As Pre-Registration Begins, Course Descriptions Missing

At the beginning of the spring 2010 pre-registration period, which began Monday, nearly 200 undergraduate courses — almost one in every five courses — lacked descriptions and syllabuses on the registrar’s Web site.

On Monday, at least 196 of 1,024 courses, or 19.1 percent, lacked descriptions and syllabuses. Although some departments have posted descriptions and syllabuses throughout this week, at press time more than 170 courses still lacked information.

At the start of the pre-registration period, the categories with the most courses lacking information were government, international affairs, English, linguistics and Spanish.

As of last night, 15 courses did not have faculty assigned to them. Thirty more courses had one faculty member listed on the schedule and a different faculty member listed in the description. Eighteen of these 30 classes were in the Spanish department.

Pre-registration ends on Thursday for the College and Saturday, Nov. 14 for the other undergraduate schools.

John Pierce, registrar and assistant provost, said that course descriptions are submitted by departments, and the syllabuses are submitted by the faculty. Both are submitted online through an online service called Explore.

Pierce added that reminder notes are sent to faculty before each semester, urging them to post the pertinent information.

“It’s very important that they be up there,” he said.

The change to a new student information system is not the problem, according to Pierce.

“There is no change in the methodology for doing either of those things,” he said. “In the shift to the new student info system, there has been general confusion about how to do things. It’s possible that some people were confused this semester, but given that those processes are using the same processes that they did in the past, there should be no problem.”

The issue is a perennial one, and Pierce called the number of courses lacking descriptions and syllabuses “not bad.”

“It’s acceptable but not good, and consistent with previous semesters,” he said.

He added that he hopes to improve the number of courses with information available in the future.

“We’ve been working at it for years and sending out reminders both to the departments about the course descriptions and to the faculty members to post the [syllabuses]. We do send out reminders in both instances,” he said.

Several students expressed frustration that courses they were interested in taking did not have information posted.

“It’s kind of disheartening,” Sheilagh Carey (COL ’12) said.

Government department Chair George Shambaugh said that descriptions are still being posted for courses in his department.

“Some of the postings were delayed slightly because the Explore link was inadvertently removed from the Faculty and Staff and my.georgetown.edu Web pages on the Georgetown site, and it was not clear to some how to update their information,” Shambaugh said. “This glitch is being fixed. In the meantime, the Explore link still functions when typed in manually and faculty have been asked to submit their descriptions to our undergraduate and administrative assistant. He is currently posting them.”

He added that students should always feel free to speak with professors in the department about their concerns.

“I encourage all students to increase their amount of non-electronic contact time with faculty,” he said. Associate Professor John Morrell, chair of the Art and Art History Department, said that while most course descriptions are listed on the department Web site, it is still early for some classes to have all of the information posted.

“Sometimes course descriptions aren’t up because a faculty member is designing a new course,” Morrell said. “Some teachers will work right up until December, January before the semester starts to adjust and develop a course.”

He added that students who would like more information about a particular course should contact the professor directly.

“I would think the faculty member would more often than not respond because they obviously want students to take their course,” Morrell said.

Some of the courses without information posted are in the SFS-Qatar or Italian Villas programs. But according to Pierce, students enrolled in these programs register the same way and at the same time as the students studying on the main campus.

“They have a separate calendar, published on my Web site, but pre-registration is scheduled at the same time here and in Doha because of our processing requirements. We produce the schedule of classes for SFS-Q based on the data they send us,” Pierce said.

In the classical studies department, 10 of 20 courses on the registrar’s schedule had neither course descriptions nor syllabi available. Department Chair Charles McNelis indicated that on the department’s page, five out of 18 courses were lacking descriptions. He said that the department will work quickly to fix this discrepancy.

“Until then, Classics is a very friendly department,” McNelis said. “So students who need more information immediately may e-mail the individual professor.”

McNelis added that some courses in the language sequence lack descriptions because there is a natural progression in the material studied.

— Hoya Staff Writer Brian Burke contributed to this report.

Correction: This article incorrectly stated that pre-registration ends on Wednesday, Nov. 11 for the College and Friday, Nov. 14 for the other undergraduate schools. Pre-registration ends at 9 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 12 for the College and on Saturday, Nov. 14 for the other schools.