Basic Schedule Building Information

Your big assignment before coming to campus is to create a proposed schedule of 3-4 courses for each semester. You should do this before you meet with your academic advisor in August. 

Please keep in mind that this is a proposed schedule. Building it will provide you with an opportunity to discover what courses are offered and to reflect on what you might like to take.

After you arrive on campus, you and your academic advisor, who is a Hendrix faculty member, will talk through your choices before any course requests are finalized.

Start by thinking about you.

• What subjects did you enjoy the most in high school?
• What do you want to learn more about?
• What are you good at?
• What academic skills would you like to develop?
  
• What are some potential majors you would like to explore?
  

The Course Planning Pages are a great place to discover where you might start in any subject area. Those areas are listed on the right side of the page. Simply click what interests you for additional information.

As a general rule, plan on taking 100- and 200- level courses during your first year unless the Course Planning Pages suggest otherwise.

Additional information on academic departments, majors, minors, and programs can be found in Hendrix's official Catalog. 

A more detailed overview of Hendrix's curriculum can be found here. For our purposes, know that you will need to earn 32 credits to graduate. You should expect to take 4 courses (credits) per semester.

You can think of your degree as having four parts: 

• Learning Domains and Capacities (General Education Requirements)
• Your Major
• Odyssey experiences (which are generally not for course credit)
• Electives

You and your advisor will keep track of your degree progress. To help with that, you can navigate to Registrar's Forms for Students and download the Generic Audit Form - New. 

Schedule building happens within  CampusWeb, which is where you are. On the left sidebar menu, look under Academics and choose Course Search.

The add/drop page looks like this: 
     

Make sure you are in the correct year and term (which is near the top of the page).

If you are a first-year student, you should be able to see your fall TEC and Explorations sections, which are required for graduation. Typically, these courses cannot be moved unless they  interfere with your ability to graduate in four years. (That is extremely rare.) If you are missing a TEC section or Explorations, contact us.

In addition to the Course Planning Pages, the Online Course Schedule is a very helpful tool to use when building a schedule. The Online Course Schedule tells you what is offered on-campus. Be sure to set the filter to the current academic year. Use additional filters to narrow your search by term, subject, etc.

You can click any course title for a description of the course, including prerequisites should they exist.   

To start your education, choose courses that interest you or fill an intellectual need. Do not build your schedule to get requirements “out of the way”. This rarely leads to a satisfying set of courses.

Most introductory courses carry learning domain or capacity codes, so you automatically are working on the general education requirements. 

To add a course: On CampusWeb, choose Course Search under the "Academics" tab. Course Search is not a flexible search engine so know what you want to do before you engage it. Make sure you have the right year and semester. Search by Department rather than course name or number. Using the “Course Search” tab –

1. Click on the box next to Department and make your selection.
2. Click the Search button.
   
3. Find a course and click the “Add” button on the left side.
4. Finish by scrolling to the bottom of the page to click the “add course” button on the left. (In large departments, you might have a scroll a long way down.)

If it worked, then repeat these steps until you have four courses for each semester.

If it did not work, check for these potential issues.

• Did you click both buttons (the “add” box next to the course and the “Add course” button at the bottom of the page)?
• Are you trying to add a laboratory class? This can be tricky.  Try adding the class only and let the program prompt you to add the associated laboratory.
• Are you choosing courses with prerequisites? These can be troublesome if the program does not recognize your past work (typically AP credit or courses from a previous institution). If that is the case, do not panic. Your advisor will be happy to help you work around this once you get to campus.
  

Building a schedule can be confusing at first. Now that you have a little practice, let’s look to other tools you can use.

• Placement Records. These are found in CampusWeb under Advising. These include course suggestions for English, Mathematics, and Chemistry. Placements for Languages come after you arrive on campus.  Most first-year students need an English course, many will take start a Language sequence, and some will take courses in Mathematics and Chemistry. Pay close attention to these recommendations! Remember: Where you start does not decide how far you can go.
  
• Academic Resources . This is a master list of useful advising tools also available on the Hendrix website.  Find this list on your CampusWeb, under Academics.

After you have added a few courses based on your strongest interests and possibly your prospective major, you might not know what else to add.

We recommend expanding your horizons with some courses related to your interests or courses that will give you useful skills. Spread out across the curriculum. You will find that doing so will result in naturally fulfilling General Academic Requirements, especially Learning Domains and Capacities. 

Finally, consider adding a physical activity credit. This is not a full academic course, but a co-curricular requirement. You need two for graduation, and it is smart to get one done in your first two years.  Find these under PACT in the schedule. They are worth 0.25 academic credits, so you would take this in addition to the four academic courses you need.