Guide to Course Proposals 2026

Summer Teaching Overview

This section provides a broad overview; additional details about the differences between undergraduate and pre-college courses are provided below.

• Courses may be offered as a part of UChicago's College (undergraduate) curriculum or be especially designed for pre-college (academically advanced high school) students.
• Courses may be proposed for in-person or remote (online) instruction for Summer 2026.
  • Remote instruction allows for greater flexibility for students and instructors alike, and is a popular option, especially with College students.
  • All remotely taught courses have a significant synchronous (live interaction) component. No courses are wholly asynchronous (self-directed by students without live interaction).  
  • Instructors of remote courses must be in the United States when teaching for the program, specifically in California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, or Wisconsin for tax purposes.
• Courses are taught in an intensive format, covering the content of a nine-week quarter in a fewer number of weeks.
  • See the sections on Developing a Proposal for more information on course lengths.
  • People who teach during the summer tell us they appreciate the intensive schedule, as it allows them to still have a good portion of the summer remaining to dedicate to research, writing, and travel.
• Proposals are due Monday, October 13, 2025.

For compensation information, please visit our main Summer Session Instructional Employment website. 

Summer Session at the University of Chicago includes: 

• Summer Quarter: June 15-August 21, 2026, (no classes June 19 or July 3) open to UChicago students, as well as visiting undergraduate, graduate, and pre-college students
• September Term: August 24-September 11, 2026, (no classes September 7) only open to UChicago students

We offer two different types of courses: 

• Undergraduate courses - during Summer Quarter and September Term, we offer courses that are part of the regular College curriculum, and
• Precollege courses - during the first six weeks of Summer Quarter, we offer courses especially designed for high school students ready to tackle undergraduate-level material in our Immersion or Summer Online programs

Summer 2026 course proposals are due Monday, October 13, 2025.

• Undergraduate and pre-college courses must fall under an academic area represented in The College. Refer to the College Catalog for a complete list of programs of study.
• If you are proposing a pre-college course or a new (not currently offered during the other quarters of the year) undergraduate course, you will need to upload a brief course plan that describes student learning outcomes and the kinds of topics, readings, assignments, and activities that will constitute the course.
• Read both sections below about undergraduate and pre-college courses carefully as you consider what course to propose, so that you are sure to meet the needs and interests of the target audience. For those interested in testing out creative course designs, you might find that your proposal fits the pre-college population better than the undergraduate one, or that it works better within September Term than Summer Quarter.
• For undergraduate course proposals, talk to your department, committee, or program office about their individual curricular needs, criteria, and procedures regarding undergraduate course offerings, and use that information to inform what course you decide to propose. For pre-college, review the 2025 Immersion and Summer Online course offerings to see what sort of courses appeal to this audience.
• Those without a current full-time academic appointment at UChicago must submit a CV along with their proposal.
• When submitting your proposal, teaching fellows, research associates, and other academic or administrative personnel must provide proof (such as a signed memo or email) from your supervisor (staff) or divisional dean's office (teaching fellows and other academic personnel) that you are pre-approved to take on additional paid duties during the summer if your proposal is selected. Please note that post-doctoral fellows are often prohibited from taking on extra-service appointments; please review the terms of your fellowship before proposing a course.
• If you wish to discuss your proposal ideas with someone in the Summer Session Office, please contact Stephanie Friedman  (sfriedmn@uchicago.edu).

Application: Your submitted course proposal will act as the application for this opportunity, which has been posted to GRAD Gargoyle; an application does not need to be submitted there. 

Course type options: UChicago graduate students are welcome to propose either pre-college courses or undergraduate curriculum courses. See sections, below, for additional information about these course types.

Dean of Students approval:  

• Proposals must include an uploaded email or letter from your division's Dean of Students confirming that you are in good standing and eligibility. eligible to be hired and compensated outside of their department.  
• For graduate students in the Humanities and Social Sciences divisions who are proposing a course in the College curriculum, this letter must also confirm whether the teaching experience course will apply to your Pedagogical Training Program (PTP) or Mentored Teaching Experience (MTE.)
  
  • All PTP and MTE requirements must be fulfilled before a student may be eligible for compensation beyond primary funding.  
  • Pre-college courses are not part of the College curriculum and the PTP/MTE restrictions do not apply. 

