New or Repeat Special Topics Course Proposals

Special Topics courses are courses that will be offered only once or twice. Special Topics courses are typically courses that are being taught as pilots before permanent versions are proposed or courses taught by visiting faculty in their areas of expertise. Use the form below to propose a new Special Topics course or request that a Special Topics course be repeated.  

Approval Process: Special Topics courses require Curriculum Committee approval and may be offered twice within a three-year period without being presented for a Faculty vote. If a course is to be repeated for a third time or is being offered for a second time outside the three-year window, a Faculty vote is required. 

Proposal Instructions

Please click here to open the Special Topics Course proposal template file and then click the Use Template button to create a copy of the template in your Drive. Use the instructions below to complete your copy of the proposal template and then submit it to the Curriculum Committee using this form.

Please note that Chairs will be asked to acknowledge that the submission of this proposal is the product of a departmental discussion.

Course Information

  • Course Listing: Enter the course details in Bulletin-ready language, following the guidelines below. Please not that Special Topics courses are not eligible for DR tagging.
    • Course Number: The course number should reflect the level of the course. The possible numbers are as follows:
      • 190-194: introductory Special Topics course
      • 195-199: introductory Special Topics course with lab
      • 290-294: 200-level Special Topics course
      • 295-299: 200-level Special Topics course with lab
      • 390-394: 300-level Special Topics course
      • 395-399: 300-level Special Topics course with lab
      • 490-494: 400-level Special Topics course
      • 495-499: 400-level Special Topics course with lab
    • Number of Credits: The number of credits can be 1, 2, 3, or 4.
    • Course Description: See guidelines.
    • Prerequisites: List the prerequisites for the course. If there are no prerequisites, write “None”. The phrase “or permission of instructor” is not necessary because instructors can always waive course prerequisites. However, if you would like instructor permission to be required for all students, please indicate this requirement in the Prerequisites. 
  • Short Title: If a course title is more than 30 characters, an abbreviated title that is under 30 characters long must be provided. If you are changing the short title from a previous offering of this course, paste your current short title into the box and then indicate any changes. 
  • Credit Explanation: A standard course is four credits. If you are proposing that this course be less than four credits, please provide an explanation. 
  • Grading Option: Enter the grading option. If you are changing the grading option for the course, please enter the current grading option and strike it out and enter the new grading option in red. The options are:
    • Must be taken on a letter-grade basis
    • Must be taken Credit/No Credit basis
    • Can be taken on a letter-grade basis or a Credit/No Credit basis
  • Semester: Please enter the semester and year in which the course will be offered.
  • Staffing: Please describe who you expect to teach the course and provide any other relevant staffing information. 
  • Rationale: Please explain why this course is being proposed, including how it fills a need within your program. If it is in response to program assessment, please describe how your assessment data informed this proposal.
  • Overlap with existing courses? Please briefly describe to what extent, if any, this course replicates or overlaps with any existing courses. You can use keyword searches in the Academic Bulletin website (http://catalog.allegheny.edu/) to review existing courses. The existence of replication or overlap with any other courses will be reviewed by the Curriculum Committee in its consideration of your proposal, but will not necessarily count against the proposal.

Program Requirements and Electives

  • Programs Affected: Please list all of the majors and minors connected to this Special Topics course. 

Learning Outcomes and Mapping

  • Course Learning Outcomes: Please list 3-5 course learning outcomes, keeping the following points in mind:
    • Learning outcomes should describe what students should know, understand or be able to do by the end of the course and should be written broadly enough that changes in instructor, textbook, etc would not require a change to the outcomes. (Changing the outcomes for a future offering of this course would necessitate the proposal of a new Special Topics course.)
    • As you write your outcomes, please think about how the wording of your outcome might affect your ability to effectively assess the outcome. For example, compound outcomes will require you to separately assess multiple components of the outcome. To avoid compound outcomes, you may need to think about which outcomes to prioritize by listing them as CLOs and which outcomes are important but don’t rise to the level of a CLO.
  • CLO to PLO Mapping: Please complete the table in the following way:
    • Replace PLO 1, PLO 2, etc with the exact wording of your program learning outcomes.
    • Replace CLO 1, CLO 2, etc with the exact wording of your course learning outcomes.
    • For each CLO, indicate any mapping to a PLO by entering I, D, R, or P in the appropriate cell in the table:
      • I – Introducing
      • D – Developing
      • R – Refining
      • P – Proficient.
    • Feel free to add rows and columns, as needed.