University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Policy Name: Online Individual Degree Adjustment (IDA): Function, Authority for Adjustments, and Notification System
Policy Number:
Effective Date: January 2011
Policy:
The new importance of the degree audit (CAPP):
Use of the degree audit (CAPP) will no longer be optional and will assume a central role in the advising process for the following reasons:
- The Office of Transfer Support Services articulates all transfer core (general education) work. The results of its articulation—the account of which UALR requirements are satisfied and which remain to be completed—will be available only on the degree audit report.
- The Office of Records must have a record of any adjustments to a student’s degree plan (substitutions, waivers, re-articulation of transfer courses, etc.) in order to clear the student for graduation during the checkout process. The new online process for requesting adjustments to the degree audit will also function as the only means to notify Records of adjustments to a student’s degree plan. An accurate degree audit will be necessary at graduation check out.
Authority for various kinds of adjustments:
The Office of Records will accept adjustments to core requirements only from the Office of Transfer Support Services (OTSS). This includes re-articulation of a transfer course to a UALR equivalent for purposes of meeting a core requirement. Also, while departments may request adjustments to core requirements for transfer students under the special authority granted them by the Senate in Spring 2011, departments must make those requests through OTSS. See Departmental Authority to Modify Requirements for Transfer Students (Trans-Flex) for details.
- Adjustments to major requirements must be made by the major department.
- Adjustments to the minor department must be made by the minor department.
- Majors and minors that require courses offered outside the major or minor department can waive those requirements or substitute other courses for them. It is not the business of the department offering the courses to do this. However, only the department offering the course can request that a transfer course be articulated to a UALR equivalent. For example, Middle Childhood Education requires HIST 4355, Arkansas History. Middle Childhood Education can waive the requirement or substitute any course it chooses (either at UALR or a transfer course) to meet the requirement. However, Middle Childhood Education cannot request that a transfer course be articulated to HIST 4355; only the History department can do that.
- Adjustments to university graduation requirements must be approved by the Provost’s Office. Examples of such adjustments include waiver of the second language requirement and deviation from 124 minimum total hours, 45 upper-level hours, cumulative overall GPA, and cumulative GPA in major and minor.
- Advisors with students who qualify to have two non-core science courses approved to substitute for a core science course, on a two for one basis, should email Laura Beck in the College of Science and Mathematics, who will see that the adjustment is processed.
- Lower-level courses can be substituted to meet content requirements normally met by upper-level courses. Lower-level courses used in this way will not count toward upper-level hours. Lower-level transfer courses can never be articulated to UALR upper-level courses as if they were equivalent in both content and level.
Under special authority granted to departments by the Senate in Spring 2011, departments may adjust some university graduation requirements for transfer students. These adjustments must be requested by departments using the IDA, but special instructions and separate reporting requirements apply. See Departmental Authority to Modify Requirements for Transfer Students (Trans-Flex) for details.
Major department notification to minor department that minor requirements need adjustment:
Since the major department manages the degree audit and degree plan, but only the minor department has the authority to make adjustments to minor requirements, the major department should notify the minor department when it appears that an adjustment is necessary or possible. For example, the major department may notice a transfer course that the minor department might either approve as a UALR equivalent or accept as meeting a requirement of the minor even if UALR has no equivalent. The major department should email the minor department and request the review. Only the minor department has the authority to submit the adjustment request if it approves of the articulation or substitution. Go to the list of minors and contact information found on Advising Central.
Notification System:
- Department chairs will designate persons within their units who are to receive email notifications that adjustments have been requested.
- When a person in the major department requests an adjustment to the major, the requestor and all other persons in the major department designated by the chair will receive an email notification.
- When a person in the minor department requests an adjustment to the minor, only that person in the minor department (the requestor) will receive an email. All persons in the major department designated by the chair will receive an email notification that a request to adjust the minor has been made.
- The notification system is keyed to department codes, not program codes. Thus, if a person in the major department is to receive email notifications, he or she will receive notifications of adjustments to all programs offered by that department (if there is more than one), not just the one for which he or she might be personally responsible. However, the mail notification includes the program in the subject line, which should making sorting by individuals within a department easily manageable.