Curriculum Development

Curriculum Development Guidelines
Describes general procedures for the planning and approval of academic programs. (Updated July 2025)

Process for Review of Special Topics Offerings
Describes process to be used when an Academic Unit is proposing a Special Topics Offering (Effective May 2025, Revised December 2025)

Curriculum Development Procedures
Describes general procedures for the planning and approval of academic programs (Superseded in part by the Curriculum Development Guidelines).

Having the catalog in a database has significantly decreased the workload associated with formatting and editing the catalog and increased the accuracy of curriculum and academic policy information. Once the current year catalog is published to the FGCU website, it is a matter of public record. It was necessary, therefore, to setup guidelines for evaluating requests to make changes to the current catalog.

The guidelines are as follows:

• A change will not be made to the current catalog unless the change is needed to correct a critical error. For this purpose, a critical error is defined as inaccurate information that would inhibit a student’s progress through a program, time-sensitive changes due to accreditation or state mandates, or material that could harm the institution’s reputation. Changes to a published catalog require updates in two database areas (current catalog and working catalog) with appropriate documentation in a master log.

• Please keep track of non-critical-error changes that you would like to make for the upcoming year.

• In early spring, Curriculum Liaisons from each college/school will receive an email from Academic and Curriculum Support requesting their review of the Academic Programs section of the upcoming academic year's catalog.

• The purpose of this review is to verify that the approved curriculum changes from the most recent curriculum cycle have been accurately entered into the Working Catalog.

• If you have questions or suggestions, please feel free to share them with Lucero Carvajal.

• Undergraduate Degree-Major Revision Proposal
• Minor Revision Proposal
• New Minor Proposal

• Graduate Degree-Major Revision Proposal
• Certificate Revision Proposal
• New Certificate Proposal

Helpful Information for first-time users:

• Complete Tutorial
• The Curriculum Management System (CMS) will allow you to enter requests for new courses, requests for changes to existing courses, and requests for deletion/removal of existing courses. CMS may not work on the Firefox browser for MacOS devices. Recommended browsers are Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, or Safari.
• One person is chosen by each college/academic unit to act as their College Administrator within the system. Each College Administrator has the ability to add other users from their college.
• Users are classified as "Observers" or as "Initiators." An observer can view and comment on all courses in the system. An initiator can enter and modify their own requests.
• Request information is (1) entered, (2) reviewed, and finally (3) saved into the system. Requests may be re-opened and modified after the first submission/save until the information is "Approved" by the appropriate College Administrator.
• Course initiators should know what they plan to enter for 4 important fields on a request entry form. They are the course prefix, course level, 3-digit course number, and course title (30 characters or less). 
  
  Please note: For new courses, there must be a suggested 3-digit course number in CMS. However, when putting this course in program information for the catalog copy, the suggested 3-digit course number must be represented with an XXX. For example, the level and suggested 3-digit course number of 4123 would be represented as 4XXX (4123) in the catalog copy for any programs that would include this course. 
  
  
• Initiators can go back and make as many changes as necessary to their own saved requests in the CMS. The only thing that will prevent an initiator from making changes is final approval by their College Administrator. Once the College Administrator approves a course, it is closed to further modification, and presented to the appropriate Curriculum Team for review and approval.

• Learn more about how to arrive at your suggested course number.  

• SCNS Website: https://flscns.fldoe.org (do not need to log on to access menu/reports)