New General Education Structure Is Launched

UITS partnered with the Office of General Education, the University-wide General Education Committee and colleges across campus to implement the University’s redefined General Education program within UAccess Student.

Early in the process, the UAccess Student team helped to inform policy making decisions and change management processes by providing historical data from a broad array of student populations. The data was used to discuss and determine many considerations, including how advisory reports would reflect students’ status and progress between the old and new General Education structures.

The UAccess Student team spent several months making system updates which included programming and testing an entirely new set of General Education courses in UAccess Student. Specific updates were made in several areas including advisement reports for degree requirements, transfer and test credits to reflect automatic transfer rules, the pre-scheduler used to enroll incoming first-year students and class scheduling and class search functions to identify and inform enrollment processing. The team also managed the complexity of launching the new General Education course structure while maintaining the previous course structure for existing students.

The new General Education Program was implemented through a phased implementation plan, beginning with the soft launch within UAccess Student in Spring 2022 with 48 courses. General Education structure grew significantly in Fall 2022.

Learn more about the General Education Programs at ge.arizona.edu

Spanish Translations Featured With Guest Center Upgrade

Students can share access to their Student Center information with their families by creating a Guest Center account. With 26% of the University’s student population identifying as Hispanic, Parents & Family Programs and Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) Initiatives invited the CIO Division to collaborate on making the University more welcoming to Spanish-speaking students and their families.

Adding a Spanish language option to Guest Center became a top priority and was completed in October 2021 to support Hispanic students’ families. Funding was provided by the US Department of Education’s HSI Relief Fund and the University’s National Center for Interpretation provided the translations. The addition of the Spanish language in Guest Center reflects the University’s commitment to this significant portion of the student population.

The UAccess Student team made additional enhancements to Guest Center last year, making it mobile-friendly with updated University branding, and requiring only a single login for visitors who have multiple students at the University.