Submitting a Proposal
Review Process
Your proposal will be reviewed initially by the chair and the executive committee before being included in the agenda for the GCC meeting. In order to allow for plenty of time for this process, proposals are due to the chair three weeks before the GCC meeting.
You must secure approval from your academic unit and dean before having your proposal considered by the full committee. Check with your dean’s office to find out the process within your school. Please see the section Signatures below for more details.
Some internally approved proposals require additional approval by the Office of Post-Secondary education (RIOPC) or the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) before they can be listed in the catalog. New degree programs require RIOPC approval and new certificate programs need to be announced to the RIOPC. Please allow plenty of time for this process. We recommend that complex proposals requiring approval outside of RIC be submitted by the February meeting. Proposals not approved at the May meeting will be reconsidered by GCC the following Fall.
Proposal Preparation
A complete proposal to GCC includes signed proposal forms and the catalog copy page. The proposal form is periodically revised; please use the most current version and make sure to save your document as .doc or .docx. You must include all relevant information in the proposal form, extra documents may not be included with any proposal.
If you are proposing a new program with new courses, you must provide separate proposal forms for the program and for each course. See the GCC page for examples of past approved proposals.
You can find guidelines for document preparation in
Section 4.2 of the Graduate Committee Manual.
Please contact the chair of GCC with any questions.
College Catalog Copy
The purpose of providing a catalog copy page is to show exactly how the information should look in the College Catalog. This is what the editor of the College Catalog uses when updating the catalog each year. To edit the information:
- Identify all catalog pages affected by your proposed change, program listings and course descriptions. Other departments or programs may also list course information. The proposal must include all relevant pages from the college catalog and must show how the catalog will be revised.
- Download all catalog sections relevant for this proposal, including course descriptions or other affected programs.
- Place all relevant catalog copy for a proposal into a single file. Put page breaks between sections and delete any catalog pages not relevant for the proposal.
- Using the “track changes” feature in Word, revise the catalog pages to demonstrate what the information should look like in next year’s catalog. You must use “track changes” to show the old and new information.
- Check the revised catalog pages against the proposal form, especially making sure that program totals are correct if adding or deleting course credits. Please check back later for updated documents.
Catalog copy from the 2020-2021 catalog:
Proposal Form and Manual
Signature Process
You must obtain all required internal approval and acknowledgment signatures before your proposal can be put on a GCC meeting agenda. You should request signatures using Adobe Acrobat Sign (available to all RIC faculty via Adobe Creative Cloud at
http://www.ric.edu/technology/Pages/Hardware-and-Software.aspx.) as soon as the proposal is ready. This allows for increased efficiency and can considerably shorten the amount of time required to collect signatures.
Contact the chair of GCC if you would like help with the process.
