The Degree Progress Unit (founded in May of 2024) supports students in the successful completion of their baccalaureate journeys in three ways. The degree audit system ensures students and their advisors have, even before enrolling in their first UC Santa Cruz course, a full knowledge of the academic requirements they have completed and what they will still need to do. Articulation ensures that students at community colleges know what California Community College courses correspond to UCSC courses so that they can be prepared for successful transfer and graduation. Formal posting of transfer and exam credit is essential for incoming and continuing students as they make the most of educational opportunities throughout the state and world, in coordination with their UC Santa Cruz coursework.
Degree Audit
We are thrilled to announce that Degree Progress Reports (DPR) for every undergraduate major, concentration, and minor have been programmed for the 2024-25 catalog. This, in addition to the work done previously in the Degree Audit Project, means DPRs are updated and accurate for 100% of programs from the 2021-22 catalog onward. As of this fall, 97% of students are using those catalog years for their programs and have a fully updated DPR. This past spring we partnered with the Office of the Registrar and four departments to graduate students using reporting of DPR completion. The pilot successfully graduated 380 students, verifying our abilities to accurately report on DPR completion and develop new ways to more efficiently move students through the graduation process. In the year ahead we are building out new training resources and opportunities, optimizing DPRs for performance, usability, and ease of reporting, and piloting honors GPA calculation.
Articulation
Since May we have launched several large scale projects across all 5 disciplinary divisions to articulate over a dozen UCSC major preparation and qualification courses. These articulations reduce enrollment barriers, expand or create pathways to complete major prep curricula, and will help students make progress toward their timely degree completion. In addition to creating new articulations, much of the work has been centered on redoing our resources and processes to make articulation more transparent. This year we are launching a new process which will allow us to easily track articulation requests from community colleges, the status of these requests, and create more accurate reporting and recordkeeping. In the year ahead we are launching an articulation toolkit with web-based resources, FAQs, relevant policies, and best practices around articulation.
Transfer Credit
Upon taking on credit evaluation for continuing and readmitted students, we enhanced our reporting to allow us to more easily work through queues of transcripts. This has allowed us to evaluate continuing student credit in three to five days from receipt of the transcript. Students are getting their credit quicker, reducing the need for staff and faculty interventions in enrollment, such as permission codes, and providing a more accurate DPR. Our team conducted a full audit and redesign of the AP/IB/A-Level chart and the exam credit rules to ensure accurate equivalencies are awarded. We are also doing initial testing and prototyping for a complete rebuild of our transfer credit rules. These rules will provide simpler, more effective awarding of credit, and, working with the articulation officer, establish processes to ensure transfer credit rules are always up to date.
In the DPU we are excited to see what we can accomplish over the next year. If you ever need to reach us, have a question, or want to provide feedback, email us at degreeprogress@ucsc.edu.
