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Faculty Guidelines For Requesting And Evaluating Core Courses

• Objective
• Requirements
• Exemplary Educational Objectives
  
  
• Download the Core Curriculum Course Request Form:
  [ MS Word ]   [PDF ]
   
• The Electronic CBM003 Form and Instructions

Objective:

The objective of a social and behavioral science component of a core curriculum is to increase students' knowledge of how social and behavioral scientists discover, describe, and explain the behaviors and interactions among individuals, groups, institutions, events, and ideas. Such knowledge will better equip students to understand themselves and the roles they play in addressing the issues facing humanity.

Requirements:

1. New courses approved for the core curriculum must be non-advanced courses except for substantiated reasons justified and approved on a course by course basis.
   
2. The request must show how the course intends to meet the exemplary educational objectives, as set forth by the Coordinating Board. This shall be done by including a syllabus that addresses the appropriate objectives.
   
3. To meet Coordinating Board requirements that core courses be evaluated, requests for new core courses must present processes and procedures for evaluating course effectiveness in regard to appropriate objectives and must delineate how the evaluations will be employed in course development.
   
   Relevant guidelines derived from the CB's Criteria for Evaluation of Core Curricula appear below:
   
1. How is the course consistent with the appropriate elements of the core curriculum component areas, intellectual competencies, and perspectives as expressed in "Core Curriculum: Assumptions and Defining Characteristics" adopted by the Board?
   
2. How are the institution's educational goals and the exemplary educational objectives of the core curriculum recommended by the Board being achieved?
   
3. What processes and procedures are being used to evaluate the course and its contribution to the core curriculum?
   
4. How will the evaluation results be utilized to improve the course and its contribution to the core curriculum?

Exemplary Educational Objectives:

1. To employ the appropriate methods, technologies, and data that social and behavioral scientists use to investigate the human condition.
   
2. To examine social institutions and processes across a range of historical periods, social structures, and cultures.
   
3. To use and critique alternative explanatory systems or theories.
   
4. To develop and communicate alternative explanations or solutions for contemporary social issues.
   
5. To analyze the effects of historical, social, political, economic, cultural, and global forces on the area under study.
   
6. To recognize and apply reasonable criteria for the acceptability of historical evidence and social research.
   
7. To analyze, critically assess, and develop creative solutions to public policy problems.
   
8. To identify and understand differences and commonalities within diverse cultures.
   

The Electronic CBM003 Form and Instructions

Download the Core Curriculum Course Request Form:
[ MS Word ]   [PDF ]

Office of Academic Program Management
at the University of Houston

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