For additional employment information, please visit our main Summer Session Instructional Employment website. 

Summer Planning Timeline

September	Proposals solicited; renewal requests sent
October 13	Proposal and renewal form submission deadline
mid-November	Proposal decisions sent; final course details for all proposals and renewals sent for review
December	Summer Session 2026 website launched
January	Begin reviewing applications from pre-college students
February	Summer Quarter and September Term enrollment opens for College students

University Holidays 2026

The University of Chicago observes the following holidays, on which classes are not held, either in-person or online:

Juneteenth	Friday, June 19, 2026
Independence Day	Friday, July 3, 2026
Labor Day	Monday, September 7, 2026

 

Please do not submit a proposal form for courses that were offered in summer 2025.  In September, the Summer Session Office will send renewal forms for courses offered during summer 2025 to departments and/or instructors. Please note that courses that were low-enrolled (i.e., fewer than 10 final enrollments) are usually not renewed for the following year. 

If you are interested in adding additional sections of an overenrolled summer 2025 course, please contact Sarah Lopez (slopez@uchicago.edu).

Additional Information: Pre-College Programs

Program	Start Date	End Date	Holiday(s)
Immersion	June 15 (Monday)	July 2 (Thursday)	June 19
Immersion	July 7 (Tuesday)	July 23 (Thursday)	n/a
Summer Online	July 7 (Tuesday)	July 23 (Thursday)	n/a

Immersion (In-Person) Courses

All Immersion courses meet daily Monday through Friday for a total of 13 instructional days.  Meeting days usually run from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm with a 90-minute lunch break from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm; the daily schedule can vary, depending on that day’s activities (such as a field trip or group projects). 

When you fill out your proposal form, request the session you would prefer, but please be aware that you might be asked to teach in a different session, as we try to balance the overall schedule.

Summer Online (Remote) Courses

All remotely-taught Summer Online courses will have synchronous class sessions held Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 11:00 am or 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm Central Time. Asynchronous activities (such as pre-recorded lectures) supplement but do not replace these live, interactive sessions.

For Summer 2026, we seek course proposals for the pre-college Immersion (3-week residential) and Summer Online (3-week remotely taught) programs, which provide a deep dive into a specific topic (e.g., The Physics of Stars) or broad exposure to a field of study (e.g., Pathways in World Politics). Courses could also be interdisciplinary.

Pre-college courses allow for a wider variety of potential themes and topics to be covered than is often possible in Summer Quarter undergraduate curriculum courses. When deciding on a topic, consider what would be both interesting and accessible to these students, and is not something already represented in our pre-college Immersion offerings. To further expand our variety of offerings, we are especially interested in proposals in the following subjects:

Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Sciences

For the full list of existing pre-college courses, review our 2025 Immersion and Summer Online course offerings.

Participants in pre-college programs (rising 10-12 grades, mostly ages 15 through 17) gain entrance through a competitive admissions process. Most students live in a university residence hall for the duration of the Immersion program, and are overseen by a dedicated residential program staff (composed mostly of UChicago College students) outside of class.  We know that not all students want to or can participate in a residential program, so we also have remote-only courses in the Summer Online pre-college program.

All pre-college students apply to specific courses, and are admitted based on their academic readiness for that course, as well as their particular interest in the course subject matter. These courses can serve as powerful pipelines into The College and individual majors.

Pre-college students are enrolled in only one course at a time. For those participating on campus, they engage in traditional classroom activities like lecture and discussion, but also in hands-on experiences like labs, field observations, field trips, guest lectures, and group projects, all of which provide access to the rich resources available on campus and throughout the city. Pre-college programs allow students to “test drive” the university, and help them make decisions about their future academic and professional paths.

Immersion courses are not “high school” courses, despite the age of the students enrolled in them. They have course numbers assigned by an appropriate department or program, and carry 100 units of credit, like regular undergraduate courses do. Their participants are registered students of the university with the same access to university facilities as College students (except where precluded by their legal status as minors). They receive a quality letter grade, which is recorded on an official university transcript maintained by the Registrar’s Office. Most importantly, they are expected to tackle undergraduate-level material in their readings, labs, essays, and other assignments.

In terms of what you can expect from them academically, pre-college students:

• They are not very different from first quarter, first-year students at any selective institution.
   
