Frequently Asked Questions - UCFTR

DeCals are a unique feature of the UC Berkeley campus that enable students to design and facilitate a credit bearing course on any topic of their choosing. Adding 300+ courses to our school’s curriculum each year, DeCal courses and the students that lead them further Berkeley’s dedication to intellectual discovery and knowledge production. 

The “DeCal” nickname for these courses originates from the Democratic Education at Cal (DeCal) Program, a student group whose mission is to provide support, outreach, and publicity for classes initiated and facilitated by students. The Program’s success in publicizing classes has led, over the years, to the "DeCal" program name being used as a synonym for all student-initiated and -facilitated "directed group study" classes that fall under the 98/198 (for lower and upper division, respectively) special studies courses umbrella.

To propose the creation or return of a student-initiated special studies 98/198 (DeCal) course, you must have the following: 

• Course Proposal Form (CPF)
• Fully developed syllabus
• Unit Value Worksheet (included in CPF packet)
• Letter of Support from the course’s faculty sponsor
• For first-time facilitators: training through one of UCFTR's facilitation and collaborative learning workshops

Please visit the website of the Academic Senate—the faculty-led governing body that makes decisions about the rules/regulations for, and reviews the proposals of, all student-led classes—for a full explanation of each element. Sponsoring departments may also have their own additional requirements for proposing a DeCal, as well as deadlines that fall earlier than that of the Senate. You can refer to UCFTR’s Department-Specific DeCal Information sheet

Note that some departments may ask you to turn in this proposal packet directly to them, while others may ask you to submit it to the Academic Senate (320 Stephens Hall) on the department's behalf. Once you've submitted your proposal you can choose to post your class on the DeCal website, where most students look for listings of student-initiated classes.

As of Spring 2018, the Academic Senate mandates that all first-time DeCal facilitators must complete training with the UCFTR. Training offerings can be found on our services page, under the Training Workshops tab. The deadline to fulfill this requirement is the same as the Academic Senate’s course proposal deadline (see below section).

If you have experience facilitating a 98/198 course before, check with your department to confirm if this experience fulfills your requirement, or if you would still need to complete training with UCFTR.

The Academic Senate’s deadline for proposing a DeCal and for fulfilling the first-time facilitator training requirement is always one month before the last day of instruction in the preceding semester (or summer). For specific course proposal deadline dates, click the “Deadlines” tab of the Senate’s website, or the Deadlines page of our website.

Note also that sponsoring departments may have their own additional requirements for proposing a DeCal, as well as deadlines that fall earlier than that of the Senate. You can refer to UCFTR’s Department-Specific DeCal Information sheet

Among other things, the faculty sponsor is an “Instructor of Record” who chooses to support your course and is thus responsible for reviewing, working with you to create, and signing off on your course proposal materials. A detailed description of the sponsor’s role and responsibilities can be found underthe “Instructor of Record” section of the “Resources” tab on the Academic Senate’s website. There, you’ll find links to a Frequently Asked Questions page and a list of responsibilities on the Faculty Checklist page of the Course Proposal Form. Note that graduate students and postdoctoral scholars cannot serve as faculty sponsors.  

A number of specific teaching titles are authorized by the Academic Senate to sponsor group-study courses, running from various types of lecturers to various types of professors. If you're seeking sponsorship from anyone other than a regular faculty member of the department, it's best to confirm with your sponsoring department that the "Instructor of Record" you'd like to sponsor your course is authorized to do so.

Additionally, faculty generally can only sponsor one 98/198 course per semester (unless they get their Dean's approval for more), so we encourage you to begin your sponsor search as soon as you can. 

More than you think! The average professor-led class is the result of years of research and fine-tuning, and it's not unusual for GSIs to spend up to a year researching and preparing a class for the first time. Most well-thought-out DeCal classes are undertakings on the scale of a major undergraduate research project: preparation should take a lot of the semester beforehand in the research process, and more time than you think the semester of its implementation.

Though the planning process for a class will vary depending on its structure, below are some recommendations to consider.

