Course Planning + Scheduling
Course Planning & Reporting
During the Course Schedule Maintenance period, academic units should submit a Course Planning Form to report all First-Year Seminars (FYS), FIrst-Year Lanuches (FYL), and Honors Carolina courses. A reminder will be emailed to directors of undergraduate studies and departmental course scheduling officers with specific dates each semester.
The Course Planning Form should include:
- First-Year Seminars and Launches – We encourage departments to offer at least half of their annual minimum number of FYS and FYL courses in the fall semester. Instructors with a new FYS 89 Special Topics course for Fall 2026 must submit their First-Year Prospectus form by February 15th. The form and attached syllabus will be routed to the FYS/FYL Course Committee for review/approval.
- Honors First-Year Seminars and Launches – A limited number of Honors-designated sections may be offered each semester, subject to confirmation.
- Other Departmental Honors Courses | “H” courses – Please ensure that the honors version of each of your planned offerings already exists in the Course Inventory. If a planned course has not been offered previously as an “H” section, the department must submit a request to add the course via the Curriculum Inventory Management (CIM) system. The syllabus will route to Honors Carolina for review/approval.
Senior Honors Thesis courses do not need to be reported.
BEST PRACTICE: When planning your departmental course offerings, we encourage you to review the enrollments of your previous FYS/FYL/Honors courses and consider scheduling more of those courses in which there has been demonstrated high demand.
Scheduling Honors Carolina Courses
The departmental course scheduling officer should schedule Honors Carolina courses via ConnectCarolina each semester during the Course Schedule Maintenance period using the following guidelines:
- Add Consent Flag: This should be set to “No Consent.” Honors Carolina courses should not require special permission to register (with the exception of Honors thesis and research courses). If you believe it is necessary to require consent for a course, include an explanation in the “Notes” field on the Course Planning Form.
- Enrollment Capacity: This should be set to “24” for all Honors Carolina courses (except for Honors First Year Launch courses which will be capped at 35). If you wish to set a lower enrollment, include an explanation in the “Notes” field on Honors Carolina Course Planning Form. Requests to offer fewer seats in an Honors First Year Seminar should be directed to the First Year Seminar Office.
- Wait List Capacity:Following the new waitlist guidelines, honors courses will utilize wait lists and should default to a capacity of “999”.
- Reserve Capacities: Honors Carolina will set reserve capacities for courses prior to the beginning of registration.
Any changes to an Honors Carolina course offerings (day/time/instructor changes, cancellations, new courses) should be reported to our office at honorscarolina@unc.edu immediately.
Registration and Wait List Process
Click here for details about class registration and the wait list process.
