Students will have to begin removing several words from their Duke-related vocabulary—one year from now, classic courses such as Math 31, Econ 55 and Psych 11 will be known by different names.
Next Spring, a new course numbering scheme will go into effect during the registration period for Fall 2012 courses. Planning and development of the new numbering system began March 2009 to be ready by registration for Fall 2011 classes—but the implementation was delayed due to University budget cuts.
“The early retirement incentives and overall reduction and turnover in support staff has made this past year difficult in many respects,” wrote Ingeborg Walther, a Trinity associate dean and director of the Office of Curriculum and Course Development, in a May 2010 memorandum. “[This] has also substantially increased the workload of my office, the faculty committees on curriculum and courses and the Office of the Registrar, which has been operating with reduced staff.”
The Course Renumbering Committee, composed of faculty, students and administrators, has not met in more than a year since each department and academic program began submitting spreadsheets of its respective renumbered courses early 2010. However, the process of putting the numbers into effect has proven to be a “monumental task,” according to the memorandum. In addition to changing the numbers that appear on ACES and the Bulletin of Undergraduate Instruction, the office of the registrar’s limited staff has to update course descriptions that contain pre-requisites, advising materials and department brochures, among many other projects.
“Well, I don’t think that much has changed in the past year—the delay in the whole process was a manpower delay,” said James Bonk, a chemistry professor and committee member. “[The committee] hasn’t done anything. We didn’t need to, our work is done.”
Although the implementation of a new number scheme has been challenging, the administration believes the end product will benefit students, faculty and administration by making course registration much easier to understand.
The current numbering system reserves numbers zero to 99 for introductory-level courses, 100 to 199 for the advanced level, 200 to 299 for seniors and graduate students and 300 to 399 for graduate-level courses only. The new numbering system assigns numbers zero to 99 to courses directed at freshmen, such as first-year seminars, 100 to 199 to the introductory level, 200 to 399 to undergraduate courses above the introductory level, 400 to 499 to the advanced level, 500 to 699 to graduate courses open to undergraduates and 700 to 999 to graduate-level courses only.
The current numbering system poses a challenge to departments that teach more courses than they have course numbers available, Bonk said. Additionally, students are potentially disadvantaged when applying to graduate schools because most other undergraduate institutions do not assign such low numbers to advanced level courses, which could make a Duke student’s curriculum look misleadingly easy.
Sophomore Sadhna Gupta said that the current numbering system is illogical, and a new one is much anticipated.
“There is no cohesion in the course numbers, it’s so arbitrary,” Gupta said. “The transition might be frustrating, but in the end, it will be super beneficial.”
Although the transition might be difficult for students, Bonk said it will be more difficult for faculty, noting that some courses in the chemistry department have had the same numbers since he began teaching at Duke 53 years ago. But the new system will help his department organize courses either by vertical structure—grouping upper-level courses with their pre-requisites—or by subject matter. He added that when students register for Fall 2012 classes, they will see both the old course number and the new course number on ACES in order to ease the transition.
Walther wrote in a Wednesday email that the new numbering scheme, which she noted is similar to the scheme at many other universities including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—will allow departments to be more deliberate when numbering their courses and to have a chance for them to rethink their entire curriculum.
“For students, I think it’s important to know that departments are using the new numbering scheme in meaningful, yet different ways,” Walther wrote.
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