List of recommended summer 2024 sessions:

Recommended Sessions

# of Weeks	Code	Start	End
4-week	ZDD	5/20/24	6/16/24
4-week	DDD	6/17/24	7/14/24
4-week	HDD	7/15/24	8/11/24
6-week	ZFF	5/20/24	6/30/24
6-week	FFF	7/1/24	8/11/24
8-week	DHH	6/17/24	8/11/24

Summer Term 2024 undergraduate courses should be scheduled for sessions between 5/20/24 - 8/11/24.

Avoid early sessions (with session code beginning 'Y') and late sessions (sessions ending later than the general 8-week 'DHH' session). These sessions fall outside of the Summer Term calendar and impact student grading and end-of-term actions (e.g., drops, academic standing). Some of these sessions overlap with spring/fall faculty contract dates, and will create HR/payroll issues for instructors and Teaching Assistants.

Tips for scheduling courses:

• Departments should avoid offering multiple courses in the same session that appeal to the same group of students.
• Idiosyncratic course timing (not conforming to the usual 4-week or 8-week sessions) may be problematic for students, and thus discourage enrollment. See L&S Credit Limits in Fall, Spring, and Summer Terms

Related resources:

• The Office of the Registrar's website has a full list of session codes.
• Standard appointment levels for summer instructors are listed on the following KB page: Guidance for Summer Sessions appointments in L&S

Instructions for proposing a new course: L&S Course Proposal Information (Main Overview)

Courses previously approved for the academic year can be offered in the summer term without further course approval from curricular committees. Ideally, new course offerings should expand (not merely displace) current summer enrollments.

Summer offerings are exempt from the L&S Policy on Offering Undergraduate Class Sections with Online or Hybrid Modality. There are no summer residential expectations and summer term enrollment is optional for most undergraduates.

We expect summer courses to follow the six characteristics described in the L&S Foundational Criteria for Online & Hybrid Instruction.

Summer planning directly incorporates costs and revenues. Whether a course is “profitable” (i.e., makes a positive contribution to department surplus) depends on both the instructional costs and the number of paid credits. Courses with higher instructional costs require more paid credits to “break even.” Departments are permitted to run courses that reduce department surplus as long as the department maintains a positive surplus overall.

Courses intended primarily or exclusively for graduate students will generate little or no revenue if these students receive tuition waivers. As with low-enrollment undergraduate courses, departments are permitted to run such courses as long as the department maintains a positive surplus overall.

Please see L&S Summer Budget Model for discussion of financial considerations.

Summer Course Guide Preview

Each fall, the Division of Continuing Studies (DCS) will publish a Summer Course Guide preview on https://summer.wisc.edu/

The procedure for L&S is on the following KB page: Summer Course Guide Preview - Instructions for L&S Departments

Marketing

Departments are responsible for advertising summer-term courses to internal audiences (including their own majors, other L&S students, and non-L&S students).

Marketing to external (non-UW) audiences will be coordinated by DCS. Departments may wish to contact Payton Jones to discuss marketing for a particular course, or to explore how potential summer courses could fit into existing marketing initiatives.

Requests to cancel a summer course are sent via the 'Course Cancellation and Non-standard Times’ request form (instructions). The full policy and procedure for canceling a summer course is on the following KB page: L&S Course and Class Section Cancellation Policy

Offer letters to instructors and TAs contain contingency language regarding sufficient enrollment.