Part 1: Planning and Letter of Intent

☐ Read the Faculty Guidelines for Themes page on the Common Curriculum website carefully.

☐  Develop an idea for a Theme and begin looking for courses that might fit. One way to find courses is to do a keyword search of the PDF version of the undergraduate catalog. (See link under the picture on that page.) Another resource is the Registrar’s running list of Common Curriculum courses. Click on the link for the Excel file and sort as desired. (Note that courses show up once for each CA, TOI, or competency they have, so a course with two CAs, two TOIs, and a W will be listed five times.) Remember that only courses with TOIs can be used in Themes.

☐  Choose between three (3) and ten (10) courses for your Theme. Students should be able to complete your Theme in two years if needed, so keep in mind how often courses may be offered. We recommend including at least four courses in any Theme to ensure adequate availability.

*Please see the downloadable checklist in Word at the bottom for worksheet tables where you can record information in preparation to submit both your Letter of Intent and your completed proposal.

☐  Submit a Letter of Intent to commoncurr@uconn.edu that includes the following:

• Proposed title for your Theme
• Potential courses (numbers and titles) that you're considering for your Theme, their TOIs if known, and a couple sentences about why they would be included.
• A brief description of your Theme and how you envision the courses fitting together.
• A brief explanation of where you are in the development process. For example, are you just starting to think about a Theme? Have you already spoken to other faculty whose course(s) you want to use? Has your department head or curriculum manager already given you the go-ahead to develop this Theme? Etc.
• Are you from a regional campus where you expect this Theme to be available?

Note: Theme Letters of Intent are reviewed on an ongoing basis. You do not need any approvals at this point. The Letter of Intent process is designed to help CCC+ identify any potential issues or guideline violations before you officially submit. This is to save you time so you don’t do unnecessary work.

Part 2: Official Proposal
To be completed after CCC+ responds to and approves your Letter of Intent.

☐  Make Any Requested Changes: Once CCC+ responds with feedback, finalize your Themes proposal. Be sure to address any issues the committee flagged (e.g. Add a 1000-level course if needed, replace any ineligible courses, etc).

☐  Secure Approvals: Contact each department and get permission to use their course in your theme. NOTE: If a course is cross-listed, you must secure approvals from all cross-listed departments.

The contact person and level of approval may vary by department. We recommend reaching out to the department or unit head and/or the undergraduate curriculum director. Some departments may want to send your request through their Curricula and Courses Committee (C&C). Other department heads may feel comfortable signing off on their own. The only thing CCC+ needs from you is 1) a confirmation date that you received permission to use the course, and 2) the name of the person who signed off on it. Save any emails you receive that can confirm you received approval in case there’s a question, but you do not need to forward them to us.

Record the approval dates and the person who granted approval below. These will eventually be entered into the online form. If you have multiple courses from one department, you only need one entry as long as all courses are covered under that approval date. If you received approvals on different dates for different courses from the same person, use the date when you got the final approval for the last course from that department/unit.

☐ Research Course Availability: The easiest way to do this is probably just to look up courses on the Dynamic Class Search feature in Student Admin. By changing the semester/year field, you should be able to get an idea of how often a course is generally offered. (Remember to uncheck the box about only open courses.) We’re primarily concerned with regular semester (Fall & Spring) offerings, but you can indicate if there are frequent summer or intensive session offerings as well.

☐ Collect Syllabi: You’ll need to upload a syllabus for each course in your theme. The syllabi should be the ones that include the TOI alignment table. Please upload an actual Word or PDF document. Do not link to SharePoint sites.

☐ Submit Proposal: If your Letter of Intent was approved, you should have received a link to the online submission form. Use the information you collected above to complete the form and click “Submit”!