Committee on Educational Affairs (CEA)

The CEA evaluates and implements changes in the curriculum, both graduate and undergraduate. Here is more information about the duties and membership of the CEA.

Quick Links

CEA Chair Memo: 2024-25 Curriculum
Course Submission Checklist
CourseLeaf (CIM) and CEA Request
WordPress Catalog Updates

Curricular Review

The annual curricular review process kicks off in January. Chairs and Administrative Assistants will receive an email from Amanda Turner, Associate Registrar. Please share this email with faculty in your units. The following timeline maps out process and deadlines.

January 29, 2024

  • Login to CourseLeaf and select CEA Request Management to submit a Curricular Revisions Report.

    The Curricular Revisions Report should include any substantial changes to a unit's curriculum (the CEA should have been alerted to any changes prior to receiving the report).

    Examples of changes in major, concentration, or honors program (including, but not limited to):

    • Number of courses required for major or concentration.
    • Changes in specific courses required.
    • Changes and/or additions to prerequisites for core courses.
    • Additions or changes in non-course requirements (e.g. colloquium).

    No changes? No need to submit a report!

  • Login to CourseLeaf and select Course Inventory Management (CIM) to find and inactivate courses.

    Courses in the current catalog that will never be taught again (e.g. courses taught by visiting professors) should be inactivated. Once inactivated, these courses will not be listed in the catalog, nor on a unit's website.

    Do not inactivate a course if:

    • there is a possibility it will be offered at some point in the future, or
    • your department is listed as a secondary cross-listing.

February 19, 2024

  • Login to CourseLeaf and select Course Inventory Management (CIM) to submit a proposal:

    • New
    • Edit (if edits are so extensive that a student could repeat the course for credit, a new proposal should be submitted instead)
    • Reactivate (previously inactivated and now should be included in course offerings)

    Before submitting a proposal to workflow:

    • Faculty should review the course submission checklist to ensure courses adhere to established guidelines.
    • Course descriptions should be finalized, copy-edited, and ready for publication in the catalog.

    Current faculty, please submit course description proposals by the deadline. For pending hires, new courses should be submitted by Chairs or Administrative Assistants as soon as possible so they can be included in the catalog for pre-registration.

    Once pre-registration begins, we can no longer make any changes to course descriptions.

March 11, 2024

  • After course descriptions are finalized, the Calendar & Schedule Committee (CSC) steps in to oversee the schedule.

    • In February, Chairs and Administrative Assistants will receive an email from Amanda Turner—this email includes a link to your unit's scheduling spreadsheet.
    • Class Schedule instructions will help guide you through the process.

April 1, 2024

  • In March, Chairs and Administrative Assistants will be able to edit unit and program catalog descriptions in WordPress (the tool used to manage websites)—course descriptions cannot be edited in WordPress—only the catalog content that proceeds course listings.

    • Be sure to include any changes that were submitted to the CEA in your annual Curricular Revisions Report.
    • Faculty titles and leave patterns no longer need to be updated—that information now pulls directly from the database.
  • Per accreditation standards, courses not offered within a four-year cycle will be removed from the catalog, but will remain active in PeopleSoft so they can continue to appear on your unit website's list of offerings.

    No action required, the Registrar's Office will identify those courses and update after all offerings have been finalized.

    To view a list of existing courses that have been removed from the catalog but appear on your unit website:

    Login to CourseLeafCourse Inventory Management (CIM) > Quick Searches > Unit Website Only Courses

Course Description Policies

Information about requirements and policies as they pertain to course descriptions.

  • All Williams College students take TWO WS courses as part of their distribution requirement.

    WS catalog description.

    Further Explanation for Faculty

    Unit-Level Discussions and WS Designation

    WS designation is determined by unit Chairs in consultation with faculty seeking this designation. Syllabi and course descriptions for WS courses must include an explanation of how the course fulfills the purpose of the WS requirement.

    Examples of WS Designation Justifications

    Good, clear justifications, all include a statement of how the instructor will provide feedback on writing skills as well as details about assignments:

    • Three thesis papers at five pages each (each receiving critical feedback from
      professor); one thesis paper revision with critical feedback from professor and peers, including one letter of revision explaining the student's revision process; one keyword glossary where students develop rigorous definitions of course key terms; one roundtable discussion based on the final paper.
    • Each student will write five 5- to 7-page papers on which I will provide written feedback regarding grammar, style, and argument. Each student will write five 3-page critiques of their partners' papers. As the final assignment, each student will revise one of their five papers.

    Instructor must specify some or all of the following: nature of the assignment, length, frequency/timing of assignments, the nature and frequency of faculty feedback on writing, etc.

    Not a WS course:

    • Any course that does not include instructor’s feedback on students’ writing skills;
    • Any course that has only one or two written assignments (whatever the length);
    • Any course in which comments on writing skills will not be available early enough in the semester for students to benefit from them before the next assignment is due.

