A proposal to establish uniform effective dates for curriculum changes will be debated at today’s Council and Academic Affairs meeting.

The proposal, submitted by Mary Herrington-Perry, assistant vice president for academic affairs and CAA ex-officio member, has been supported by the Academic Advising Center, which sent a correspondence to the council to such an effect.

CAA Chair Andrew Methven, biological sciences professor, said last week that he thought that academic advisors would like the proposal because, by slowing the ability of the departments to make curriculum changes effective, the university catalog would remain more up to date, which would make advisors’ jobs easier.

If the proposal is approved, curriculum changes approved during the fall semester would not go into effect until the next fall semester, and changes approved during the spring semester would not go into effect until two fall semesters later.

The council was scheduled to discuss the proposal at last week’s meeting, but discussion was limited because Herrington-Perry couldn’t attend the meeting.

However, at last week’s meeting the CAA discussed the possibility of having all curriculum changes go into effect the following fall. Herrington-Perry said that because university catalogs are printed during the spring semester, the catalog, which is released in the fall, would not reflect changes made the previous spring.

Limiting curriculum changes to only those which affect majors was also discussed at last week’s meeting.

In other business, the CAA will evaluate two new courses up for approval in addition to a revised course.

The new courses are Fitness Concepts for Teachers, PED 3000, and Teaching Reading and Language Arts in Secondary Classrooms, EDU 4281. Teaching, Reading and Learning with Technology in Classrooms, EDU 2021, is before the council for revision.