Senate Document Number 5604S

Date of Senate Approval 04/29/04

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Statement of Faculty Senate Action:

APC Document 40:     Revision of Sunset Policy (Revision of SD0489F)

Effective Date: Fall 2004

This document is a policy change, rather than a catalog change. This document moves the responsibility of approving appeals for Sunset Courses from APC and Senate to the Associate Vice Chancellors.

Policy:
Any course listed in the UNCA catalog and not offered for five (5) consecutive academic years will automatically be deleted from the catalog. Departments may petition the Associate Vice Chancellors for Academic Affairs (AVCAAs) for exceptions.

Implementation:
At the close of each summer session, the Office of Institutional Research shall prepare a list of all courses published in the UNCA catalog for four or more years without being taught (i.e. courses in danger of "sunsetting" when the following catalog is published). This list shall be distributed to all department chairs/program chairs by the Office of the Associate Vice Chancellors for Academic Affairs with a statement of the above "sunset" policy. Academic departments may choose to offer these courses, prepare appeals for the Associate Vice Chancellors to avoid "sunsetting" or simply permit the courses to be deleted. Appeals for exemption must include a rationale for retaining each course and will be evaluated directly by the AVCAAs.

Rationale:
The UNCA catalog needs to be kept up-to-date since students and potential students use the catalog to obtain information about our course offerings. A "sunset" policy is a simple and efficient mechanism to accomplish this goal. The implementation provides for a mandatory one year advance "warning" to academic departments and a mechanism for appeal to retain courses important to the curriculum which have not been offered due to staffing limitations or other reasons. The only change from current policy is that the Associate Vice Chancellors for Academic Affairs will review the petitions for exception, rather than APC.