Quest is the authoritative source for course information. After a proposal is approved, Kuali Curriculum Management (CM) sends information to Quest so that Quest can then proliferate to all the necessary locations within Quest and to other tools and systems.
In Quest, course ownership (Academic Org) is applied at the subject code level. This means that all courses listed under the same subject code will have the same owner.
Kuali CM and the Academic Unit field
It is not possible to match Quest's ownership structure in Kuali CM, thus each course has a field to indicate the owner: Academic Unit. The Academic Unit field for each course must be identical to the official owner of the associated subject code ownership in Quest.
Although Kuali CM appears to offer the ability to choose an independent owner, it is not possible due to integration and how our campus systems digest this information.
Why must all courses match the subject code ownership?
When ownership is desired at the course level, there are downstream system impacts and manual work required.
- Kuali: Staff responsible for Kuali content check to ensure the Academic Unit field matches subject code ownership in Quest. For courses with different Academic Orgs., the curriculum and calendar team would need to remember that a mismatch for one course is intentional, not an accidental error.
- Quest:
- Quest security is provided to individuals based on the Academic Org. When different Academic Orgs. are used for the same subject code, individuals needing to access courses may need to have access to all courses and related processes in an Academic Org. unnecessarily.
- Considering courses with different Academic Orgs., here are examples of impacted processes and pages:
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Grade submission for authorized non-instructor access
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Security access management
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Instructor/Advisor table security
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Course build
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Prior term copy workbook
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Data analysts would need to be aware that there is a disconnect between the subject ownership data and the course catalog ownership
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Data extracts – users would need to know to run both Academic Orgs. to capture all courses within a single subject code
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Queries for course selection processes with department
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Scheduling:
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Course information for scheduling purposes is pulled from Quest into the Data Collection Utility (DCU) to facilitate the course scheduling process.
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Instructors are assigned to courses based on their Academic Org.
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Scheduling Reps have access to scheduling processes based on their assigned Academic Org(s).
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Instructor/Advisor access updates: For instructors or advisors who need access to the subject code within Quest, they would need to be added to both Academic Orgs. for the same subject code so they still can upload grades and have access to the student information within Quest.
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DCU security: Security roles in the DCU would require manual adjustments to ensure the correct individuals can view and work with the course having a unique owner.
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Additional manual checks: At the start of each scheduling cycle, and again during the mid-cycle review, staff responsible for scheduling courses normally check for catalog errors. For courses assigned to an alternate Academic Org., staff would need to remember this exception, adding another manual layer to the process.
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Delays when contacting Scheduling Reps: When reaching out to Scheduling Reps about errors or questions, staff responsible for scheduling would be required to remember which Academic Org. owns each course, and which academic unit should be contacted with questions. This extra step increases the chance of delays.
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Instructor “Ownership” adjustments in DCU: Instructor ownership within DCU would need to be manually reassigned to align with the academic unit responsible for entering the instructor's constraints. This adds ongoing maintenance every term.
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Duplicate instructor constraint submissions: When Scheduling Reps submit instructor constraints (Level 1 or Level 2), there would be a risk that the same instructor could be submitted by both academic units that share ownership of the subject code. This can lead to duplicate entries, conflicting availability information, or additional follow-up to resolve discrepancies.
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What to consider before changing ownership of a subject code
- Consider the effective date being requested for the change.
- Must be the start of future term (e.g., September 1 for fall, January 1 for winter, May 1 for spring).
- This could impact any course scheduling processes that are underway.
- Academic Unit is a field that is visible in the Graduate Studies Academic Calendar.
- Ideally, ownership is changed for all courses using the same effective date in Kuali CM, but this may not be possible due to existing proposals in the workflow, or differences between graduate and undergraduate records (if subject code is shared).
- If any impacted courses are cross-listed, an updated Kuali CM record will need to be created at the same time.
To change the ownership - faculty and/or academic unit - for an entire subject code (and thus all associated courses) requires faculty council approval. This request does not have to go to Senate Undergraduate Council/Senate Graduate Council, but can be sent there for information if desired.
For any subject codes that are used at both undergraduate and graduate levels, the ownership at the academic unit level must be the same for both (one ownership per subject code).
How to make a request to change ownership of a subject code/subject
- Create a memo for Faculty Council (and any meetings under it that would be necessary) explaining the desired change of ownership (existing to new) for faculty and/or academic unit changes.
- Once approved, complete and submit the Curriculum Management (Kuali) Subject Requests Jira form, selecting the Change ownership of an existing subject option.
- Once received, members of the Office of the Registrar or Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs will update the subject code table in Quest and will also individually change each record in Kuali Curriculum Management (CM) - as an editorial change - on the faculty's behalf, which will then update each course in Quest.
- If there are any courses already in the Kuali CM workflow, the Faculty/Academic Unit fields for those courses can also be changed by the proposers or subsequent approvers, as long as faculty council approval has occurred.