Course Proposal: Approval Workflow
Steps in the Approval Workflow
Steps in the Approval Workflow
All approvals must be completed before a proposal may advance to the next step of workflow.
- Subject approver
- On course change proposals, a "for your information" email is sent to any program listing this course in the curriculum (Department Approver is notified) once the subject approves the course. This is not an approval step.
- Any subject listed in the "What subjects (if any) might be interested in this course?" will receive an email notifying them that a course proposal is advancing in workflow that may be of interest to them once the course is submitted to workflow. This is not an approval step. If there are concerns/support, comments may be added to the proposal once it is in workflow. Any issues must be resolved prior to advancing to the next step of workflow.
- Cross-list Subject approver (if applicable)
- School/College approver
- Cross-listed School/College approver (if applicable)
- L&S Curriculum Committee (if applicable)
- General Education Committee (if applicable)
- University Curriculum Committee
- Registrar (Student Information System)
Details about each step
Subject approver
- The proposal system identifies the subject approver as the subject identified in the "Subject" field. If the course is cross-listed, this subject must sign off before any other subjects are notified of the proposal.
- This role includes the chair of the department that owns the subject listing and anyone designated by the chair to approve proposals. Additional information about the responsibilities of subject (department) approvers.
Cross-list Subject approver (if applicable)
- If the course is cross-listed, all subjects listed in the "Select subjects that will be crosslisted" field will be notified of required action after the subject approver approves the proposal.
- The proposal will remain in the "CrosslistedSubjs" workflow step until all subjects have approved the proposal.
- If a subject does not want to approve a proposal, an administrator will need to roll back the proposal to a previous step of workflow. Contact your school/college contact for assistance.
- To approve courses in this step of workflow, navigate to the Lumen Courses landing page and search for the course. An approve button will appear on the right hand side of the page above the workflow list.
School/College approver
- The proposal system identifies the school or college approver based on the departmental owner of the subject. The department owning a subject may only reside in a single school or college, thus that school or college must sign off on any proposal from that subject.
- This role includes the dean/director of the school, college, institute, or division and anyone designated by the dean or director to approve proposals. If the school/college/division is on the proposal as a cross-list partner the role will be listed under the heading CrosslistedCols. Additional information about the responsibilities of school/college/division approvers.
Cross-listed School/College approver (if applicable)
The related information for the CrosslistedCols step of workflow is the same as the CrosslistedSubjs step.
L&S Curriculum Committee (if applicable)
If a course uses attributes or designations from the College of Letters & Science, it must be reviewed and approved by the appropriate committee. This includes:
- L&S Breadth
- LAS Credit
- Level
- Foreign Language
Note: if L&S is the School/College approver, it will only show up in workflow once (it will not show up once for the school/college approver and again for the attributes/designations approver).
General Education Committee (if applicable)
If a course uses general education attributes, it must be reviewed by the appropriate General Education Committee. If a course uses more than one of these attributes/designations, it must be approved by each before advancing to the additional committee(s).
This includes:
- Communication A
- Communication B
- Ethnic Studies
- Quantitative Reasoning Part A
- Quantitative Reasoning Part B
University Curriculum Committee (UCC)
All courses must be reviewed and approved by the University Curriculum Committee. Courses are reviewed by Data, Academic Planning and Institutional Research prior to the committee review to ensure that proposals meet the minimum standards set by the committee before slating them for an agenda (UCC Approver step). Once a course is at the UCC Agenda step, they are slated for an upcoming agenda.
Registrar (Student Information System)
The Office of the Registrar will build requisites, then sync the proposal with the Student Information System once approved by the UCC.
- Registrar-Course data entry is for proposals that have been approved at UCC and are waiting to be implemented in SIS. This step was added to ensure that requisite changes are correctly implemented (previously the software would sometimes erroneously complete proposals prior to the date entry being completed, because we do not bridge requisites)
- PeopleSoft is for the data entry in the course catalog, this is final "sync" step which will complete the proposal.
