Developing and Maintaining Functional 4-Year Degree Plans - Navigate U - Office of Undergraduate Studies

Overview & Rationale

The overarching goal of all curricula at the U is to support student success:

Are students learning what they need to be successful in their discipline and as contributing citizens?
Can we document that learning is happening?
Is a particular curriculum designed and delivered in a way that it can be achieved in 120 credits, within 4 years, and documented in a plan that academic advisors can use to support students’ timely completion?

Knowing the steps in the curriculum approval process at the U and the people and resources available to support navigation of this process, we can shift focus to truly Functional Four-Year Degree Plans.

This project outlines the process for developing and maintaining functional 4-year degree plans with a 120-credit hour cap at the University of Utah. These plans are crucial for facilitating the U’s smooth transition into a new degree audit system (Stellic), guiding students along their academic journey, and ultimately ensuring timely completion for more undergraduate students.

Action Steps

Revisit your program-level learning outcomes in the current catalog (6 months before implementation). These learning outcomes should drive the curriculum for your major. If they are outdated, work with the Office of Learning Analytics and Outcome Assessment to revise (which will constitute a substantive change per NWCCU). All requirements for your major should be contributing to the achievement of these program-level learning outcomes.
Gather program information (6 months before implementation) to conduct a thorough review of each major’s current curriculum and compile a list of all degree requirements, including courses required for the major, courses for any required emphases, general education and baccalaureate degree requirements, required allied hours, free electives, and prerequisites. Consult with the Offices of the Registrar (including Curriculum Management and Academic Planning) and General Education regarding effective and appropriate utilization or requirements. Utilize these key considerations.
Develop draft plans (5 months before implementation) by creating a semester-by-semester plan— focused on maintaining 15-credit hours per semester¹, taking core English/Writing and Math during the first year and consider 9 credits in the student’s academic focus area²—outlining the recommended course sequence for completing the degree in 4 years. Identify key academic and extracurricular milestones. Collaborate with academic advisors to ensure the plan is realistic and considers or mitigates common student challenges.³ Degrees must stay within the 120-credit hour cap, with extremely rare exceptions.
Conduct a stakeholder review (4 months before implementation) to present the draft degree plans for feedback to department heads and faculty ensuring a crosswalk for any prerequisites in another department/school/college and include input from current students.
Finalize degree plans (3 months before implementation) based on feedback from stakeholders. Utilize this degree plan template.
Secure approval from departmental and college/school leadership and publish the finalized degree plans via direct links to the current catalog.
Verify and maintain plans annually (no later than January 20 each year) by:
1. Collecting data on student progress, completion rates, plan usability and relevance, bottleneck patterns, and “toxic” and “power” course combinations.⁴
2. Reviewing any changes to the curriculum, course offerings, or degree requirements and validating that plans still align with current degree requirements and provide a realistic path to completion in 4 years.
3. Conducting review sessions with department heads, faculty, and advising staff to confirm the plans are up to date and fully functional and how these should align with faculty teaching schedules (short-term: workload distribution and long-term: planning at 2- or 4-year increments).
4. Updating degree plans as changes to the curriculum or degree requirements are approved. Clearly communicate any changes to students and advisors through multiple channels, including the university websites, working groups, email notifications, and Campuswide Advisor Development sessions.
5. Ensuring viable teach-out plans are in place to accommodate those changes by working with the Office of the Registrar.
6. Requiring academic advisors to engage in regular training sessions on interpretation, use, and improvement of the degree plans.
Incorporate the degree plans into advising appointments and new student orientation to keep students on track to timely completion. Eventually, these plans will be fully developed in Stellic.

By following this guide, the University of Utah can develop and maintain functional 4-year degree plans that support increased timely completion. Regular review and updates, along with continuous feedback and stakeholder engagement, will propel the Associate Deans as student success leaders who guarantee that the degree plans remain relevant and effective guides for students through their academic journey and ensure every student can have an exceptional educational experience. #NavigateU

Key Considerations

Prerequisites and Corequisites

A prerequisite should only be used when the material in a particular course must be mastered to be successful in a subsequent course. There are other mechanisms to meter/restrict access if that is the goal.
Prerequisites (with seats available) should be placed prior to their requiring course in the degree plan and should be included in the 120-credit hour cap.
Degree plans should start at the expected level of proficiency required for the major. If a student needs to remediate or take prerequisite courses to reach that level, those credits do not need to be included in the 120-credit hour cap, but students should be informed that not starting at the expected level of proficiency may add additional time/cost to completion (and require more than 120 hours).
Prerequisites should be offered annually at a minimum, but, ideally, every semester.
Paired lab or other component sections are not considered corequisites.
Corequisites should only be used when linked courses must be taken during the same semester – and should be used sparingly, if at all, as they can create barriers for students. If a student withdraws from/drops one of the courses, they must obtain permission to remain enrolled in the corequisite for that same term. (If a corequisite is failed, the student can retake it the next semester it’s offered without taking the paired corequisite again.)
“Recommended” is not an official notation and should not be listed in the degree plan as it will not be programmed into the degree audit. If faculty have preferences for courses but do not want to explicitly require them, this preference should be conveyed to advisors and students. There are other mechanisms to build cohorts/pathways if that is the goal.

