According to the Office of the Registrar, graduation applications are now due one year prior to a student’s prospective graduation date.
Students graduating in December 2015, May 2016, August 2016 or December 2016 must turn graduation applications into the Office of the Registrar by Oct. 9, 2015. Students graduating May 2017 or later must apply for graduation starting in April 2016.
Seniors graduating this semester won’t be affected by these new requirements. In the past, they would have applied for December graduation at this time.
However, this policy change will affect every graduating class after those who graduate this fall. Junior Aaron Davis will need to apply for graduation in April according to the new requirements. Davis said he didn’t understand why students would need to apply for graduation a year in advance.
“I can see the point behind doing it early because then you can’t wait until the last minute to fill out the packet but a whole year is a little too early,” Davis said. “For me, my official date changes depending on how many summer hours and other factors come in so it puts a lot of unwanted and unintentional stress on students who are about to graduate because that’s the last thing you want to think about almost a year in advance.”
According to an email from University of Central Arkansas Graduation Coordinator Amanda Smallwood, the graduation application will be approved by a full-time adviser instead of a faculty adviser beginning next fall in most departments.
Smallwood said the applications would now be approved by a full-time adviser because of the university’s many curriculum updates. Smallwood said giving full-time advisers the responsibility of reviewing graduation applications would make things easier for faculty because they will not be required to learn all of the new changes.
Students who have been seeing their faculty advisers may be unsure of how to find a adviser to look over their application. To do this, students can go to their faculty adviser for help, then submit their major and minor to the Academic Advising Center. Smallwood said there is a specific adviser for each academic department.
Students may remember having a full-time adviser during their freshman or sophomore year, when they went to the Academic Advising Center in Harrin Hall. After freshman year, many students were given their major adviser, who is usually a faculty member in their department.
In her email, Smallwood said, “We believe moving up the deadline will allow students greater opportunity to meet all outstanding requirements for completion of their degree by the desired graduation date.”
If a student is not sure whether he can graduate in the next year, Smallwood recommended that he contact the Academic Advising Center to see how many hours he needs. She also said that a student could use DegreeWorks to check his progress toward his degree.
Students can access DegreeWorks by logging into myUCA, clicking on Self Service, then Student & Financial Aid, and selecting DegreeWorks for Students.
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