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Curricular Review Process

Institutional Effectiveness (IE) and the Registrar’s Office have teamed up to offer a suite of tools to help programs identify curricular features that add complexity to students’ path to degree completion. Programs can schedule a review with IE and the Registrar that will cover the following areas:

• Roadblock courses
• Course prerequisites, corequisites and overrides
• exceptions
• Structural review (emphases, tracks, cohorts)
• Completion efficiencies
• Course inventory (courses no longer taught, consistently low enrollment)
• Scheduling issues
• Lightcast Workforce Analysis
• (Graduation Major Academic Plans)

A new curricular review process is currently being piloted and will, in the future, become part of the formal program review process. To participate in the pilot, departments should reach out to the Office of IE at oie@weber.edu.

Students study in the Program of Architectural Design on February 4, 2025.

Scheduling Best Practices

Intentional scheduling supports student retention and timely completion. USHE has also set minimum space utilization requirements that Weber State will need to meet to earn new capital funds and improve performance funding. Classrooms should be scheduled for a minimum of 34 hours per week to meet USHE standards. The Registrar’s Office makes the following recommendations in support of efficient, student-centered academic scheduling. 

• Schedule some classes outside the of 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
• Adhere to standard meeting times as much as possible. Using non-standard meeting patterns increases conflicts in students’ schedules, impedes students’ ability to schedule a full load and prevents classrooms from being booked in consecutive time slots.
  • Use the new Non-Standard to identify course sections outside of standard meeting times.
• Labs should follow scheduling patterns as closely as possible. If a lab will take up multiple blocks of time, try to schedule it within two standard blocks so as not to take an extra block unnecessarily.
• Hybrid sections should be scheduled to fill a standard time block fully. For example, a hybrid section that meets only once a week should still fully utilize a Tuesday - Thursday time block by scheduling one hybrid section in the time block on Tuesday and another at the same time on Thursday.
• Use right-sized rooms and avoid large classrooms for small classes. Sections with enrollments significantly below classroom capacity should be identified for potential relocation and schedulers should consult with faculty to determine if effective classroom instruction can be supported in a smaller room.

Please contact the Academic Scheduling Office at academicscheduling@weber.edu for help applying these best practices to your department’s scheduling process.