Administrative InfoUndergraduate Guidelines

Resources – Undergraduate Guidelines

Undergraduate Affairs

See Undergraduate Counselors in Room 158 or 160.  Some guidelines are as follows:

Academic Dishonesty

If you have a student who has plagiarized or otherwise violated standards of academic integrity, the Dean of Students Office is the best source of information for how to handle the situation. This site also provides classroom and syllabus guidelines for protecting academic integrity at UCLA, how to confront a student about suspected academic dishonesty, and the procedures for officially reporting a case of academic dishonesty: http://www.studentgroups.ucla.edu/dos/faculty/

The UCLA Student Code of Conduct can be accessed here: http://www.studentgroups.ucla.edu/dos/assets/documents/scc12.pdf

Arbitration

The UCLA Office of Ombuds Services is an independent, neutral, and confidential place where students, faculty, staff and administrators can go for assistance in resolving conflicts, disputes, or complaints on a formal basis. You may find their services helpful on occasions when students wish to dispute their grades and you cannot successfully resolve the issues on your own. http://www.ombuds.ucla.edu/

Capstone Seminars

The department has adopted a “Capstone Program” certification where at least 60% of majors complete a capstone experience to fulfill their seminar requirement (rather than a “Capstone Major” which would require 100% of our seminars to be offered as capstones). To meet this goal we now offer four capstone formats:

  1. Senior Honors Thesis
  2. Directed Individual Research or Senior Project
  3. Participation in Undergraduate Student Initiated Education (USIE)
  4. Capstone Seminar (with Paper or Project)

There are three criteria for a capstone seminar:

  1. It must require a culminating project or paper;
  2. It must require some kind of oral presentation;
  3. The culminating project will be archived for three years (by the dept).

Students are expected to demonstrate the following learning outcomes for the capstone experience:

  • proficiency within a broad-based knowledge/skill set (research methods; critical thinking; analytical writing).
  • familiarity with basic material for project; such material could include data from a variety of sources (academic archives, new media resources, etc).
  • familiarity with relevant scholarly debates and current debates in the relevant field.
  • ability to conceive and execute an independent project.
  • skills in seminar or workshop format, oral and written communication, and defense of scholarship.

Classification of Courses for Satisfaction of Historical and Breadth Requirements

Each quarter all of the undergraduate English courses being offered are classified and listed on the department website by which requirement (s) the course may be allowed to satisfy for that term: Historical (pre-1500, 1500-1700, 1700-1850, or 1850-present) or Breadth (Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability, and Sexuality Studies [GREDS], Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies [ITP], Genre Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Critical Theory [GICT], or Creative Writing [CW]). Faculty are requested to indicate which requirement(s) they believe their course(es) will be qualified to satisfy based on a minimum threshold of 75% subject matter before each quarter’s schedule of classes appears on-line.

College Honors

Students in College Honors may occasionally ask faculty for permission to enroll in a 1-unit contract course for honors credit, as an adjunct to the primary course in which the student is enrolled. Students may also ask faculty if a primary course they are teaching counts for College Honors credit. Information regarding faculty responsibility for and grading of College Honors contract courses is located here at the College Honors website: http://honors.ucla.edu/contracts.html

In addition, a general list of campus courses that carry College Honors credit, including those offered by the English department, is available here: http://www.college.ucla.edu/hcc/

Distressed/At Risk Students

You may come in contact with a student who displays concerning behavior or appears to be dealing with issues outside of the classroom that are negatively impacting his or her academic performance. When a student is at-risk or in crisis, responding to the students’ needs and providing appropriate referrals can prevent an escalation of the situation and help keep the student and our campus community safe. If you observe behavior that is concerning, please take action to get help for the student. You may contact the Undergraduate Counselors to help determine the most appropriate campus office for referral, depending on the circumstances.

For a quick overview of helpful campus resources for these kinds of situations, please consult the “Faculty and Staff 911 Guide”: http://www.studentincrisis.ucla.edu/docs/911Guide.pdf

For a fuller discussion of the campus resources available to students at risk, please refer to the website of the UCLA Consultation and Response Team: http://www.studentincrisis.ucla.edu/

This website discusses and distinguishes the roles that various campus resource offices play in assisting students at UCLA, including the UCLA Consultation and Response Team, the Student Care Manager, UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services, the Office of the Dean of Students, and the UC Police Department. A summary list of campus resource websites and phone numbers is also available.

Official Notices

The Office of the Dean of Students publishes “Official Notices” in the Daily Bruin at various times during the year. Such notices are important, and all students are held responsible for the information in them. All such published notices on a wide variety of campus policies (on topics from auditing classes to mobile phones & pagers to examinations, and much more) are listed and available for review at the Registrar’s Office Schedule of Classes Official Notices website: http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/soc/notices.htm.