Course Inventory
Official Publications maintains the University’s course inventory. The course inventory is the set of courses that the University is authorized to teach by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Here are some important facts about the course inventory:
- A new course or a change to an existing course must be recorded in the inventory before it may appear in a University catalog or Course Schedule.
- Changes to the course inventory can only be made by submitting requests to Official Publications via the online “Request for Change in Course Inventory” system.
- The deadline to submit requests is always November 1 for the following academic year. For example, for changes to 2010-2011, the deadline is November 1, 2009.
- You can view the most current course inventory information using the mainframe application *NRCRIN. To get authorization to view your courses in *NRCRIN, submit a request through *DPUSER or contact Official Publications at offpubs@austin.utexas.edu.
The online “Request for Change in Course Inventory” system must be used to submit all requests for changes to the course inventory. If you need to submit requests, here are some important facts:
- Authorization is required for the system. To request authorization, contact Official Publications. If someone else in your department is already authorized, he or she can request authorization for you from the system home page (“Request Authorization”).
- The system is only open according to the following schedule: September 1 through November 1 for changes for the following academic year; and April 15 through May 15 for limited changes for the following spring semester.
- If any of these dates fall on a weekend, the system will open or close on the next weekday.
- Help screens are available within the online request system. More detailed instructions are also available online.
- Charts of available course numbers can help you plan which numbers to use for new courses.
- A list of all current fields of study, in Course Schedule order, is also available.
- Paper forms are not accepted.
Here are some important details about how the online request system works:
- Requests are routed through designated department and college administrators for approval. Requests must be approved by all designated approvers by the deadlines listed above or they cannot be processed.
- Originators of requests are responsible for making sure that requests are completely approved by the deadline. Approvers do not receive notification from the system that requests are pending. All users can track the status and location of requests by using the “Forms in Progress” tool found on the system home page.
- You can view a list of the approvers within your academic unit by using the “List Authorizations” tool found on the system home page. You can search by college, department, or field of study. The routing scheme cannot be changed once a request has been originated, so make sure your routing scheme is correct before September 1 of each year.
- Approvers may be designated to fill multiple roles within a routing scheme. If so, they will be required to approve requests more than once.
- When new topics courses are created, the system will not allow individual numbered topics to be added to the course at the same time. If you need to add a new topics course and new topics, you should request the new course as soon as the system is open in September and contact Official Publications. We may be able to process the request in time for you to submit requests to add individual topics before the system closes. Otherwise, you must wait until the next time the system is open.
- The online system will only recognize existing fields of study. If you need to add a new field of study, you won’t be able to use the online system until the field is approved by the provost. Contact Official Publications for the necessary paperwork to create a new field of study.