• They have the ability to take on undergraduate-level material, but need some additional scaffolding as they make the transition to working in an undergraduate environment, with its different expectations and structure.
   
• They have specifically applied for the courses they are enrolled in, so they bring carefully vetted academic qualifications as well as focused interest in the subject, making them exceptionally motivated and enthusiastic learners.
   
• Given the greater number of contact hours, it is important that the daily schedule for pre-college Immersion courses include a variety of teaching modalities, providing a mixture of lecture, small group work and discussion, and other forms of active engagement.
   
• In such an intensive program, it is important to vary the type and style of instruction and academic engagement throughout the day, mixing direct instruction with small group work, discussion, and actively engaging projects and assignments that can be initiated or completed by students in class. Additional enhancements such as guest speakers or academic field trips should also be scheduled during the academic day.
   
• The typical schedule is class from 9:00am to 11:30pm, a lunch break from 11:30pm to 1:00pm, then class again from 1:00pm to 3:00 or 4:00pm.

Rich Kron (Astrophysics)

The students are excellent and already motivated.  It is rewarding to watch the cohort take shape and help each other as the course progresses, i.e. seeing the social dynamics acting in a positive way to achieve the academic goals. The summer course I teach is similar to PHSC 12700, a core course, which I also teach.  PHSC 12700 is designed for non-science students. The summer course, by contrast, includes students ready to use math and computers and analyze data, so the summer course is tailored to exercise and develop those skills and interests. The intensive format means that the instructor has all of the students’ attention for the period of time, which means the instructor can depend on what was accomplished an hour ago to be remembered for the next hour or next day. This in turn allows projects to be extended from one day to the next, for example, giving a lot of flexibility.

Christopher Schonbaum (Biological Sciences)

The extended period of interaction each day and the ability to meet daily allows us to do experiments that we can’t do very easily during the school year.  Typical once a week undergraduate labs are disruptive ,especially when working with living organisms.  In RIBS, we can have students perform experiments in a more natural manner, and similar to the way they would perform experiments in a research lab.  An experiment that might stretch out for several weeks in an undergraduate lab can be done in three days in the summer.  The experiment is fresh in their minds and we can more easily discuss outcomes as a class.  Moreover, the summer students can carry out experiments that are not possible during the school year.  In RIBS, the students perform experiments on cancer cells that require daily observations and follow-up.  In addition, in undergraduate courses, students are often asked to design an experiment but there is not time to actually do the experiment.  In the summer course, the students not only design experiments but they have the opportunity to carry out the experiments and test their hypotheses.

One other aspect of the summer course that I find appealing is that the students are all excited about studying biology and in general, are eager to talk about science. They are taking the course and spending all day in lab because they want to be here, not because it is a requirement.  The students have lots of interesting questions based on something they read in the news and because of the extended day, we have time to digress and talk about science topics other than what was scheduled.

Katherine O’Doherty (Psychology)

I love working with the high school students! The group is typically very diverse and includes many international students — so we have many different perspectives brought to the classroom. Their diverse educational experiences really enrich our discussions. I enjoy the high school students’ enthusiasm and excitement for the future — particularly when they begin collecting and analyzing the data for their research project. They work so hard to finalize the methodology and when they get to put it into practice, collect actual data from human subjects, and present the results they are thrilled.

The content and assignments are actually quite similar to my college courses, what differs greatly is the timing. Having a full day of class five days a week for three weeks straight is really different from the school year and very fun. I do get to incorporate longer videos in the summer, which are great in psychology courses, I just don’t often have time to show them during the school year. I would say the research project is a fun summer assignment that only works because we have time each afternoon to meet individually with each group to plan and implement their study, analyze the data, etc. It is really fun to end the class with their research presentations — it feels like a real celebration of learning.

David Reid (Physics)

I find the students to be the most appealing aspect of the course. They are very eager to learn and work hard and no complaints if the course is challenging.  They want the challenge. For this program, because of the length of the class periods, I definitely plan things differently. I spend much more time with students working on things, and on in-class discussions, than I would during the regular year. The main thing I am able to do is to have much more in-depth discussions because of the longer class period.  Another less conventional assignment students really enjoy in the intensive summer class is to give them a quiz in the form of a game; it takes 90 minutes, and so doesn’t work well in a normal class.

