity of the cross-listed version of the course.
- Course syllabi will reflect the cross-listed nature of the course (listing both identities of the course), and will include a statement that “students should ensure they are registered in the correct “section” before the end of add-drop, because no changes can be made to a student’s registration after that date”.
- NOTE: Faculty should be aware that granting an override in one “section” will, in effect, increase the overall capacity of the course – the other “section” will not have its capacity decreased correspondingly.