Syllabus Preparation

Planning the Course (Fall 2024)

Be familiar with Important Syllabus Reminders from the Office of Academic Affairs.

When planning your course, you may want to consult old syllabi. The recent syllabi are posted on the public website of the department. Note that they may have outdated required statements. Things to keep in mind when building the schedule (from the Academic Year Calendar):

  • First day of classes is Monday, August 26
  • Academic/financial drop deadline is Monday, September 16
  • Fall break is Monday, October 14 – Tuesday, October 15
  • Mid-semester progress report period is Thursday, October 17 – Thursday, October 24
  • Thanksgiving break is Sunday, November 24 – Sunday, December 1
  • Withdrawal deadline is Friday, November 22
  • Last day of classes is Tuesday, December 10
  • Final exams are given from Thursday, December 12 to Tuesday, December 17
  • Final grades are due on Monday, December 30

Progress reports are submitted for all students in courses numbered below 500, so some evaluation of the students’ work should happen before the report period ends. Additionally, consult the Hendricks Chapel list of holy days (if it is not updated yet, try a similar list from WashU). Scheduling an exam during a major holiday like Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur may result in a large number of excused absences under the University’s Religious Observances Policy.

Also for your reference:

Suggested Syllabus Format

  • Course subject, number, and title (e.g., “MAT 295 Calculus I”)
  • Contact Information: name, office, email, and phone number of the course supervisor (for course-wide syllabi) or of the section instructor. For section-specific syllabi, include the office hours if known.
  • Course Description, Prerequisites and Restrictions from the Catalog, as well as the number of credits.
  • Textbook and any required supplementary materials such as a homework access code. Students also see this information through eCampus; please check its consistency.
  • Course Learning Objectives: what will the students be able to do after finishing this course? See the page Course Learning Objectives.
  • Shared Competencies / Course Tag(s) (e.g., “SYR 123 fosters two Shared Competencies, Syracuse University’s university-wide learning goals for undergraduate students: Scientific Inquiry and Research Skills and Critical and Creative Thinking“)
  • Calculator Policy
    • MAT 117: TI-84 is required.
    • MAT 121/122: Any calculator with a square root key is adequate.
    • MAT 183: TI-84 or TI-83 is required.
    • MAT 193/194: TI-84 or TI-83 is required.
    • MAT 221/222: TI-84 or TI-83 is recommended.
    • MAT 284: TI-84 or TI-83 is required.
    • MAT 285/286: TI-84 or TI-83 is required.
    • MAT 295/296/397: MAT 295-296-397 students are expected to complete the calculus sequence without the use of a calculator. [Exceptions can be made subject to the decision of the course supervisor.]
  • Additional statement on calculators, if applicable:
    • On exams and quizzes where calculator use is permitted, any graphing calculator may be used, but calculators with a symbolic calculus capability, such as the TI-89 or TI-Nspire with CAS, are forbidden. All electronic devices other than the calculator should be turned off and put away during class. Calculators on cell phones are not to be used on tests or quizzes.
  • Course Supervisor Statement (for courses with a course supervisor):
    • Please inform your instructor of any problems that you have with this course. Problems not satisfactorily resolved with your instructor should be brought to the attention of the course supervisor without delay.
  • Homework and Quiz Policy (in case of a course-wide syllabus: to the extent that applies to the entire course)
  • Grading Policy (in case of a course-wide syllabus: to the extent that applies to the entire course). Check that the weights of different categories add up to 100%.
  • Test Policies and Makeup Policy. Include the dates of midterm exams if possible.
  • Final Exam information:
    • The University administration expects a final exam to be scheduled, or at least that there will be contact with the students during the final exam period, in all courses including upper-level courses (600 and above too). Prominently display the final exam information on the syllabus. Final exams are not allowed during the last week of classes or on any of the Reading Days.
    • For courses numbered 100-399 and 485 (except 375 and UC sections), include the following statement. The final examination covers the entire course. It is a two-hour exam and will be given on Friday, December 13, 2024, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. The exact time of your final examination will be announced in lecture. 
    • For other courses, if the course number is under 600, list the final exam day and time as they appear on Registrar’s Final Exam Schedule.
    • There is more flexibility with final exams in 600+ courses: they can have take-home exams. These finals are not scheduled automatically: see Ms. Kelly Jarvi to schedule your final exam. The day/time indicated by Registrar’s Final Exam Schedule should be used to ensure there are no conflicts with other finals.
  • Attendance Policy
  • Course Schedule, preferably listing the topics and not just textbook section numbers. (When a student applies for transfer credit, a professor from another university should be able to understand from the syllabus how our course compares to their courses.)
  • Required Statements: see Appendix with University policy statements.
  • Other (optional) policy statements are found on Academic Affairs website.
  • Sources of out-of-class help, as applicable: Math Clinic / Calculus Help Center, CLASS group tutoring if it is offered for your course
  • Other general course information you wish to include. Some examples are in the section Advice for Students below.

