A: The new Common Curriculum officially goes live in Fall 2025! That being said, most structures and courses will be in place by Spring 2025 in time for New Student Orientation and registration.

The outgoing General Education Content Area system will remain in place for now, but it will sunset over the next several years. This means that UConn will operate two different systems simultaneously for a while until most students who came in under the outgoing system have graduated. After this, the old system will be phased out.

A: On April 3rd, 2023, all departments and units received a spreadsheet that lists all their courses approved for CAs as of the April University Senate meeting. For each course, the department or unit is asked to choose one of the following options:

No Transition – The course is not moving to a TOI at this time. It can still be moved in the future using a CAR form. If the course is never transitioned to a TOI, it will cease to count toward any General Education or Common Curriculum requirements once the legacy General Education system is phased out.

Direct Transition – The course will be considered for the TOIs indicated on the spreadsheet. Courses considered for direct transition may change slightly but not enough to require catalog copy revision. In short, the course will largely transition as-is. A standard syllabus for each course should be included in the packet returned to the CCC+.

*Please note that all sections of the same course should have the same Learning Objectives, including learning objectives that address their Common Curriculum content. Please see the individual TOI pages for criteria and sample learning objectives.

Transition w/Revisions (CAR Needed) – The course is changing significantly enough to require new catalog copy (i.e. a change in title, description, number, or prereqs). This course should still be reported on the spreadsheet, but a Curricular Action Request (CAR) form will be needed to finalize the changes.

Spreadsheets are due along with all related syllabi on November 1, 2023 to commoncurr@uconn.edu. If your department or unit has not yet contacted you about transitioning your course, please touch base with them to find out where they are in the review process at this time.

A: Courses in the Common Curriculum are limited to two Topics of Inquiry (TOI), but they can also carry a W, a Q, or both. It should be noted, however, that the move from General Education to the Common Curriculum changes Environmental Literacy from a separate entity to a TOI, so any courses that currently hold two Content Areas plus an E will need to make a decision about what areas to focus on when they transition to TOIs.

A: No. General Education courses under the outgoing system currently require special approval to be offered in Intensive Sessions (IS) of 4 weeks or less (mainly Winter & May terms). The same will be true of Common Curriculum courses, but current approvals of courses in their Gen Ed versions will NOT carry over for TOIs. 

To have your Common Curriculum version of a course considered for offering in IS before November 1, 2023, please make sure that the person in your department or unit who is completing the Common Curriculum Course Migration Spreadsheet has a copy of the condensed IS version of your syllabus, as this will need to be included with the course packet they return to the CCC+. After November 1, a separate form will be required to request approval for offering in the IS.

To find out if your outgoing General Education Content Area course is currently approved for offering in IS, please visit GEOC's Approved Gen Ed Courses page. Again, however, please remember that this approval will not roll over to the TOI version of the course. If the course is currently approved for offering in IS and you do not request approval for it under the TOIs, that approval will be withdrawn after Summer 2025. You can still choose to have the course considered at a later date using our usual approval process.