• Presenting an opening argument in moot court
• Sequencing a portion of a bacterial gene
• Curating a museum exhibition
• Writing a computer program that plays chess
• Conducting an observational study of the psychology of crowds
• Participating in a UN Security Council simulation

We require candidates to have some undergraduate teaching experience; those who do not have experience with pre-college students but have a strong interest in gaining that experience will also receive full consideration.

Additional Information: Undergraduate Curriculum Courses

If you propose an undergraduate curriculum course, you will be asked about scheduling information (your preferred dates, days, and times) for either Summer Quarter or September Term. 

Summer Quarter Sessions
Three-course sequences, such as Self, Culture and Society, can be completed in one summer, with each segment taking place in 3 weeks: 

Start Date	End Date	Length	Holiday(s)
June 15 (Monday)	July 3 (Friday)	3  weeks	June 19, July 3
July 6 (Monday)	July 24 (Friday)	3 weeks	n/a
July 27 (Monday)	August 14 (Friday)	3 weeks	n/a

Two-course sequences that need more than 3 weeks to meet pedagogical goals can run for 5 weeks: 

Start Date	End Date	Length	Holiday(s)
June 15 (Monday)	July 17 (Friday)	5  weeks	June 19, July 3
July 20 (Monday)	August 21 (Friday)	5 weeks	n/a

Stand-alone course offerings (meaning those not part of a sequence) can be scheduled for:

Start Date	End Date	Length	Holiday(s)
June 15 (Monday)	July 3 (Friday)	3  weeks	June 19, July 3
July 6 (Monday)	July 24 (Friday)	3 weeks	n/a
June 15 (Monday)	July 17 (Friday)	5  weeks	June 19, July 3
July 20 (Monday)	August 21 (Friday)	5 weeks	n/a
June 15 (Monday)	August 7 (Friday)	8 weeks	June 19, July 3
August 24 (Monday)	September 11 (Friday)	3 weeks	September 7

 

Contact Hours
All undergraduate courses in The College must meet for a minimum of 27 contact hours. During Summer Quarter and September Term, this means a three-week course should meet for a minimum of 9 hours per week and a five-week course for 5.5 hours per week. 

Days & Times
When you fill out your form, request the specific meeting days and times you would prefer, but please be aware that you might be asked to make changes, such as teaching in the afternoon rather than the morning, or in a different session, as we try to balance the overall schedule. Please consider if you could schedule class sessions in the evenings (e.g., 6:00 pm-8:00 pm CT) to accommodate students with jobs and internships during the day. Eight -week evening courses in particular have been very well received by students, because these courses can meet for fewer hours each week, and so work particularly well for students who have daytime committments.  

During Summer Quarter and September Term, the majority of College students do not take classes unless they have a compelling reason to do so, such as completing a required course so they can graduate on time, retaking a course, or studying abroad in the coming year. Since the student population is smaller than during other quarters of the academic year, the number of courses offered is reduced accordingly, and preference is given to course offerings that will best serve student needs.

Simply put, electives rarely draw student enrollments during the summer, no matter how compelling the topic. Strong preference is given to course offerings that fulfill a major or degree requirement in the College.

How do you determine if your proposed course might be a fitting addition to Summer Quarter or September Term? You should be able to answer “Yes” to more than one of the questions below:

• Does it fulfill a Core or major requirement, especially one which students have trouble fulfilling?
• Is it a course which is often oversubscribed or very full?
• Is it an especially rigorous course that students might want to take at a time when they can focus on it with fewer distractions?
• Is it the sort of course which is offered at many different institutions, so that a visiting undergraduate student could likely transfer credit from UChicago to his or her home institution?
• Does this course showcase well-known strengths of this University or otherwise appeal to students from other institutions who would be looking for an opportunity to study here?
• Is the department, committee, or division which offers the course willing and able to help recruit students to take the course?
• FOR SEPTEMBER TERM ONLY: Does it take advantage of campus and city sites and resources or involve pedagogically creative activities that would be difficult to include during a regular academic quarter?

You will also be asked if you would like to teach your course in-person, remotely, or have no preference. We tend to emphasize remotely taught courses during Summer Session as College students need the flexibility they provide. 

• To ask a question about the proposal process, contact Sarah Lopez at slopez@uchicago.edu
• To request a consultation on your proposed curriculum, contact Stephanie Friedman at sfriedmn@uchicago.edu