Course Proposals

Proposing new courses and changes to existing ones

Courses at Indiana University are maintained in the University Course Catalog, sometimes referred to as the Master Course Inventory. The University Course Catalog is shared across all campuses of the university. In many cases, courses themselves are shared between the campuses. For these reasons, all new course proposals and course change proposals are subject to multiple layers of scrutiny, including a 30-day remonstrance period.

Courses cannot be proposed for CASE or General Education credit until they have survived remonstrance and been fully approved. Units, however, are encouraged to review the learning outcomes for the types of credit they intend to seek during the course design process. 

Phase 1

  1. Proposal creation
  2. Department/School review and approval
  3. College review and approval

Phase 2

30-day remonstrance period (begins first business day of the month).

Phase 3

  1. Campus approval
  2. System approval
  3. Entry in the University Course Catalog
  4. Prerequisite programming
  5. Entry into the College of Arts and Sciences Bulletin

Creating course proposals

All course proposals are routed through the university's Course Approval, Remonstrance, Maintenance and Integration system (CARMIn). Whether you wish to propose and new course or make the simplest of changes to existing ones, the proposal will need to go through the CARMIn system.

CARMIn

All faculty members—and approved staff—have access to CARMIn.

Log in here

Below are two job aids that may be useful to new CARMIn users:

When a member of a unit initiates a New Course or a Course Change proposal via CARMIn, the electronic document (eDoc) is automatically routed to the individuals in the next level (node) of the approval chain.

  • Review node: This is an optional node that may contain the Director of Undergraduate Studies, Scheduling Officer, Curriculum Committee chairperson, or another individual.
  • Approval node: every unit has this node; it usually contains the unit's Chair/Director or the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS).

The College strongly recommends that each node contain two people in the event one person is unable to review CARMIn eDocs. One individual, however, should be designated as the primary individual responsible for review/approval. We also recommend that any single use belong to just one (1) node in a unit.

Unit reviewers and approvers may approve a proposal or return it with comments to the initiator. Once a proposal is approved at the unit level, it is then routed to the College. The College will review the proposal and request changes, if necessary. On occasion, courses are brought before the College's Committee for Undergraduate Education.

Unit administrators and approved staff may view membership of the CARMIn approval nodes via the Approved Users app under Curricular Apps.

Remonstrance period

If approved by the College, course requests are required to be placed on a Central University Remonstrance List so that other units and campuses have an opportunity to review them. After the 30-day remonstrance period, they are routed to the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and University Student Systems and Services for final approval.

Unit administrators should review the Remonstrance List each month to ensure that units agree with any changes that impacts the unit. OUCPR will notify units if we find any proposals that we believe impacts the unit, but we cannot be responsible for uncovering all issues.

If a unit wishes to remonstrate against a course, the remonstration must be officially filed within the 30-day remonstrance period.

Reasons for filing a remonstrance include:

  • Equivalence of a proposed course with a course already shared in the Course Catalog
  • Confusion, overlap, or redundancy with existing courses
  • Failure to obtain required approvals
  • Documented lack of resources or of faculty expertise to offer the proposed course

Out of respect for their colleagues, faculty members have used this privilege only sparingly. See additional information on CARMIn and the remonstrance process at the VPSS Student Records website under "Course Catalog."

In the College, faculty and staff who have concerns about an undergraduate course or course change should direct all correspondence related to the filing and resolution of a remonstrance to both:

  • Rich Hardy, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education
  • Justin Grossman, Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education and Director of the Office of Undergraduate Curriculum, Policy, and Records.

In this way, concerns are addressed by the appropriate people who will help ensure that the process is moving ahead expeditiously.

In the event that a remonstrance is filed, the two parties will correspond in a good-faith effort to address and resolve these issues. See the VPSS Student Services website under "Course Catalog" for additional instructions. Until the remonstrance is withdrawn after the parties reach a satisfactory agreement, all changes are frozen; the process places the burden of proof on the proposer.