Academic units planning to create, modify, suspend, or discontinue academic programs or departments need to follow the campus Programs, Curricula, and Courses (PCC) procedures for review. Individual courses are approved or modified by a different process through the Course Approval (VPAC) process.
Important: even if an explicit statement in a program proposal indicates that a specific course will be modified, whether it is a change in restriction or the addition of a prerequisite or corequisite, a course modification proposal must also go through the regular course review process and approved before that statement can take effect.
COURSELEAF CURRICULUM MANAGEMENT (CIM)
Academic units that want to create, modify, suspend, or discontinue a program must use the online CourseLeaf Curriculum Management System (a.k.a. CIM, pronounced Kim). Academic program proposals move through different levels of approval via the CIM system. CIM makes it easy to find information on current programs as well as the status of submitted program proposals. The system is also integrated with both the Undergraduate Catalog and Graduate Catalog. Approved proposals will automatically update the next version of the catalog, eliminating the need to enter the same program information twice (once in the proposal and then a second time in the catalog). Please see our CIM help page for guidance on individual CIM issues.
Although proposals must be submitted through the CIM system, a worksheet based on the CIM proposal is provided to help prepare new program proposals. Please note that this worksheet is only provided to help formulate responses to the CIM proposal form prompts, and will not be accepted in lieu of the CIM proposal. A PCC Manual (plain text) is also available for detailed information on the structure, content, and requirements for PCC proposals.
Please note that proposals to create, modify, or discontinue academic units (such as departments or colleges) will still be handled through a paper process. Please contact our office at pcc-submissions@umd.edu for more information about submitting these kinds of proposals.
APPROVAL PROCESS
All proposals (with a few exceptions listed below) follow this approval path before being submitted to Academic Affairs:
APPROVAL PROCESS
- Departmental PCC Committee(s)
- Department Chair(s)
- College/School PCC Committee(s)
- Dean(s)
This procedure can be modified for non-departmentalized Colleges or for interdisciplinary programs.