Guide for UnderstandingGraduate Student Milestones

in UAccess

This general guide is meant to assist graduate coordinators and faculty in understanding the Student Milestones for graduate students. Specific questions may be directed to the program’s degree auditor or the leads (Nancy Lindsay and Mike Renning) in the Graduate College Degree Certification office.

Overview

The Student Milestones now available in UAccess Student enable departments to view at a glance a student’s progress in completing the required steps with the Degree Certification office. In UAccess, student milestones are under RECORDS AND ENROLLMENT, then ENROLL STUDENTS. Information provided by students on their Degree Certification forms is recorded in the milestones (and updated when new information is provided to Degree Certification). Departments have read-only access.

There are two sets of milestones used: Doctoral and Master’s. The milestones tracked for each of these degree levels is different, reflecting the different required steps for each. A student who has initiated the required steps with the GraduateCollege will have milestones recorded in UAccess. If a student has been in more than one degree program, there will be a set of milestones for each program (assuming the required steps were initiated).

Master’s milestones

The following milestones are used to track master’s and specialist students:

1)Master’s/Specialist POS (Plan of Study)

2)Completion of Degree Reqs (Completion of Degree Requirements form)

3)Departmental Requirements

4)Human Subjects (confirmation of Responsible Conduct of Research or IRB approval)

5)Thesis (submission of master’s thesis for archiving)

Doctoral milestones

The following milestones are used to track doctoral students:

1)Doctoral Plan of Study

2)Written Exams (written comprehensive exams)

3)Language Requirement (for programs that have one)

4)Oral Comprehensive Exam

5)Advancement to Candidacy

6)Committee Appointment form

7)Human/Animal Subjects (confirmation of Responsible Conduct of Research or IRB approval)

8)Final Oral Defense (i.e. dissertation defense or final oral examination)

9)Dissertation (submission of dissertation, DMA document, or DNP practice inquiry for archiving)

Tabs in milestones

Each milestone has four tabs, though not every tab is used for every milestone. The tabs are “Student Milestones,” “Advisors/Completion Info,” “Committee Members,” and “Milestone Attempts.”

The “Student Milestones” tab identifies the milestone and the degree (i.e. Academic Plan), and it reports the Milestone Level, i.e. the status in terms of Degree Certification review. (E.g. a Plan of Study may be Required, Received, Problem, or Approved.) The Milestone Title is used to record a thesis or dissertation title when appropriate.

The “Advisors/Completion Info” tab reports, for the Plan of Study, the graduate coordinator and degree auditor (as Advisor/Evaluator 1 and 2). The Date Required field records the time limitation for program completion for the student based on age of the earliest coursework or the comprehensive exam date. The Comment field is used for any comments regarding the milestone.

The “Committee Members” tab reports the major advisor for a Plan of Study or the committee members for forms on which the committee is identified. Each member’s role for the committee or milestone in question is noted.

The “Milestone Attempts” tab reports the status of the milestone – i.e. Not Completed, In Progress, or Completed. The Date Attempted reports the date when the Degree Certification office updated the Milestone Level under the “Student Milestones” tab. The Milestone Complete field shows whether the milestone is Not Completed, In Progress, or Completed. (Example: A Plan of Study reviewed but not approved due to a problem will show the date the Degree Certification office reviewedit and identified the problem,with Milestone Complete status of “In Progress.” When it is approved, the Date Attempted will be updated to the date of approval, and status will be updated to “Completed.”)

General notes

A step that has not been initiated with Degree Certification will generally have blank fields for the milestone data, or the Milestone Level under “Student Milestones” will show it as Conversion orRequired. (‘Conversion’ just means that the milestone was automatically generated when data was converted from our old database and it will be changed to Required, Problem or Approved by the Degree Auditor as the paperwork comes in.) If no milestones are found for a student (or for a particular degree program), that indicates that the student has not yet initiated any of the required steps with Degree Certification – the milestones are added when the student initiates the required steps.