Good afternoon! Below you will find excerpts of an email sent from the Registrar’s Office pertaining to changes to course suffixes.
“During the development stage of LionPATH, the decision was made to remove suffixes from courses. We continue to move forward with our efforts to reduce the use of course suffixes and utilize delivered LionPATH fields, such as course attributes. However, to correct some unexpected problems, we are restoring a subset of suffix courses where the suffix was used to indicate Honors, Writing Across the Curriculum, or First Year Seminar. After consultation with representatives from the Faculty Senate Office and the Faculty Senate Curricular Affairs Committee, it was determined that the suffix course will be restored for courses where there was both a suffix-bearing version and a non-suffix-bearing version. For example, the S will be restored for ENGL 015S (since there are non-FYS versions of ENGL 015), but not for ENGR 100 (since the only version of ENGR 100 is a FYS). It is important to note that not all suffixes are being restored; only those courses that meet the criteria given above.
The Registrar’s Office and LionPATH are working jointly with the Faculty Senate Office to restore the designated suffix courses and make the necessary changes for the existing non-suffix courses in the LionPATH Course Catalog. The attributes will be adjusted accordingly on each of the courses as well. No action from colleges or campuses is required at this time.
This decision will impact the Spring 2017 rollover schedule for campus registrars/college schedulers. As you know, we were planning on rolling spring 2017 classes and having them released to the campus registrars/college schedulers last week. However, because of this change, we will first remove the spring 2017 roll and then re-roll Spring 2017 after the courses are corrected in the Course Catalog. This will allow all of the courses whose suffixes are being restored to roll from spring 2016 to spring 2017.
The Registrar’s Office along with the Project LionPATH Records and Enrollment Team have identified the attached list of courses that will need to be re-built for fall semester 2016 and are developing a detailed plan for the changes that need to take place. Based on the attributes of the section, a new suffix class section will be built that matches the existing non-suffix-bearing- class section (except for data elements that differ between the two courses), the rooms assigned to the existing non-suffix bearing sections will be reassigned to the new sections (in other words, the class locations will be the same) and the students will be moved from the old to the new sections as well. The section of the non-suffix courses will be cancelled once all students are moved to the new section. Because of the magnitude of this change, we will be “turning off” access to the fall 2016 schedule while we make the changes. We will communicate with everyone when we are ready to start this process and when it has been completed.
Penn State will continue to move forward with the elimination of course suffixes. Any future changes will be handled through the curricular review process of the Faculty Senate and will be communicated through college Senate representatives and associate deans through the normal review process. While we hope that this process moves along at a brisk pace, there is no urgent need for the proposals to be submitted.”
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