Advice for Students

Getting help

Your instructor and recitation instructor will be holding regular office hours and will make appointments with students having class conflicts with their scheduled office hours. In addition, the Mathematics Department offers regular math clinics. These will be set up by the second week of the semester and a schedule of the clinics will be posted outside the math office and on the department’s website.

Center for Learning and Student Success (CLASS) also offers Free Group Tutoring Sessions for certain math courses. For details, see their website https://class.syr.edu

How to succeed

Here are a few basic suggestions for how to succeed in this course.

  1. It is absolutely essential that you understand how to solve the assigned homework problems and, more importantly, how and why the skills and techniques presented in the course are used in solving the assign problems. Quiz and exam questions will be similar to these problems.
  2. Ask questions in lecture, recitation and/or at the clinic about anything that is not completely clear. Don’t hesitate to bring questions to your instructors during office hours.
  3. Every day, read and study the sections in the textbook covered in the lecture. Learning mathematics takes time! Read carefully and work through all the examples in complete detail. It can be helpful to try to work through an example on your own before reading the solution.
  4. Stay caught up. Mathematical concepts build on each other cumulatively and you need to stay on top of the material at every stage. If you are having difficulty, don’t expect that the problem will take care of itself and disappear later. Contact your course instructor or your recitation instructor immediately and discuss the problem!
  5. Form a study group. Many students benefit from a study group to work through challenging problems and to review for exams. You should attempt the problems ahead of time by yourself and then work through any difficulties with your study partners. Explaining your reasoning to another student can help to clarify your own understanding.
  6. You should expect to work hard. Don’t get discouraged if you find some of the material very difficult. Be persistent and patient! If you follow the above suggestions, your experience in this course will be a rewarding one.

Web Accessibility

Syracuse University policy requires that “content acquired or created by the University on or after Jan. 1, 2018, must be accessible to individuals with disabilities”. See the ITS accessibility site for more. As a consequence, we will be unable to post noncompliant syllabi on the Department’s website. A few suggestions for creating accessible documents:

Both Word and TeX users

  1. Use black (or very dark) font on white background. Light colors lead to contrast issues.
  2. If you use tables, make sure that each table has a header row: a row that describes the content of each column. For example, a table of Numeric grade – Letter grade conversion could have columns labeled “Score” and “Grade”, or “Letter” and “Range”, etc.
  3. After saving the PDF file, open it in Adobe Acrobat Pro and run an accessibility check. This tool (Tools > Accessibility > Full Check) can correct many of the accessibility problems.
  4. Adobe Acrobat accessibility tool does not check contrast at present, but Blackboard does. To be sure that a file is accessible, upload it to Blackboard (for example, create a new item “Syllabus” and attach the file to it). A few seconds after the upload, refresh the page: a dial-shaped indicator will appear, which can be clicked to see the accessibility issues if any.

Word users

  1. Use the most current Word document format. If a document displays in “Compatibility Mode”, go to File → Info → Convert (to the modern Word format).
  2. Use headings for section titles, instead of just making some text bold and centered. The first heading of a file (typically the title of the course) should be Heading 1. An easy way to achieve this is to format the title in any way you want, then select it, right-click “Heading 1” in the toolbar, and choose “Update Heading 1 to match selection”. If you use multiple heading levels, they need to be consecutive: for example, H1 H2 H3 H1 H1 is fine, but H1 H3 is not. For more, see How to add a heading.
  3. In each table, select the header row, right click, access Table Properties -> Row, and select the checkbox “repeat as header row”. This will allow the header row to be recognized as such.
  4. When saving the file as a PDF, use Save As (PDF), not Print (as PDF).

If your Word-compatible software fails to produce accessible PDF, one workaround is to use Office365 web app:

  1. Log in to office.syr.edu with SU credentials
  2. Open OneDrive web app (in the menu on the left)
  3. Upload your Word file to OneDrive
  4. Double-click the uploaded file to open it with Word365 web app
  5. In the menu, choose File → Save as → Download as PDF

TeX users

  1. The PDF files produced from TeX are usually “untagged” but this can be corrected by processing the file with Adobe Acrobat Pro (Tools → Accessibility → Autotag Document).
  2. Autotagging may fail to identify the header row of a table as such. In this case you can edit tags using Tags panel of Acrobat: the first row of a table should have TH tags instead of TD tags.