Either I just got a lot smarter and am suddenly taking insanely difficult classes, or ACES just changed on me.
Although the new course numbering system will not affect courses before Fall 2012, all of the new numbers are now, as of today, visible in the planner for classes placed in the Fall 2012 and later terms. They are not available on the course catalog under the registration tab since the catalog currently only includes classes through 2011.
“[The new course numbers] were intentionally updated to allow everyone—faculty, staff, guests and students—to see the future numbers,” said John Campbell, Associate Director of Student Information Services and Systems (SISS). “For students planning their schedule in advance, they will be able to choose the new classes to add to their planner.”
Courses taken through 2011 will, however, remain unchanged on students’ transcripts.
“If we did that every time we changed a number, we’d have to change thousands and thousands of transcripts,” Campbell said. “Think of a transcript as a legal document—once you changed something you don’t go back after the fact.”
As reported by The Chronicle in March, the current numbering system only includes four distinct levels of classes: introductory (0-99), advanced (100-199), senior and graduate (200-299) and graduate-only (300-399). The new system will include six distinct levels of classes: freshman-only (0-99), introductory (100-199), undergraduate above introductory (200-399), advanced (400-499), graduate open to undergraduate (500-699) and graduate-only (700-999).
Students no longer need to worry about very low course numbers appearing on their transcript for introductory courses—Psychology 11 is now Psychology 101, Economics 51 is now Economics 101, Engineering 53L is Engineering 110L and Public Policy 55D is now Public Policy 155D.
"There's something scary about seeing 300-level computer science courses in my planner," said sophomore Peggy Li.
Since Economics is the most popular major at Duke, I played around with the Planner and pretended to be an Economics student who would take Economics 51, 55, 105, 110 and 139 as core classes and 153, 181, 187, 195 and 225 as electives. Under the new system, courses taken after 2012 will be numbered 101, 201, 205, 210, 208, 353, 381, 438, 390 and 673—that sounds much better to me (and probably employers, too)!
An email sent this afternoon from SISS to students, faculty and staff said that ACES will not be accessible from July 22 to July 25, but this is not related to the new course numbers that have been entered, Campbell said.
“This weekend we’ll be putting in some new changes that don’t really affect the look and feel,” Campbell said. “They affect how things work in the background.”
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