Prospective Instructors | Selection Process
How Collins Courses Are Selected
Course proposals must be submitted by the announced closing date. The next submission deadline is Friday, October 23rd by noon.
The student-run Board of Educational Programming (BOEP) begins the proposal review process, in which all Collins students are invited to participate. Students select proposals for the next step: instructor interviews.
BOEP then passes its recommendations to the Collins Faculty Curriculum Committee. The College of Arts and Sciences gives its final approval for selected courses, which is subject to funding and minimum enrollment (usually 10 students).
How BOEP works
The Collins Living-Learning Center, a unit of the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, has been empowering students to be major stakeholders in student-centered learning since its inception in 1972.
BOEP’s primary mission is to select residential seminars at Collins that are interdisciplinary, experimental, and experiential.
Each semester, with the assistance of Collins’ Director, students work as a committee to:
- discuss the types of courses that will fulfill Collins residents’ interests and needs.
- consult with prospective instructors to discuss course parameters.
- meet as a committee to interview potential instructors, in the process asking detailed questions about course goals and objectives, readings, projects, and opportunities to incorporate experiential learning.
- rank in order the best of the proposed courses.
- present the chosen course proposals to the Collins Faculty Curriculum Committee.
Typically, Collins offers eight three-credit seminar courses, as well as a number of one- and two-credit Options classes per semester. Freshmen and sophomores are required to take one Collins seminar each year to satisfy the Living-Learning Center’s academic residential requirement. Courses are also open to all undergraduate students and most fulfill College distributional requirements.
More than 300 such courses at Collins have been selected by students, for students, with the approval of the administration and faculty of the College. A number of courses developed by BOEP have become a part of the College’s regular curriculum. Recent initiatives include Expeditions field courses and Arts Options, Environmental Options, and Service-Learning courses.
The Collins/BOEP model for a student-centered curriculum is unique in the nation.
