Blanket Substitutions

What They Are

Blanket substitutions are courses that will satisfy a requirement, for all students, despite it not being explicitly stated in the General Catalog for a particular year.

Why We Use Them

The General Catalog is the official record of what can be used to fulfill degree requirements. For that reason, the Degree Progress Report (DPR) is "coded to the catalog," meaning that whatever the catalog states is what gets coded into the DPR. Because the General Catalog is a snapshot in time of all courses offered and the requirements of our programs, new courses created after the catalog's publication, or courses approved to fulfill requirements after publication, will not be listed. Blanket substitutions allow for courses which are created and added to newer catalogs to retroactively fulfill the same degree requirements in previous catalogs in the Degree Progress Report (DPR).

Examples

• An interdisciplinary program approves a new outside course to fulfill a breadth requirement and wants all students to be able to use it.
• A program creates a new series of courses to replace an older version which is being phased out.
• A program creates a new course designed to be an additional option for a particular requirement.

Benefits

Blanket substitutions are optional, but can drastically decrease the number of individual exceptions that need to be entered by staff and allow the DPR to automatically fulfill requirements, leading to less work for staff and a more accurate DPR for students.

Requirements

The following criteria must be met in order for a course to be added as a blanket substitution:

• Courses must be a new alternative to existing options (i.e. or, not and)
• The blanket substitution does not modify the structure of the requirement (i.e. does not change the number of required courses)
• The requirement the blanket substitution is applying to is effectively the same over the applicable years
• The program has confirmed stakeholder approval when required
• The program assure's the course's inclusion to the requirement in the next catalog publication

Blanket substitution requests are reviewed by the Academic Advisement Team. The vast majority of blanket substitution requests are approved. A request which is overly complex or would require significant rebuilding of the DPR logic may be denied.

Requesting a Blanket Substitution

Staff may request a blanket substitution by using this form. This form uses Asana and requires log in to authenticate the submitter's identity. If you are an active Asana user you likely will not need to log in. If you do not use Asana, click "Sign in with Google" to use your G Suite credentials to log in.