Professors and faculty are hardworking and deeply committed to their students. The job of an educator is challenging as it is, but it is made harder by the additional administrative work demands. Committee work can become a second job in itself. By streamlining curriculum approval, faculty can save time and get back to teaching!

Without clearly defined review criteria for each committee, faculty members going through the approval process are wasting time combing through overlapping recommendations. Each member of faculty sitting on their respective committee are basing their decision on their own experience and departmental conventions . By working with your university in establishing a rubric for curriculum approval, faculty members on committees know exactly the criteria they are grading and how to grade it objectively. Furthermore, the educator going through this process can use this rubric as a guide for developing their curriculum.

How many times have you sat through a committee meeting and left feeling as though no progress was being made? Much of the inefficiency is because committee meetings often lack structure and an agenda. Each meeting should have a set of goals and objectives for what needs to be accomplished during the meeting. By working together, we can help craft a process for how meetings should be run to make each one productive.

Applying the rubric to the curriculum approval process will cut time spent by 50%. Having laid out expectations and the grading rubric for all faculty members, confusion will dissipate and bottlenecks will be alleviated. This will increase the productivity of meetings and limit excessive back and forth and offer new or redesigned courses quickly. Imagine what your faculty can do with that extra time!