Gen Ed courses are designed for Harvard College students. A suitable Gen Ed course satisfies the following general principles:

• The course addresses an urgent problem or enduring question
• The course is geared toward non-specialists
• The course is not an introduction to a scholarly discipline, nor is it centered on illustrating the methods of a particular scholarly discipline to a non-specialist audience. It may, however, deploy various disciplinary methods in order to elucidate the course concept.
• The course is unusually explicit in drawing connections between the classroom and the world beyond it, between the subject students are studying now and the people they will one day become.

Please review the program guidelines to learn more about Gen Ed course structure, logistics, and related policies.

Tenured faculty, tenure-track faculty, and faculty with renewable teaching appointments at Harvard are welcome to propose courses for the Program in General Education.

If you are interested in proposing a course, we encourage you to please let us know as early as possible—even if it’s only a preliminary idea. The Program Director and one of the Gen Ed Committee co-chairs would be happy to meet with you to learn about your course concept and to share insights into the proposal process.

Proposal Materials

To propose a course, please send the following materials to gened@fas.harvard.edu:

• A course title and a student-oriented description (150 to 250 words) of the course.
• A one-sentence encapsulation of the urgent problem or enduring question the course addresses (in the form of a question).
• A brief explanation of how your scholarly expertise relates to the proposed course.
• A draft syllabus of approximately three pages that includes course/unit goals, course topics, main readings and major assignments.  If you are proposing modifying an existing course for Gen Ed, you have the option to instead send the current syllabus along with a statement of how you would adapt the course for Gen Ed.
• A brief summary on how the course satisfies the general principles (see above) for what makes a Gen Ed course.
• A brief statement on how each of the course assessments outlined in the syllabus aligns with the overall course goals and content.
• A brief explanation of why you think your course is a good fit for one of the four Gen Ed categories. While all of our courses are interdisciplinary by design, ordinarily courses are approved for a single best-fit category.
• A brief statement about how the proposed course differs from existing Gen Ed courses on similar topics.
• A brief statement about how you will select and train TFs, including how you intend to prepare them to grade student work in a way that accurately assesses mastery of course content, and to ensure that students across sections have consistent experiences with grading and section meetings.
• A brief statement on the pedagogical approaches you intend to employ in order to challenge and engage students fully with all of the course material (readings, lectures, sections, and assessments) over the course of the semester (Gen Ed courses are expected to be as rigorous as any other at the College, with commensurate expectations for rigor, workload, and grading).

If the course will be co-taught, please include a clear rationale for the joint efforts and confirm that all faculty instructors are engaged in all aspects of the course.

Proposal Review

The Standing Committee on General Education reviews proposals on a rolling basis during the fall and spring terms.  Given the accelerated planning timeline required for prior term registration, faculty are encouraged to submit a course proposal at least one full year before the term in which they wish to first offer the course.

When the committee reviews proposals, it typically considers all of the components described above.

To ensure that students have access to a broad range of Gen Ed offerings, courses are approved with the expectation that they should ordinarily be taught at least every other year. Courses that are not offered at least once in four years must be reproposed for continued inclusion in the program. The program is committed to offering a full slate of courses during the academic year, so summer courses are not counted.

Ordinarily, courses are reviewed after their initial offering and considered for reapproval after three more offerings. These reviews are based on their fit with the mission and goals of the Program, as well as rigor in workload and grading.  Learn more about the review and reapproval process.