General Education (GE) and Baccalaureate Degree (BD) Requirements

Annually (after the catalog is published), ensure that GE/BD designated courses are explicitly and accurately indicated on the degree plan and remove redundancies – inaccuracy is a frequent reason for GE/BD exceptions or taking unnecessary coursework.
Appropriate Writing and math courses should be included in the first year of all degree plans.
It may be fully appropriate for specific GE courses to be built into a degree plan (e.g., courses that might satisfy a prerequisite for a course in the major, material in the course is valuable to a particular but different discipline, etc.) to facilitate timely completion and support prediction of seat demand.
It also may be fully appropriate pedagogically to “spread out” GE over the course of a degree plan to offset other workload in particular semesters. That said, reserving 12-15 credits of GE for the last year and, especially, the final semester should be avoided.
Until Fall 2028, there are students who remain on the “old GE/BD” requirement structure. This will be critical for advisors and curriculum planners to note as these students will still need two of each breadth area course, BS students will still need two QI courses, etc.
The Upper-Division Writing (CW) and Methods (for BS students; either Quantitative Intensive (QI) or Disciplinary Inquiry (DI)) BD requirements are intended to be completed within the major. These two requirements could be satisfied by a single well-designed course, saving time/cost to completion. They can also be intentionally outsourced to another unit (in coordination with that unit).
BA-seeking students are not required to satisfy the Methods BD requirement, but you may still want them to take a QI- or DI-designated course as part of the learning in the major. That is acceptable and the course should be included in the 120-credit hour cap.
There must be space in the 120-credit hour cap to satisfy all GE and BD requirements. Consider courses that carry multiple designations as well as the level of prescriptiveness you include in your plan: the GE/BD space can be a place for efficiency when it makes pedagogical sense.

Specified Allied Courses

Courses specified in the degree plan should contribute to the program-level learning outcomes in a meaningful/measurable way to satisfy USHE/NWCCU assessment expectations – otherwise they are, functionally, free electives.
If allied courses are offered by another department/college/school, the requiring unit should coordinate with the offering unit to ensure that seats are available and that scheduling conflicts are minimized.
Specified allied courses and emphases are highly functional mechanisms to showcase faculty

Transfer Considerations

USHE code R471 specifies common course numbering for lower-division courses to facilitate transfer.
Discussions related to the requirements of USHE code R471 and other policies occur at the USHE Majors Meetings (typically held annually in the Fall), making faculty participation crucial.
Some majors have formal 2+2 Transfer Pathways in place with SLCC and the degree plan should accommodate/reflect these agreements.
Any changes to curriculum should be contemplated in terms of impact on pre-existing articulation agreements (including whether courses come in as satisfying major requirements vs. electives, creation of bottlenecks, etc.), Transfer Pathways, or off-cycle entry.
Any changes to curriculum should be communicated early enough for partner institutions (particularly SLCC) to adjust their advising materials.
Transfer students, especially those with a formal Transfer Pathway in place with SLCC, should be able to complete their degrees within 120 credit hours.
Lower-division courses should be articulated to lower-division courses only. If this is not current practice, consider curricular recalibration.

Scheduling

Courses should be offered in the terms identified in the degree plan (e.g., even year in fall, even year in spring, every semester).
Courses required by the degree plan within the same department should be offered at times that do not conflict with each other. All efforts should be made to avoid conflicts with other units offering courses required by the degree plan, as well.
There should be sufficient seats available in courses required by the degree plan (see minimum thresholds and course fill rates).
Courses required by the degree plan should be offered with sufficient frequency/capacity that a student can get back on track if they fail/withdraw from a course or take a leave of absence.
Upper-division courses should only be included in the third and fourth years of the degree plan. In addition, 40 upper-division credits are required to graduate and, ideally, are not fully relegated to free electives (which may carry prerequisites, resulting in increased time/cost to completion).
All semesters should contain at least 12 credit hours to maximize financial aid eligibility.
Academic units should be working toward a 2- or 4-year scheduling cycle to support student success through meaningful planning, manage faculty workload, and support course and seat demand modeling.