Humanities Core Course Enrollment Questions
Humanities Core is a yearlong sequence of classes. We strongly discourage students from enrolling midway through the sequence and will be prioritizing Winter 2023 registration for students who are enrolled in the program in Fall 2022.
Everyone enrolled in Humanities Core takes a 4-unit lecture (listed as HUMANITIES CORE LEC on the Schedule of Classes), as well as a seminar. Your seminar is determined by your UCI Writing Placement and Entry Level Writing Requirement (ELWR) status.
If you are having difficulties enrolling in a Humanities Core lecture and/or seminar, please contact your academic advisor or the Humanities Core office. Honors students should consult the office of the Campuswide Honors Collegium. Humanities Core staff can assist you in determining your placement eligibility and in placing you into an appropriate section on a space-available basis. Students seeking broader academic counseling related to enrolling in Humanities Core should consult the academic advising office in the school of their major.
Add/Drops, Switching Sections, and Grade Option Changes
Add/drops and grade option changes for Humanities Core lectures and seminars must be effected by the end of the second week of classes, regardless of other general campus deadlines for add/drops and grade option changes. After the second week, requests to add/drop or changes to the grade option will be granted only in exceptional circumstances. Beginning the first day of the second week of instruction, all add/drops are coordinated and authorized by staff in the Humanities Core Program Office (humcore@uci.edu). Students should not ask Humanities Core seminar instructors for authorization codes. All school and major requirements must be taken for letter grades.
Progression in Humanities Core Course Series
Students receiving deficient grades of C- or below or NP (no pass) may progress to the next quarter as long as a grade of F (or an F that converted to NP) was not received. Students who receive an F in either component (lecture or seminar) of Humanities Core in fall or winter may not progress to the next quarter of Humanities Core unless special permission is granted by the Course Director.
Students receiving a deficient grade of C- or below (including F) or NP (no pass) in either component of Humanities Core may retake the quarter in a subsequent year in most cases. Students repeating only one component of Humanities Core should enroll in both components (lecture and seminar) and then speak with staff in the Humanities Core office (humcore@uci.edu) during the second week of classes to drop the component not being repeated.
Satisfaction of Requirements and General Education Credits
Students who complete all three quarters of the Humanities Core lecture with a grade of D- or better or P (pass), and Humanities Core Writing with a C or better or P (pass) will have satisfied Lower-Division Writing (Category I), Arts and Humanities (Category IV), Multicultural Studies (Category VII) and International/Global Issues (Category VIII) of the UCI General Education (GE) requirements.
If the three quarter series is not completed, each Humanities Core lecture course with a passing grade of D- or better or P (pass) will count as one Arts and Humanities (Category IV) and each Humanities Core writing course with a passing grade of C or better or P (pass) will count as one Writing (Category I) for either Fall or Winter and one Writing (Category I) for Spring.
Students who want to begin Humanities Core in the winter can do so as long as they have satisfied the UC Entry Level Writing Requirement. After completing the winter and spring quarters, students will have met the lower-division writing requirement (Category I) as long as they have a grade of C or better in the writing component. Completion of the lecture component over two quarters with grades of D- or better will fulfill two Arts and Humanities (Category IV) of the GE requirements. (Students who finish the fall in Humanities Core but need to withdraw for the winter can return in the spring for the credits described in this paragraph.)
Majors within the School of Humanities do not have the option of taking Humanities Core for P/NP (pass/no pass). The entire sequence of Humanities Core satisfactorily completed for a letter grade satisfies a school requirement. Other schools may have similar requirements. Non-Humanities majors should consult an academic counselor in the school of their major before opting to take the course for P/NP.
UC Entry Level Writing Requirement and HUMAN 1AES and HUMAN 1BES
In addition to the regular discussion sections of Humanities Core (HUMAN 1AS-BS-CS), the Program offers sections (designated ES) for students who have not met the UC Entry Level Writing Requirement. HUMAN 1AES, offered in fall, must be taken for a letter grade. Students who successfully pass the writing component of Human 1AES with a grade of C or better will have simultaneously met the UC Entry Level Writing Requirement and may progress to a regular section of Humanities Core Course (HUMAN 1BS) in winter quarter. Students who do not pass HUMAN 1AES with a grade of C or better will have a second opportunity to pass the UC Entry Level Writing Requirement in winter quarter by enrolling in HUMAN 1BES for a letter grade. Completion of HUMAN 1BES with a grade of C or better will satisfy the UC Entry Level Writing Requirement and will allow students to move on to HUMAN 1CS to complete the lower-division writing requirement. Satisfactory completion of the HUMAN 1AES-BES/BS-CS sequence additionally fulfills other GE requirements (Categories IV, VII, and VIII), just as the 1AS-BS-CS sequence does (see Satisfaction of Requirements and General Education Credits above).
Last updated May 2020. Requirement information is provided here merely for your convenience; please refer to the UCI General Catalogue for official documentation.
Disability Services and Accommodations
Students with disabilities who believe they may need accommodations in this class are encouraged to contact the Disability Services Center (http://disability.uci.edu, 949-824-7494) as soon as possible to better ensure that such accommodations are implemented in a timely fashion. All exams are administered in seminars in Humanities Core; therefore, students should specify their seminar instructors when requesting exam accommodations.
Grading Policies
The Policies and Procedures document distributed in each seminar explains grading for the lecture and writing components of the course. Please note that these are guidelines intended to help students plan their work in the program. The Humanities Core Course Director reserves the right to make changes in these evaluation criteria during the course of the quarter. The Course Director will also administer a formal reevaluation process in the event of a grade dispute.
Academic Honesty
UCI and the Humanities Core program view plagiarism as a serious ethical matter. UCI’s Academic Integrity Policy and Procedures define plagiarism as “the use of intellectual creations of another without proper attribution” and identify the two primary forms of plagiarism that occur in courses like Humanities Core:
- To steal or pass off as one’s own the ideas or words, images, or other creative works of another.
- To use a creative production without crediting the source, even if only minimal information is available to identify it for citation. (See Section XI. Types of Academic Integrity Violations Part C. Plagiarism of the Academic Integrity Procedures)
According to this definition, utilizing AI-generated text (for example, text generated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT or another large learning model) in a Humanities Core assignment would constitute a violation of university policy in that such text is not your own but instead is composed of the uncredited words of others and results from the intellectual creation of others. When you matriculated here at UC Irvine, you agreed to uphold these standards. We intrinsically know that giving credit to others for their ideas and labor is the right thing to do but sometimes we struggle to do so properly or according to specific academic conventions. Learning to responsibly cite direct quotations, paraphrased and summarized text, and information that is not part of common knowledge is a fundamental part of your university education and you should feel free to speak to your seminar instructor if you have questions about best practices. Turning in any work which is not your own and not properly acknowledged as such will result in a recommendation for failure on your assignment and subject you to further action by the university. Please note that program directors and seminar instructors regularly review papers that appear not to be students’ own creations, and you may be asked to upload your assignments and exams to the plagiarism detection service Turnitin through Canvas. For more information about responsible citation and ethical research practices, please see “Writing is an Ethical and a Self-Reflective Activity” in the Humanities Core Handbook, pp. 26–7.
