Courses | Graduate Studies

The Graduate and Professional Catalog has descriptions for graduate and professional courses. You can use this catalog to identify prerequisites, credit hours, course formats, and more course-related information.

Guidelines for Proposing New Graduate Courses

These guidelines are provided to ensure compliance with UNL Graduate Credit Policy when proposing new graduate courses. The guidelines are also intended to increase transparency during the review process by providing a checklist of requirements and expectations for both proposers and reviewers.

The syllabus must reflect graduate-level work and provide clear differentiation between undergraduate and graduate when offered as a dual-level course. New course proposals require approval by the appropriate department, school, interdepartmental area, and college committees prior to review and final approval by the UNL Graduate Council. New course proposals are submitted using the Curriculum Inventory Management (CIM) system.

Each of the following points should be considered when preparing new course proposals:


Justification	Why is the course needed? What other UNL graduate courses address the same or similar topics?
Course title	Does the title accurately reflect course content? Is the title concise?
Course number	Does the number fit with university, department and/or college numbering schemes? Is the number level (800 vs. 900) appropriate?
Credit hours	Are the credit hours consistent with expected effort and performance outcomes? When course with variable credit are offered, are the expectations for each possible iteration clearly described?
Pre-requisites	Are pre-requisites and co-requisites necessary and clearly stated? Is the lack of pre-requisites appropriate?
Course description	Does the description accurately reflect course content? Is the description concise?
Dual-level (400/800) courses	Is there clear distinction between the graduate and undergraduate course objectives, content, and performance expectations? Is the graduate level work reflected in assignments, examinations, and other required course work? Are the methods of assessment and grading procedures (including rubrics) for graduate students clearly defined?
Syllabus	Does the syllabus contain all required information as stated in the UNL Syllabus Policy? For dual-level (400/800) courses, is the differentiated graduate level work, performance expectations, and grading procedures clearly described?