Faculty and Adjunct Professors
Planning your course
Syllabi
The University has guidelines for syllabi contents and structure. Please follow the sample template when developing your own syllabus.
Syllabi for courses are kept on file in the Dean's Office. Once you finalize your syllabus, please email it to SLIS so the SLIS office can keep one on file. It will also be included on the semester's class schedules unless you let us know that you do not wish to have it published outside of class.
Should you wish to see a copy of a syllabus from a previous class, please contact SLIS, 202-319-5085.
Blackboard
Your Blackboard site for your class will be set up by CPIT. You will be responsible for any customization of your site. You will use your CUA network login (the login you use for your email and to access computers on campus) to access Blackboard.
The class roster is imported from Cardinal Station into Blackboard when the class site is created. This is done again after the last add/drop. However you should ask your students to log on well before the first day of class to make sure they were all included.
Instructor must make their classes available in Blackboard before students in the class will be able to view them: Go to the Control Panel in Blackboard and select Settings, Course Availablility, change setting from No to Yes and then clicking Submit.
Students must not edit their profiles on Blackboard. CPIT periodically rolls back changes, so any edits they make will be lost. Students may only use their cardinalmail.cua.edu e-mail accounts. If you do try to change a student’s e-mail address from the default, CPIT will only change it back and the student will not receive important announcements. Students who wish to use another e-mail address can forward their Cardinal mail to that account. Instructions on how students can forward their Cardinal mail to another account, can be found on the CPIT website.
Be aware that CPIT regularly conducts routine maintainence: every Thursday 7:00 AM – 9:00 AM and the third Sunday of every month 7:00 AM – 2:00 PM. During these times, Blackboard might be unavailable. Keep your students informed about these interruptions and keep them in mind when scheduling assignments.
If you have any questions about Blackboard you may contact the Dean's office (202-319-5085). If you wish to request one-on-one training you may contact Joan Weeks ( ). If Blackboard is down contact CPIT (202-319-5373) or Public Safety (202-319-5111) if after hours.
Blackboard resources:
Book Orders
A Federal mandate effective Summer 2010, requires universities to publish textbook information along with course schedules three months before the start of the semester. So, faculty are advised to order textbooks as early as possible. To comply with this mandate, please send your textbook information (title, author, and ISBN number) to SLIS as soon as possible.
You can also order your textbooks each semester by completing and submitting the textbook request form to the CUA Bookstore located in the Pryzbyla Center. Your textbook order can also be completed online at cua.bncollege.com by following the eDoptions link. If you have never submitted your textbook adoptions online before, your faculty password for access to this service is 787 (first time users). Please consult the bookstore website for ordering deadlines.
Class roster
It is your responsibility to check your class list in Cardinal Station after the add/drop deadline and the mid-term dates that are indicated in the Academic Calendar. If anyone is on the roster that has not attended the class by midterm, please notify the Administrative Assistant for Registrar Functions. If anyone is attending the class and is not on the roster, please notify the student that they have not registered and ask them to contact the Administrative Assistant for Registrar Functions. The exceptions to this rule are students from other universities taking courses through the Consortium agreement, and alumni who are auditing the class under the Alumni Audit program.
Instructions from CPIT on how to access your class roster are available in PDF here.
Commercial database access
Faculty members who want free student accounts for commercial databases (such as LexisNexis, Westlaw, Dialog, etc.) in their courses should contact the Computer Laboratory Manager ( ) well in advance of the beginning of the course so that User IDs and Passwords for the instructor and students can be obtained. Before each semester starts, Joan Weeks will send out a form for technology requests. When the School receives the User IDs and Passwords for a course, they will be sent to the instructors for distribution to students in their classes.
Course reserves
Faculty are responsible for obtaining permission from the publishers to put material on reserve. The Office of General Counsel has extensive resources on their web site to help you in doing this: http://counsel.cua.edu/copyright/index.cfm. The University Libraries reserve request form has a box requiring your signature indicating you have that permission. Alternatively, you can work with the University bookstore to create a course pack of copyright cleared materials for your students to purchase: http://bit.ly/CUABookstoreCoursePack.
One of the ways CUA Libraries help in compliance with copyright laws is by making linked or scanned articles, book chapters, and other digital materials available as electronic reserves through BlackBoard. Beginning with the Fall 2010 semester, that will be the only way that materials will be available. They will scan the photocopy (or identify a licensed online source for the material), create a link to the item for your BlackBoard course, and return the photocopy to you.
To ensure that all reserve materials are available to your students when they are needed, the University Libraries establish reserve request deadlines each semester. The deadline for the Fall semester is August 6th. Future dates will be published on the Adjunct Listserv. Reserve requests are processed as quickly as possible in the order in which they are received. Requests received after the deadline may not be processed before the semester begins. For additional information, see the Libraries’ Instructions for Placing an Item on Reserve at http://libraries.cua.edu/access/resinstr.html, or contact Traci Perkins, Central Reserves Coordinator at 202-319-5060 or .
Guest lecturer parking
If you have a guest lecturer who will need a parking pass, please contact Louise Gray five working days in advance. She needs the party's name, date and time of arrival, make of car and license number in order to request a pass. The parking permits for guest parking are now reused and must be returned to the school by the requester.
