The General Announcements represents Rice's official curriculum. Each spring semester, before the GA is published, 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.
In 2017, Rice implemented CourseLeaf CAT, a comprehensive Catalog Management System designed to assist schools in maintaining their university curricular requirements and policies in an interactive format. Rice will continue to use CAT for the 2018-2019 GA onward.
The Office of the Registrar (OTR) will facilitate the edit process to the curricular program listings for the 2018-2019 GA. This process includes edits and updates made in the “Programs of Study” section of the online GA. The VPAA's Office has distributed the 2018-2019 Programs of Study Edit Process memo regarding an overview of the process, key dates for each round of edits, and additional helpful information regarding this year's GA publishing procedures. This informational memo is available here, as well as on the VPAA Office's website under the Guidebook section.
Each department will be emailed a link to their unique GA text at the beginning of each round. Should departments need to find these URLs to check the progress of their GA edits at any time, they can find them listed by department here. (Login using your NetID is required.)
On your behalf, the OTR will make all updates to each department or program's GA text in the system. We ask that, during each round of edits, each department or program thoroughly read, review, and comment where appropriate on the following areas in their unique Programs of Study pages:
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.
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 will be required to review and "sign off" on their GA text for the 2018-2019 publication. During each round, each department/program is asked to review their proposed 2018-19 GA text and indicate on the sign-off memo that they have either:
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, we will update the GA Edit Status Dashboard below tracking the Programs of Study edit process throughout all three rounds until the 2018-2019 GA is published in August 2018.
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.”