    Examples of writing-intensive courses that do not count as WS courses:

    • “35 pages long research paper due at the end of the class”
    • “weekly journal due at the end of the class, and a term paper”
    • “a 10 pages long midterm paper and a 30 pages long final research paper”

    These examples would be considered insufficient justifications:

    • “several short papers”
    • “several papers”
    • “four papers”
    • “a number of writing assignments”
    • “several short assignments and a final project”
  • All Williams College students take ONE DPE course as part of their distribution requirement.

    DPE catalog description.

    Further Explanation for Faculty

    There are three main axes upon which the DPE requirement hinges: the centrality of DPE themes and ideas throughout a course; a balance of DPE-related content and DPE-related skills; and consideration and agreement of a DPE designation at the unit level.

    The Centrality of DPE-Related Themes

    Students should know why a course in which they are enrolled is a DPE course. In the catalog, in the course description, on the syllabus, and in class throughout the semester, instructors of DPE courses should be specific about how the course addresses the issues of difference, power, and equity amongst groups and the nature of the theoretical tools or perspectives used to understand these issues.

    A Critical Balance Between DPE Content and Skill

    It is imperative that DPE courses strike an important and necessary balance between engaging course content and materials that explore various forms of difference, power, and equity, and facilitating the development of skills that will help students address the implications of said forms. Courses may consider current examples, historical examples, or some combination thereof. The focus may be on examples within the US or may be international, but should go beyond exposure to the variety of human experiences and instead foster critical engagement with the practice and experience of difference.

    DPE courses should foster difficult, but carefully framed conversations about how difference works and has worked, how identities and power relationships have been grounded in lived experience, and how one might both critically and productively approach questions of difference, power, and equity. While different DPE courses employ a variety of pedagogical approaches, methodologies, and theoretical perspectives, these courses are uniform in actively promoting a self-conscious and critical engagement with the practice and experience of difference, especially as it relates to the dynamics of power in structuring that experience. The list of themes that could be a possible focus of a DPE course should be taken as a starting point; other areas of difference (ability/disability, body size, national origin, political affiliation, for example) may well suit a DPE course. DPE courses may focus on multiple themes or intersections between them, or may examine only one theme. Faculty proposing DPE courses are encouraged to choose topics and materials they are passionate about.

    DPE courses, like courses that receive the Quantitative/Formal Reasoning (QFR) and Writing Skills (WS) designation, are skill-building courses, and as such, should lead to the development of critical faculties that will prepare students to serve society at large. The pedagogical approaches employed vary significantly by discipline and content, but share the key aims of enabling students to 1) understand how power comes to be distributed unequally across difference, and 2) draw informed, responsible judgments about when and how to intervene to change such inequalities.

    Unit-Level Discussions and DPE Designation

    DPE designation is determined by unit Chairs in consultation with faculty seeking this designation. Syllabi and course descriptions for DPE courses must include an explanation of how the course fulfills the purpose of the DPE requirement.

    Here are results of a CEA student member survey soliciting topics for DPE courses of particular interest to students.

    Browse DPE courses for examples of designation explanations.

  • All Williams College students take ONE QFR course as part of their distribution requirement.

    QFR catalog description.

    QFR courses must have regular and substantial problem sets in which quantitative/formal reasoning skills are practiced and evaluated. Courses which require only a few illustrative problems to be solved, that involve merely plugging numbers into formulae, or that spend only a small portion of the semester on formal skills would not qualify for this designation.

    While qualitative descriptions of scientific and mathematical topics can be worthwhile approaches to a discipline, these are not the main thrust of a QFR course. This is not to say that prose answers can play no role. In order to meet the QFR requirement, a course must clearly emphasize the skills of quantitative and formal reasoning. Translating real world phenomena into a mathematical description, computing quantitative results, and relating those results in words are the sorts of skills we would like to develop in a QFR course.

    Unit-Level Discussions and QFR Designation

    QFR designation is determined by unit Chairs in consultation with faculty seeking this designation. Syllabi and course descriptions for QFR courses must include an explanation of how the course fulfills the purpose of the QFR requirement.

  • Expected class size, enrollment limit, and enrollment preferences are used by students when selecting courses during pre-registration.

    Expected Class Size

    For new courses, make an educated guess.

    For current courses, make sure the expected class size accurately reflects pre-registration interest.

    Enrollment Limit

    An enrollment limit may not be lowered after pre-registration for the semester, per faculty legislation.

    Enrollment Preferences

    You must state enrollment preferences—who has priority for spaces if the course over-enrolls.

  • Pass/Fail Option catalog description.

    Faculty-approved pass/fail legislation mandates that if a course is designated as pass/fail, that option is made available to all students in a given course and should not be offered to individual students selectively or midway through the semester.

    When determining whether or not to offer a course with the pass/fail option, it may be helpful to consult with unit Chairs or colleagues.

    A pass/fail designation can't be changed after pre-registration—please check that your course is designated correctly.

Annual Reports

Curricular Revision Reports and new courses, by division, for faculty review.