In the semester prior to launching your course:

• you should allow yourself as many weeks to plan in advance as you'll have of class meetings
• dealing with logistics can be time-consuming--and distract from the core work of polishing core class content--so start early and stay focussed
• consider your class syllabus and core course curriculum akin to a research project: you need time to season your thoughts on the subject's potential, time to find the best source material, and time to reconsider the best way in which to present it—or to draw it out from your students
  
• once you have found a potential faculty sponsor, you can solicit their feedback for the ongoing development of the class. Some may be amenable to sponsoring your course provided you fill out some underdeveloped aspects of it—something you can only do if you started the sponsor search early enough in the semester

When class is underway:

• most teachers spend at least two hours in prep time outside class for every hour spent inside class, while most teachers working with material for the first time spend three or more hours in prep per every one hour in class

Academic Senate Regulation 760 provides the following guideline: one unit equals a minimum of three hours of work per week, or at least 45 total hours over a 15-week semester. This work includes time spent in class as well as time spent doing work outside of class. This adds up to 45 hours of work each semester for each unit.

In a standard lecture or seminar class structure, that would work out to one hour of meeting time, and two hours of work outside the meeting (for readings, writing assignments, problem sets, discussion, etc.), for each unit earned. If your class starts after the beginning of the semester (e.g., 2nd or 3rd week), you can account for that in extra class time or work outside of class.

When mapping out the amount of work hours and units you want to assign your class, it’s helpful to think about your facilitation needs and semester timeline. For example, some facilitators choose to start their course several weeks into the semester, once the majority of students’ schedules have settled. This allows them to avoid the sometimes disruptive period of having multiple students adding and dropping the course. Other facilitators choose to run their class more intensely up until Thanksgiving or even spring break, but not after, leaving themselves and their students more time to spend on final work in other classes.

To help with your planning process, you can refer to the Academic Senate’s Unit Value Worksheet on page 2 of the Course Proposal Form (CPF) packet.

You cannot enroll in the DeCal course you are facilitating in order to receive academic units. However, in some cases, student facilitators can arrange to receive units through an Independent Study (99/199) course supervised by their faculty sponsor. The details of these arrangements vary on a case by case basis depending on the discretion of the sponsoring faculty and department, so we recommend reaching out to these parties directly for more information.

Per Academic Senate policies, students must be fully matriculated at UC Berkeley in order to be eligible to create and teach a DeCal. As such, students not fully matriculated, such as UC Berkeley Extension and/or visiting students, are not eligible. 

Per the COCI Memo on SFCs and Student Groups, prerequisites should be academic in nature and attainable through high school, a community college, or UC Berkeley. 

Membership in a club or a student organization is not a permitted prerequisite.

The Academic Senate does not have an official policy regarding multiple faculty, but they recommend having only ONE faculty sponsor for the following reasons:

1. Faculty Sponsors are responsible for inputting final grades. This responsibility cannot and should not be split between faculty. 
2. The department that sponsors a DeCal is linked to the faculty sponsor (i.e. a DeCal sponsored by an Anthropology professor would be sponsored by the Anthropology department). Departments must provide approval for DeCals that they sponsor and have different protocols and requirements for the DeCal proposal process. Having multiple faculty sponsors from different departments means that facilitators must submit and be approved by multiple departments. 

A DeCal can be lead by multiple facilitators, all of whom must be listed as a facilitator on all proposal materials and complete the mandatory pedagogical training offered by UCFTR. This includes any students who may be interning or acting as a Teaching Assistant for the DeCal. 

Each department has different protocol and expectations on how many facilitators can be attached to a DeCal, so we encourage that you clarify your department sponsor’s procedures before adding facilitators to the facilitation team. 

Per the COCI Handbook, Section 2.4.1, you may list your DeCal as a variable unit course as long as you specify how the units will be assigned. In order to do so, make sure to submit multiple versions of the Unit Value Worksheet to illustrate the varying unit values and detail how the units will be assigned on your syllabus.  

We suggest reading the ASUC Funding Page and the LEAD Center "Funding your Student Org" Page, as well as reaching out directly to ASUC's Chief Grants Officer (grants@asuc.org)  to get guidance on acquiring funds for your DeCal. The DeCal Board (decalprogram@gmail.com) is also a great resource for DeCal facilitators, and they may have additional insight about acquiring materials for your DeCal course. 

