Course Cancellation Timeline

This Section Cancellation Guide, outlines the rationale, steps, and timing that York College will follow going forward. Much of this is best practices that have been in place and are being shared across departments. The purpose of this guide is to ensure transparency for all concerned.

Course scheduling is critical to student success. As such, the procedure for offering and cancelling courses needs to be student-centered, with an eye toward providing students with the courses that they need to complete in order to graduate in a timely manner. Coupled with this is the responsibility that we all share as members of a state-supported institution to be responsible stewards of state resources. Thus, the procedure that we describe is designed to efficiently offer needed courses, cancelling those that are under-enrolled while still supporting our students’ pursuit of their degrees.

To this end, section cancellations will occur in two stages. The first stage considers cancelling under-enrolled sections of multi-section courses in order to funnel students into other sections of the same course. The second stage continues this consideration and adds to it under-enrolled single-section courses, especially courses that fulfill the same graduation requirements as another course offered that semester or the subsequent semester. Chairs and program directors will have the strongest insights about what students in their departments need now and going forward. To assist in this work, we use numerical benchmarks to guide, but not mandate, outcomes. All course cancellations are done in consultation with the Chair and Dean in order to ensure that the students’ graduations are not delayed. The consultations between the Chairs and Deans also are meant to help mitigate the impact of course cancellations on our devoted faculty. The timing of the cancellations is designed to allow students enough time to identify new sections and register for them without being too disruptive at the start of the semester.

Students who are enrolled in a cancelled section will need to act in order to replace the cancelled section. This might involve changing to another section offered at the same time, changing to a section offered at a different time, or switching courses completely. This is important to maintain academic momentum, but most vitally, to ensure that student retains their full financial aid resources. Once the section is cancelled, students will receive an email from the Registrar’s office notifying them of this fact. It is a best practice that Department Chairs or designated advisors notify the students enrolled in the section being cancelled BEFORE making the request to OAA. This notification could use Navigate to message the student in both text message and email to maximize the chance of receipt. The Chair/advisor can also make recommendations for a new section using Schedule Builder. Students may need to meet with an advisor if their personal schedules or graduation requirements make the selection of a replacement schedule challenging.