The Texas Legislature passed Texas HB 2504 in 2009. This legislation requires the university to provide online the following information for most undergraduate courses within a week of the first class day of the fall 2010 semester:
1) a curriculum vitae (CV) for each instructor
2) a syllabus for each class and
3) departmental budget information (which will be provided by FAMIS).
Listed at the end of this message are several frequently asked questions and answers including information about the undergraduate courses that require an online CV and syllabus.
The university must submit a report regarding compliance with HB 2504 provisions to the State of Texas by January 1, 2011. The compliance report will be based on CVs and syllabi that have been uploaded in Howdy by September 6, 2010.
EIS has developed an application that is now available for instructors in Howdy. Instructors have the option to upload a PDF document or associate a web link for both the syllabus and the CV through the "Class Roster and Syllabus" and "Curriculum Vitae" links on the Instructor/Advisor tab. After an instructor has uploaded this information, it will be available through the public class search.
Individuals such as staff or teaching assistants can be designated in Compass to have the ability to upload a CV and syllabus for specific classes. The course administrator who is responsible for maintaining faculty load and course enrollment limits in your department can provide access.
A demonstration session for uploading the information is scheduled for Monday, August 16 from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. in the General Services Complex Room 101A. In addition, training guides for uploading the information are available on the Instructor/Advisor tab in Howdy.
HB 2504 also requires that student evaluation information be available to the public online. A subcommittee of the Task Force on Faculty Performance Evaluation will make a recommendation to the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academics on meeting this requirement.
If there are any further questions regarding the tool in Howdy for uploading the CV and syllabi, please contact pschaub@tamu.edu.
HB 2504 Question & Answer
Question 1: Do we need to include 285, 291, 485, 491, and other directed study classes?
Answer: Only "undergraduate classroom courses" (defined below) are required to have a CV and syllabus.
Undergraduate Classroom Course--Any lower- or upper-division credit course offered to five or more students. This includes on-campus, off-campus, distance education, and dual-credit courses (including those taught on high school campuses). It excludes courses with highly variable subject content that are tailored specifically to individual students, such as Independent Study and Directed Reading courses. It excludes laboratory, practicum, or discussion sections that are intrinsic and required parts of larger lecture courses and are directly supervised by the same instructor(s) of record for those large courses.
Question 2: Do laboratory classes need to be included?
Answer: Laboratory classes that are part of larger lecture section and directly supervised by the lecture section instructor of record do not need to be treated separately from the lecture course. In contrast, laboratory classes that do not match the previous criteria would need to have a separate CV and syllabus. All courses that have an integrated laboratory (e.g., BIOL 101 (3-3), BIOL 102 (3-3), ECEN 214 (3-3), ECEN 248 (3-3)) will not be treated separately, but labs that have a separate course number (e.g., CHEM 111 (0-3), CHEM 112 (0-3)) will be treated as an "undergraduate classroom course."
Question 3: Can I upload a syllabus in Howdy for classes that are excluded by HB 2504?
Answer: Howdy does allow a syllabus and CV to be uploaded for all undergraduate courses including those excluded by HB 2504. However, this feature is not available for graduate courses.
Question 4: How will departments know when a syllabus and CV have been uploaded for all their classes?
Answer: A "Missing Course Information Report" is available to departments and colleges in Compass Reports (ePrint). This report lists classes for which a CV and/or syllabus has not been uploaded for courses requiring this information by HB 2504.
Departments can also perform a class search in Howdy for all classes in their department and see which ones have the associated syllabus and CV links.
Question 5: If there are multiple instructors in a class, do you upload multiple CVs?
Answer: Multiple CV uploading is not supported at this time. Therefore only the primary instructor, designated in Compass with a "P," will be uploaded in Howdy.
Instructor(s) of Record--The primary instructor or co-instructors of a course who are responsible for the course content and the assignment of final grades. This includes tenured and tenure-track faculty, lecturers, adjuncts, and graduate assistants (who are not working under the supervision of an instructor of record). It does not include guest lecturers or others who may be brought in to teach less than fifty percent of the class sessions.
Question 6: What must be included on the CV and syllabus?
Answer: The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board guidelines are available here.
Question 7: Do cross-listed courses need to be uploaded under both cross-listed departments?
Answer: The syllabus must be uploaded separately for each cross-listed course. We will explore a future enhancement that will allow a syllabus to be copied to a cross-listed course (just as instructors can copy the syllabus to sections of the same course).