Additional Notes About Workflow
- If an individual is listed as an approver for more than one subject and more than one of these subjects is cross-listed on the proposal, when they approve the proposal is approved for all subjects they are associated with.
- A proposer has six (6) months to complete the proposal form and submit it to workflow. A proposal must be fully approved within one year (12 months) of being submitted to workflow. See the Policy for Lumen/Guide: Lumen Content for more information.
- Proposals that are reviewed and not approved at any step may be rolled back to a previous step for revision.
- For any course proposal that has been submitted to workflow by the proposer, the progress of the proposal through workflow steps can be tracked using the workflow list on the right side of the proposal.
- Clicking on the workflow step opens an email message populated with the email addresses of those who are in the approver role. This allows you to contact an approver but do not know exactly who to contact.
Types of Workflow Roles
Those authorized by the department chair or program director may be added to an approver role using this form.
Roles Associated with Conditional Steps
L&S College Approver = the dean of the College of L&S and anyone designated by the dean to approve proposals. This single role is used both for courses where the department is part of L&S and where the proposal requests LAS, Breadth or Level course attributes.
COM A Approver = If "Communications Part A" is the response selected in the General Education field, the person(s) in this role review the proposal to determine whether it meets the criteria of this attribute.
COM B Approver = If "Communications Part B" or "Section Level Communications Part B" is the response selected in the General Education field, the person(s) in this role review the proposal to determine whether it meets the criteria of this attribute.
QR-A Approver = If "Quantitative Reasoning Part A" is the response selected in the General Education field, the person(s) in this role review the proposal to determine whether it meets the criteria of this attribute.
QR-B Approver = If "Quantitative Reasoning Part B" is the response selected in the General Education field, the person(s) in this role review the proposal to determine whether it meets the criteria of this attribute.
Ethnic Studies Approver = If the question "Should this course be considered for the Ethnic Studies ... " is answered affirmatively the person(s) in this role review the proposal to determine whether it meets the criteria of this attribute.
The CrosslistSubjs and CrosslistCols steps are used when the course is cross-listed. Approvals do not work the same as Subject Approver and the School/College Approver steps.
- The subjects (or school/colleges) will get the email notification telling them there is a proposal to be reviewed and approved. The email will have a link to the proposal itself and the proposal will not appear on the console page that lists all proposals for that subject listing. These proposals can only be approved through the proposal page, not the subject (or college) approver queue or the CrosslistedSubjs or Crosslisted Cols queue.
- Subjects and school/colleges listed in these roles may enter comments but may not rollback a proposal.
- All cross-listed subjects (or school/colleges) will be listed under this step and must approve before the proposal will move to the next step in workflow.
- The individual subject (or school/college) roles listed under the step will appear in gray text until approval has been entered and then the text will turn green. The approval path will not record which user in the role approved the proposal.
- After the last subject (or school/college) has entered approval, a system process advances the proposal to the next step. If there is no specific subject and school/college/division listed (i.e. there are no cross-list partners) then these steps (while they appear in the workflow list) are automatically skipped.
The Lumen Course Proposal System is now able to access data from the Lumen Program Proposal System. If a course proposal is submitted for a course that is specifically included in the curricular requirements of a program in Lumen Programs, those listed in the Dept. Approver role for that program will receive an FYI email letting them know that there is a course change proposal in progress for the course. This is only an FYI. If the department reviews the course change proposal and has any questions or concerns they must contact the proposer of the course change. If it is determined that the change to the course necessitates a change to the program requirements, they must initiate a program change proposal.
Those listed in an approver or notify role will receive an email notification when the proposal reaches the relevant step in the approval process. This is the ONLY email that is sent until the proposal is fully approved and entered in the SIS course catalog. At that time an email notification is sent indicating the the proposal is complete and entered in SIS. This system does NOT send email notifications when a comment has been added. If a proposal needs to be edited the rollback function must be used. Rolling back a proposal includes a comment describing the needed edit and the proposal is sent back to the step indicated in the rollback action, is edited and resent (generating a new email notification requesting approval) to the next step in workflow.
