Change Forms and Submission Portals

How to fill out each of the fields

• Faculty (&  Department or Academic Unit) - Unit can include department or academic unit

• Contact Person(s) - Name and/or email address.  This will be used if there is an issue with the submission. May be different from the person who physically submits the request. More than one person can be listed here.

• Level of Change - Changes will first go to the undergraduate or graduate Program Support Teams. Only one level of change may be included per form.

• Type of Change Request - Check all boxes that apply.  As forms will not be split, any form containing multiple types of change request will follow the path requiring the highest level of approval that is applicable to the form.

  • Program - Changes to program requirements

  • Regulation - Changes to admission, academic standing, program regulations, faculty regulations, course load

• For which term is this intended to take effect? Suggested format: Term, Year

  • The term indicated here, the date of approval, and the Calendar production schedule will determine:

    • Which Calendar this will be printed in

    • Whether this is on time, early implementation, errata or addenda

    • Note: The above points are determined by the Calendar production team and/or Exams and Timetabling

• Does this proposal have corresponding course changes? (Should be submitted at the same time). Course changes need to be submitted on a course change form. If the program or regulation change has corresponding course changes, all related forms should be submitted at the same time so that they can be reviewed together, even though they may appear in different sections of a governance committee agenda.

• Rationale - All changes should include some rationale, but this is meant to be a high-level summary.  The greyed-out suggested text can be deleted before entering your rationale.

  • Things to consider (maximum 500 words). The maximum of 500 words is a recommendation.  However, if you plan to exceed this, you might want to consider a cover page or explanatory memo instead. Though there is no minimum, the rationale should be sufficient to explain to reviewers the reason behind the change, especially if your proposal is going to approval without a presentation.

    • What brought about this idea for change

    • How will it benefit students

    • How will it benefit Department/Unit

    • How is this change comparable to similar programs (internal or external)

    • Include historical context

    • Please describe how the changes/ proposal intends to facilitate program administration/ program structure

• Calendar Copy (on the Program and Regulation Change version)

  • URL in current Calendar - Please ensure you are using the URL from the currently published Calendar

  • 2-column Current & Proposed - See Comparative Table.

    • This should be the most recently approved information.  If this is the first change since the Calendar was published, use the copy from the published Calendar.  If a change to this section has already been approved since the Calendar was published, use the newly approved copy (or the copy from the draft Calendar if it has been updated).

• Course Template (on the Course Change version)

  • Each of these fields comes from the course template in Bear Tracks and the Calendar.  Please include information from all fields and use the change highlighting conventions found in Comparative Table.

• Reviewed/Approved by - This section must include the date it received final approval for your Faculty Council. If this approval was delegated to a sub-committee or other individual, please note this as well. Including other internal faculty approvals is optional.

  • For combined programs or any other page under the authority of two faculties, this field should list the approval dates from both faculty councils.

Other notes, tips & tricks

• If your internal approval process requires additional rationale, notes, fields or other information, please includes those on a cover page to this change form. If your cover page includes information that would valuable to the review process, please submit those documents together.

• Multiple changes of the same type (course changes, program changes, regulation changes) with the same rationale can be included on a single form by copying/pasting the Calendar Copy (and Rationale) section multiple times

How to complete each of the fields:

• Faculty/Unit - drop down menu to select your faculty or academic unit.  If your unit isn't listed, selection 'other' and then identify your unit in the "Short Description" question

• Career - select one of UGRD or GRAD, as each type of change will go to a different support team for review.

• Types of change being submitted - select all types of changes that are part of this submission.

  • If any single document contains multiple types of change, it will move together as a package, along the route of highest level of approval needed.  

  • Multiple documents consisting of different types of changes may be grouped together if their content is related.

  • For more information about what each of types of changes, see Which Changes go Where?

• Short Description - Use this field to identify your change so that you (and other reviewers) can tell which submission it is on the tracking sheet without having to open each file.  Suggestions include: file name (if submitting a single file), page name, course designator and number, short summary, faculty-specific codes, etc.

• SUBMISSON VERSION 1: Upload a file - common files to add include Word documents, spreadsheets, or PDF files. Maximum 10 files. Maximum file size 10 MB.

• SUBMISSION VERSION 2: Link to a Google Document - copy and paste a link to your Google document.  Please ensure that the share settings on your document allow it to be viewable by anyone at the U of A.

Tracking

Once submitted, you can follow the progress of your change proposal on this tracking sheet.

As your change proposal progresses through different committees, a review or approval date will be updated here.

Reviewing Submitted Documents

After uploading your files into the submission form, they can be reviewed in these Google folders. 

Once the governance teams have reviewed your submissions, the files will be posted into one of the committee review folders.