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  4. General Announcements Programs of Study Edit Process

 

General Announcements Programs of Study Edit Process

The General Announcements represents Rice's official curriculum. Each spring and summer, before the GA is published for the next academic year, academic departments and programs are asked to review their curricular listings in the GA to ensure that their information and requirements are current and up-to-date. 

Beginning with the 2017-2018 academic year, Rice has been using CourseLeaf CAT, a comprehensive Catalog Management System designed to assist schools in maintaining their university curricular requirements and policies in an interactive format.

The Office of the Registrar (OTR) facilitates the edit process to the curricular program listings for the GA. This process includes edits and updates made in the “Programs of Study” section of the online GA. For the 2018-2019 academic year, the VPAA's Office distributed the 2018-2019 Programs of Study Edit Process memo, which included an overview of the process, key dates for each round of edits, and additional helpful information regarding the GA publishing procedures. This informational memo is available here, as well as on the VPAA Office's website under the Guidebook section. 

Links to the 2018-2019 GA Staging Area Text

The GA Staging Area is now closed.  The 2018-2019 GA is live and published at https://ga.rice.edu/.

GA Edit Process

As part of the GA Edit Process, academic departments and programs review and send their GA updates and edits to the OTR. The OTR will then make all updates to each department or program's GA text in the system. During the three rounds of edits, each department and program is asked to thoroughly read, review, and comment where appropriate on the following areas in their unique Programs of Study pages:

Department or Program Information

  • Overview: General information about the department or program
  • Undergraduate: Complete listing of undergraduate academic programs offered by the department or program
  • Graduate: Complete listing of graduate academic programs offered by the department or program
  • Faculty: Listing of current departmental or program faculty and titles (updates made to faculty listings are sent to VPAA for their review and input into the system)
  • Courses: Complete listing of active courses in the Rice Course Catalog
  • Codes: Internal abbreviation and descriptions used by OTR and other offices to identify programs

Individual Program Information

From the Undergraduate or Graduate tabs, the list of programs offered by the department or program will appear. Clicking on an individual program will list the requirements for that academic program.

  • Outcomes: Program learning outcomes for the academic program (updates made to PLOs (Program Learning Outcomes are sent to OIE for their review)
  • Requirements: Complete listing of all requirements to successfully complete the academic program
  • Policies: Information pertaining to policies (e.g., admission, transfer requirements)
  • Opportunities: Opportunities that students in the academic program can pursue (e.g., joint UG/GR programs, special research opportunities)

GA Review, Curriculum, and Degree Works

IMPORTANT: The review and approval of department and program curricular requirements additionally serves as “sign-off” on corresponding Degree Works scribe for all academic programs that use Degree Works (which includes all undergraduate programs of study, all graduate certificates, and select master’s degree programs).  Because the curricular requirements documented in the GA are official Rice curriculum, Degree Works must match that academic year-specific curriculum as documented in the GA.

To ensure that all information is correct, during each round of reviews (three total), departments/programs are required to review and "sign off" on their GA text for the next academic year. During each round, each department/program is asked to review their proposed GA text and indicate on the sign-off memo that they have either:

  • "Reviewed and approved with no changes" or 
  • "Reviewed and approved with changes attached"

Official signoff requires the approval signature of the academic department chair or the approved program director.

After the OTR has received the sign-off memo, the OTR will update the GA Edit Status Dashboard below tracking the Programs of Study edit process throughout all three rounds until the next year’s academic year GA is published that next August. 

Frequently Asked Questions

There is a course in a requirements grid that doesn't have a URL to click for the description, and the title is not listed. Why?

This indicates that the course is currently not active for the academic year which you are reviewing the GA for. It should either be removed from the list of courses that fulfill that requirement or should be requested to be re-activated through the New Course Request Process.

I would like to edit the title for a course listed in my requirements. How do I do this?

The information for the courses listed in the requirements are being pulled in through the 2018-2019 Course Catalog. Should you want to change this information, please follow the Course Revision process guidelines. If you want to add additional details regarding a course, we can do so by indicating a “footnote and additional information.”

 

 

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