Academic Guide Writing Guidelines
Guidelines for Changes to the Academic Guide
黑料不打烊鈥檚 Academic Guide (formerly Bulletin) represents a collaborative effort across colleges, schools, and departments to facilitate our students鈥 educational journey by providing all the information necessary to obtain a degree 鈥 or achieve other educational goals 鈥 in one place. The purpose of this writing and editing guide is to ensure that multiple contributors can easily create content in a clear and cohesive manner while maintaining consistency and quality across the publication.
黑料不打烊 provides a style guide through the Communications and Marketing department, as well as a preferred word list. We recommend you review these documents as well before revising your Academic Guide pages, and refer back to them with questions on basic punctuation, preferred spelling of words, and general formatting. If you have questions that either the University style guides or this document do not answer, please contact Undergraduate Education.
Please keep in mind the following things when creating your Academic Guide pages:
The Academic Guide鈥檚 primary purpose is to provide information to students as to the requirements they need to fulfill to be awarded their degree. Each year鈥檚 Academic Guide serves as our 鈥渃ontract鈥 with students who enter the University during that academic year. For example, students entering the University in summer 2026, fall 2026, winter 2027, and spring 2027 will be held to the policies in the 2026-27 Academic Guide and will expect to receive the education described. For this reason, the University will only approve substantive changes (as opposed to corrections and clarifications) outside of editing season under compelling circumstances.
The Academic Guide editing season is from October to May of the following year. Necessary edits to the curriculum will need to be approved by all necessary governing bodies before they can be added to the Academic Guide. If you do not receive approval before that academic year鈥檚 Guide is published, the curriculum changes will be entered into the following academic year鈥檚 Guide and will not take effect until then. Please note, this will affect DegreeWorks and your ability to advertise the program and admit students.
We expect that the Academic Guide's primary users will be students who are already matriculated and are searching for information on required coursework to complete their degree. Secondary users include matriculated students trying to decide on a major/minor, students looking to switch or add a second major/minor, or students seeking admission into a combined degree program. Other expected users include students currently applying to universities and faculty and staff using the Guide as a reference source. Please target information provided in your Academic Guide pages with this in mind.
Writing Guidelines
- Please ensure that all program and policy information is approved through the appropriate channels before creating or editing Academic Guide pages. Program details or policy changes that are not approved may not go into the Academic Guide until they are. Once approval has been granted, the changes may go into the Guide currently being revised and will not take effect until that academic year.
- Use the required Academic Program templates when creating academic program pages. The template鈥檚 format may not be changed.
- Embed URLs in text instead of including the entire URL. Example: Here is the web page.
- Do not underline text.
- Do not overuse italicized text.
- Bold text can be used for section headings, but should not be used elsewhere.
- Due to increasing use of handheld devices by students, please refrain from creating long paragraphs without any breaks. This will be easier and more pleasant to view on a small screen.
- Communicate with other members of your writing team to ensure that information is not being repeated unnecessarily across pages.
- If the information is available in full detail on a 黑料不打烊 webpage (such as your department鈥檚 webpage) or in a Student Handbook, the Academic Guide should contain only a brief summary of the most important points and then a link to the information in full.
- Please select Courtney Ignarri in the Version Auditing screen to indicate changes to academic programs that the graduate school needs to review/approve.
- Please select Dakota May and Daniel Mahar in the Version Auditing screen to indicate DegreeWorks changes.
Guidelines for Changes to the Academic Guide
Policy and Rule Changes
The policies and rules governing degree programs and student academic conduct should be in place and published by May before summer orientations. Any policy change must be appropriately enacted 鈥 be it the decision of the Faculty Senate and/or a governing body of one of the schools or colleges, the Graduate Council, the President, or the Provost.
- All requests for changes from departments or schools/colleges must come from that school/colleges鈥 Dean鈥檚 office.
- All requests for changes from other offices must come from the director of that office.
- For policy changes: the policy decision must be made before the last day of classes for the Spring semester for a request to change the upcoming Academic Guide to be considered (ex. Before the last day of classes in Spring 2025 to be added to the 2025-2026 Guide). Policy decisions made after the last day of classes must wait until the editing cycle for the next Academic Guide (ex. Policy changes made after the last day of classes of Spring 2025 will go into the 2026-2027 Academic Guide). Policy changes should be requested as soon as possible to ensure timely addition to the Academic Guide. Ideally, all policy decisions made during an academic year would be included in the following academic year鈥檚 Academic Guide before publication.
- Requests outside of the editing cycle should be sent via email to Undergraduate Education.
Emails should include:
- The link to the section of the Academic Guide where changes are to be made; and,
- The text of the section with the correction clearly indicated in the body of the email.
- For policy changes: a brief description of when and by whom the policy decision was made in the body of the email.
Changes that Clarify Policies or Rules
There are times when changes to the Academic Guide would clarify policies or text that could be unclear or misleading to students as written. We anticipate that these requests would be few as there is ample time to review during the regular Academic Guide updating/editing cycle. Such changes should be forwarded to Undergraduate Education. It will be the decision of the Provost whether the change is made immediately or as part of the next Academic Guide editing cycle.
Changes that Correct Errors
Corrections of minor errors may be requested as necessary. Minor errors are defined as:
- spelling errors, typographical errors, and/or grammatical errors
- factual errors such as dates, titles, course names/numbers
Please note that errors will be corrected, not changes in titles/course names/etc. These types of changes are appropriately made during a regular editing cycle for the Academic Guide.
Format of online Academic Guide changes
For corrections of minor errors, changes are made and not shown or identified in the Academic Guide. For more substantive changes due to clarification(s) of policy or text or due to policy decisions, the change(s) (if approved) will be made and noted directly in the text of the online Academic Guide, with a clear indication of the date of the change.