The best way to get started on your syllabus is by attending UCFTR’s “Three Pillars of a Student-Centered Syllabus” workshop. By attending the workshop, you will not only learn the ins and outs of crafting a syllabus, but you will also concurrently complete the mandatory pedagogical training for first-time DeCal facilitators. 

You can also utilize theMellon Faculty Institute’s “Components of a Course Syllabus” checklist as a guide to ensure that you have all the necessary components included on your syllabus.

Yes, you may create a DeCal that is linked to an existing student organization. However, you must ensure that the DeCal is sufficiently independent from the operations of the student organization and that all students, not just members of the organization, may enroll in the DeCal course. We encourage you to read the Academic Senate’s memo on Student-Facilitated Courses (DeCals) and Student Groups before beginning your DeCal proposal process. 

We encourage you to start by asking among your friends or classmates to find fellow facilitators. You can also check in with your faculty or department sponsor, who may know other students looking to facilitate a DeCal on a similar topic.

The Academic Senate does not have a policy that limits the amount of DeCals that students can facilitate in a given semester. However, we strongly recommend that students consider their capacity to facilitate more than one DeCal. 

The Academic Senate does not have a policy regarding faculty sponsors being on sabbatical. However, individual departments may require faculty sponsors to be on campus and teaching during the semester that the DeCal is offered. We strongly encourage students to check in with the sponsoring department directly if their faculty sponsor is expected to be on sabbatical. 

Student-initiated courses have been a fixture of UC Berkeley's academic landscape since the early 1980s. Since that time, thousands of students have educated tens of thousands of their peers in subject areas ranging from dance practica to media studies to language instruction to breaking political issues.

Some classes that have first appeared as "DeCals" have gone on to become part of their departments' regular offerings (e.g. Tagalog); some have been passed on as DeCals continuously for over 15 years (e.g. Joy of Garbage); some provide departments with no other undergraduate presence an opportunity to draw undergrads into the field (e.g. West Wing and Public Policy); some have generated curriculum for the sponsoring professor's core classes and won the student facilitator the Departmental Citation (e.g. Intro to Carnivorous Plants). In short, student-initiated class topics can be as widely varied as those offered by faculty in the Freshman-Sophomore Seminar series, and they have the potential to offer the students who facilitate them, as well as their peers who take them, no less exceptional an educational experience.

Sponsoring a student-initiated class offers faculty the opportunity to provide rich research and pedagogical mentorship on a project which bears immediate fruit--an impact in the classroom, arguably the most relevant discursive space for undergraduates. Many students undertaking these projects are doing so as an opportunity to build research and teaching skills in anticipation of post-graduate work in the discipline. Most who launch such an undertaking have the kind of initiative, passion, and intellectual curiosity that characterize the best scholar-leaders; choosing to sponsor a DeCal means taking an active role in guiding and helping further develop this exciting energy!

Among other things, the faculty sponsor of a DeCal is responsible for reviewing, working with the student(s) to create, and signing off on the course proposal materials (see the “Required Documents” page of the Academic Senate website for a list of these materials). Additionally, a detailed description of the sponsor’s role and responsibilities can be found underthe “Instructor of Record” section of the “Resources” tab on the Senate’s website. There, you’ll find links to a Frequently Asked Questions page and a list of responsibilities on the Faculty Checklist page of the Course Proposal Form

At the outermost administrative level, the Academic Senate’s has established a deadline for course proposals and training fulfillment that always falls one month before the last day of instruction in the preceding semester (or summer). Apart from that, individual departments are at liberty to set their own additional requirements and internal deadlines at points earlier than this, to enable them to more smoothly manage their student-initiated course approval process.

We publicize information about department-specific deadlines and processes through the Department Contacts page of our website.

The campus's Risk Management Office can advise on faculty or departmental liability for events associated with the class they sponsor. Additionally, please note that course facilitators holding any activities off-campus should obtain a signed waiver from participating students in advance, whether the activity is voluntary or required.