Users can click the link in the email notification to access the approval console page for that role (if they are in an approver role and not a cross-list partner). Note: The approval console page loads rather slowly, please be patient! You must select the relevant approver role from the Your Role: drop down box at the top middle right of the page.
Who to Contact with Questions
Following is a list of the faculty and/or staff in the schools and colleges who are responsible for academic planning activities.
| School/College | Contacts | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data, Academic Planning & Institutional Research (DAPIR) | Michelle Young Associate Director, DAPIR meyoung@wisc.edu Lumen Systems, academic structure |
Melissa Schultz Academic Planner melissa.r.schultz@wisc.edu Lumen Courses, course proposals, University Curriculum Committee, curricular changes and Guide interaction |
Karen Mittelstadt Academic Planner mittelstadt@wisc.edu Program review, Accreditation, Lumen Programs, University Academic Planning Council, NC-SARA |
|
| Agricultural and Life Sciences, College of |
Megan Ackerman-Yost |
Diana Anderson Academic Planner diana.frantzanderson@wisc.edu Course proposals, program proposals |
||
| Business, School of | Joann Peck Associate Dean joann.peck@wisc.edu |
Zach Hershoff |
Brigid Patterson Academic Planner brigid.patterson@wisc.edu |
|
| Continuing Studies, Division of | Alissa Oleck Assistant Dean of Professional Degrees & Certificates alissa.oleck@wisc.edu |
|||
| Education, School of | Adam Nelson Senior Associate Dean adam.nelson@wisc.edu |
Sara Alva Lizarraga Policy and Planning Analyst sara.alvalizarraga@wisc.edu Academic program development and changes |
Cindy Waldeck Academic Planner waldeck2@wisc.edu Course proposals, program proposals, assessment, program review |
|
| Engineering, College of | Sara Hagen Academic Planner and Data Analyst planner@engr.wisc.edu |
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| Graduate School | Jenna Alsteen Assistant Dean for Academic Analysis, Planning, and Assessment jenna.alsteen@wisc.edu Program review, Lumen Programs, , Graduate Faculty Executive Committee |
Lorena Kemen Institutional Academic Planner I Guide, program proposals |
||
| Human Ecology, School of | Annette McDaniel Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education and Innovation amcdaniel@wisc.edu |
Jonathan Henkel Director of Academic Planning and Assessment jhenkel2@wisc.edu |
Holly Anderson Assistant Director of Academic Planning hnanderson2@wisc.edu |
|
| Law School | TBD | |||
| Letters & Science, College of | Elaine Klein Associate Dean for Academic Planning elaine.klein@wisc.edu Program review, cross-college initiatives, centers and institutes, academic program development |
Kim Grocholski Academic Planner kim.grocholski@wisc.edu Program proposals |
Sara Stephenson |
|
| Medicine and Public Health, School of |
Maddie Sychta |
Amy Neeno-Eckwall |
||
| Nelson Institute |
Steph Tai |
Tara Mohan |
||
| Nursing, School of | Katie Bleier Assistant Dean katie.bleier@wisc.edu |
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| Pharmacy, School of | Beth Janetski Assistant Dean for Assessment and Academic Planning janetski@wisc.edu |
Emily Tarter Academic Advisor and Curricular Services Manager emily.tarter@wisc.edu Course proposals |
||
| Veterinary Medicine, School of | Peggy Schmidt Associate Dean for Professional Programs peggy.schmidt@wisc.edu Program review |
Kathleen Cummings Administrative and Curricular Specialist kmcummin@wisc.edu |
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If you have an update to this table, please contact Karen Mittelstadt (Academic Planner, DAPIR) at mittelstadt@wisc.edu.
Updated 06.22.23
Technical problems with the course proposal system can be sent to lumen@provost.wisc.edu