Note on Credit Hours
Please note courses with a range of credit hours will be charged per credit hour as appropriate.
Note on Special Topics Courses
Course descriptions are static descriptions of courses to ensure that subject matter is consistent across semesters for a given course. Course descriptions are written by faculty and approved by academic leadership. Course descriptions are by design difficult to change. However, as a research university, Howard University has the responsibility to adjust some course material to the changing fields and changing disciplines. Howard, like most universities, has instituted special topics courses to allow a curricular flexibility that both allows for the introduction of new knowledge and protects the concrete nature of other courses. As the topics faculty (or in the case of honors courses, students) choose cannot be predicted a full year in advance, the exact subject matter to be discussed in a special topics course is understandably not included in the course catalog. Students interested in taking courses that suggest a varied or selected subject matter should contact the department chair or the instructor of the course.
Special topics courses can be repeated by students in some disciplines if the subject matter differs. For students who choose to take multiple special topics courses who need evidence of the unique subject matter of each course, this can be found in their course syllabi. Students seeking funding that requires courses not to be repeated may be asked to provide their syllabi before funding is given. As an example, students receiving military educational benefits would need to provide syllabi for courses that have the same course number and/or course description.
Please note that instead of differing section numbers for one special topics class, some departments choose to offer multiple courses that are designated as "Special Topics" courses.
The same syllabi requirements would be required for students enrolled in more than one of these courses as part of their degree.