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  5. Course Approval Committee

Course Approval Committee

The Course Approval Committee (CAC) reviews new, revised, and adopted courses submitted by faculty. The committee considers compliance with college standards, accreditation standards, curriculum policies, and alignment with Special Requirements/Tags and College-Wide Learning Outcomes (CWLO).
All new, revised, and adopted courses must be reviewed and approved by the CAC prior to approval by the Vice President for Instruction. The CAC maintains and facilitates documents related to the course approval process.

Course Approval Committee Goals

  • Enable programs to offer high quality courses that meet college-wide and course-level learning outcomes.
  • Promote curriculum development.

The Course Approval Committee will

  • Review course proposals for completion.
  • Ask questions and provide feedback.
  • Determine, if requested, whether courses should receive a Special Requirement/Designation/Tag and collaborate with faculty requesters to design appropriate content and learning outcomes to earn the Tag.
  • Collaborate with Emphasis Committees to help faculty requesters to design appropriate content and learning outcomes for inclusion in an Emphasis.
  • Promote professional development opportunities for curriculum development,
  • Work with the Instructional Assessment Committee to provide support for new and revised course development.

Course Approval Process

  • All course proposals must be submitted through the Automated Course Approval System (ACAS) found on Inside Seattle Colleges. Please use this checklist to help you through the process.
  • Course proposals pass through 8 review stages in the ACAS. CAC Review is the 6th stage; note that it can take several weeks for the course proposal to reach the CAC Review stage.
  • CAC members will use a rubric to review each course proposal.
  • After review, the CAC may have questions or desire edits to a course proposal; Faculty requesters should plan for time to complete CAC editing requests.
  • Course outlines are approved after all editing requests have been completed. Please submit your course proposals well in advance of the quarter that you anticipate offering the course, to ensure that you have time to revise your course proposal.
  • If you are revising all or a large number of courses in your program, please contact Josh Whorley, CAC Chair, to set up an orientation to the Seattle Central College course approval process. Please complete an orientation before beginning the revision process

CAC Review Submission Deadlines

The application to revise, adopt, or create a course must reach the Course Approval Committee 90 days before you'd like to offer the course. Contact your division or unit administrators to check for any internal deadlines by which you must have your course outline officially approved in order to have your course entered and ready in the schedule of classes for the quarter you desire to offer the course.

The Course Approval Process and the Instructional Assessment Committee (IAC)

If you teach in a workforce or certificate program, please have your Program Learning Outcomes approved by the IAC. Please contact Emily Castillo or Elaine ong, Co-Chairs of Instructional Assessment Committee (IAC), for guidance. List of Approved Program Learning Outcomes. If the course you are adopting, establishing or revising fulfills requirements for the A.A. or A.S. Degree, please use the A.A./A.S. Learning Outcomes for your program learning outcomes. The IAC can also help with course learning outcomes.